Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
Not sure you can teach or build a team to beat Canada when Canada is on our game. Either you have the talent to do so or you don't. You can't manufacture the talent or teach the talent except by starting with youth. It's all about grassroots hockey and the USA is headed in the right direction with lots of new emerging hockey states. Players are coming out of places like Florida, California and Arizona.
If the USA keeps developing talent like Austin Matthews they'll close the gap. At this point they just can't stack up to Canada. Doesn't matter if they take Kessel or not, doesn't matter if Torts is the coach or not. Canada has a much bigger wealth of talent at the moment to pick from. But that's changing and there's a lot of young American talent being drafted every year. It should be a worthwhile rivalry at best on best in 5-10 years IMO
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In a short tournament, it can matter. Kessel is one of the best scorers in the game from the blueline in. He's done it against every defenseman on team Canada in the NHL. Is it harder when you see them every damn shift? Absolutely. But do you really think playing against Abdelkader or Palmieri is wearing any of Canada's defense down? Defense gets worn down by being forced to defend. And yes, coaching can matter from the point of the need to bring everyone together to work to win. That's why Babcock is great. These guys know how to play hockey, he doesn't need to tell them. But he does need to tell him what roles they're doing and how they should do it in the team system, and they have to listen. No one is listening to Torts anymore. The entire NHL tuned out his kind of coach years ago.
And again, they shouldn't be building with Canada in mind, they should be building the best possible hockey team USA can make. And then game planning with Canada in mind, when they play Canada.