Any reason why Svech had such a bad Junior's Tournament?
A couple of reasons, really. One is that his style wasn't really compatible with his teammates. He was playing a physical crash and bang type game in the corners, but they were playing more of an up-and-down speedy finesse game. It didn't really help that all the big teams were playing an absurd wide-open track meet style game that tournament. I think Russia's game plan was to out-skate the other teams, which really made Svechnikov stick out.
The other thing is they were playing on a bigger ice surface, so that made his lack of speed look even worse. But I think if teams were playing NHL-style defense and forechecking on normal ice, Svechnikov wouldn't have looked nearly so bad. and, like I said, it didn't really help that Svechnikov was engaging in boardplay and stuff when his team clearly wasn't interested in it.
That said, his coach downplayed a lot of the criticism. He said a couple of times that Svechnikov did exactly what he was asked to do. So it might be that he was asked to play a grinder's role. For the record, I thought he looked physically dominant. Whenever he went into the corner for the puck, he got it, and it took 2 defenders to get it back. He also had some big hits. And his coach had him playing net front on the PP, so it's not like he was getting benched. He got some decent playing time... probably around 13-14 min a game.
I suspect a big part of the "Svechnikov is terrible" line of thinking on this website is tied up with the kinds of posters who want to believe that the CHL ruins young Russian players. With some help from the usual suspects, who don't watch games and only judge prospects based on draft position and point totals.
