First, a big thanks to all of you who have taken the time from your busy holiday season (oxymoron intended) to flood my Postmedia inbox with hate emails.
In a weird way, I’ve missed you.
Second, what is wrong with you people?
Look, I totally get that most everybody in “Hockey Country” is upset over Canada’s failure to play in a medal game at the world junior championship for a second straight year, something that has never before happened in the almost 30 years of the current tournament format.
I get the passion, I get the emotion.
You all love the game and as such, have strong opinions.
It’s one of the many things that’s so great about our nation.
But come on, how about thinking things through before you type?
I’m talking to the dozens who have whined that nobody is taking “accountability” for the early elimination.
You do understand the word, right?
It’s another way of saying responsibility.
How is Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s senior VP of high performance and hockey operations, saying “the buck stops here” and “blame me” not taking accountability?
The last-minute, 4-3 loss to Czechia in Thursday’s quarter-final was not Salmond’s fault, but as the big cheese, he owned it.
I think that’s commendable.
What I will ask is for folks to stop listing the players who “should have” been on the Canadian roster.
For one thing, that’s disrespectful to the players who did make the squad.
For another, what makes you an expert?
The very qualified gentlemen in charge of forming the roster spent months and months evaluating, both live and on tape, every single player who was good enough to be considered.
No offence (see what I did there) intended, but I think many of you (not all, but many) did most of your scouting by going to the hockeydb.com website.
There is more to the makeup of a successful roster than guys who are good at scoring goals.
“I don’t think that really works,” Peter Anholt, Canada’s management group lead, replied when asked why they didn’t just bring the best offensive players in the country. “I don’t think just looking at stats, bringing the most goals and the most assists … I don’t think that does it. I think you have to look at character. I think you have to look at how they play, how they compete, and in any situation. And I think we were comfortable with the group.”
Again, Anholt and the other decision-makers interviewed all the players to find out what makes them tick.
They were looking for heart.
The players they picked had plenty of it.
The narrative I find particularly humorous is coming from media members who believe the fact Dave Cameron didn’t hold more practices in between games is a contributing factor to the loss.
Cameron said the reason he didn’t is because the players were “exhausted” and so he went with the rest is a weapon approach once favored by Guy Boucher, another former Ottawa Senators coach who he was with on Pat Quinn’s staff when Canda won gold at the 2009 World Juniors.
“That’s a situation where you’re always thinking about the fatigue of the players,” said Anholt. “Their energy level, you’re always weighing that and the emotional level of your team. Those are decisions that we make as a group, and whether the team skates on the day before or the day of the games, those are situations that you come up with and you make those decisions on what’s best for the team at that time.”
Even though he’s a former player, how does TSN analyst Carlo Colaiacovo know what the energy and emotional levels of this particular group were as he watched from Toronto?
How do any of us, other than the people who run the team and the families of the players?
Let’s be serious: Was skipping a morning skate the difference between Canada winning and losing?
Of course not.
There were probably five teams that had a chance at claiming the gold medal, and there is very little margin separating them.
Canada was among the top two or three.
Canada came up short because its best all-around player, Matthew Schaefer, suffered a tournament-ending injury in the second game, and also because of too many penalties and too many missed scoring chances.
Their undisciplined play cost the Canadians against the Americans, but that wasn’t a do-or-die game.
Terrible officiating was largely to blame in the elimination loss.
Not as much in the bogus kneeing major and game misconduct slapped on Cole Beaudoin for an open-ice body check in the first period because both teams scored during that five-minute penalty, but the call on Andrew Gibson that led to the winning goal was just brutal.
Watch the replay. It was not a dirty hit. Gibson stayed in his track and followed through with his check.
But even if some view it as questionable, you don’t call that a penalty with less than 2 1/2 minutes remaining in an elimination game.
You just don’t.
Meanwhile, what about the incident earlier in the third when Miroslav Holinka drilled Gavin McKenna’s head into the end glass.
How did two referees not see that?
Now that should have been a major, and already with momentum carried over from Porter Martone’s late second-period power goal, there’s a good chance Canada would have capitalized once or twice.
As for the lack of scoring, Canada dominated through much of the tournament and led in both shots and golden opportunities in every game.
As someone who was sitting at the end of the pressrow closest to the net Canada shot at twice each game, it’s incredible how many times a puck bounced over a stick, or hit a post or a body part and slid into a corner rather than the net.
The oft-used term snake-bitten is an understatement of Canada’s back luck.
“Sometimes the hockey gods just aren’t on your side,” McKenna said, his voice cracking slightly with emotion, after Thursday’s heartbreaker.
Sometimes they aren’t, and this week they decided it wasn’t Canada’s time.
Blame them.