WJC: 2019 Team USA Roster Talk

[Smitty93]

Congrats to Team Finland!

Pretty disappointing result. The disallowed Wahlstrom goal and the god awful PP drained the life from the team for a 30 minute stretch. Going down by two finally woke them up, but a lucky bounce cost them in the end. It's hard to beat a good team twice in the same tournament. Even though they had the shorter turnaround time, Finland looked fresher than Team USA. Certainly helps to play a lackluster semi-final opponent rather than Russia.

• Chmelevski was this team's best player overall and it wasn't that close. He was all over the place. If more 19 year olds played like him they would have won. The fact that it took the staff that long to realize it is unforgivable.
• Quinn had his best game of the tournament today.
• The defense as a whole was pretty good today, including Kemp, Samberg, and Anderson. Tough to fault the group on any goals as the first was a lost face-off, second was a lucky point shot, and the third was multiple lucky bounces in a row off another point shot.
• Cockerill was very good again. He's basically got one move (putting the puck behind him and going wide) but no one was stopping it. I was very hard on him in the start, but he really showed up these last 3 games and definitely earned his place on the team.
• Primeau was very good today. There were about 3 unlucky bounces on that game winning goal. He was outplayed by UPL but this loss isn't on him at all.
  
• Poehling was invisible in this tournament since the Sweden game. He lost a ton of huge face-offs today and 2 of those went in the net. He deserves a ton of credit for that furious comeback against Sweden, but he was a disappointment overall as he was not the big time player he should have been when it mattered most. I know he won the best forward of the tournament, but someone had to win that award and there were no dominant players in this tournament like most years.
• Madden and Robertson also mostly disappeared down the stretch. Tough to win when 3 of your top forwards are MIA.
• Barratt was invisible again. Might be the biggest disappointment of the tournament for the team.
• The team made it too easy on UPL for the first 40 minutes. Granted, he made some huge saves, but how many times did the team miss the net in the first two periods? I seriously lost count. That game winning goal shows the importance of just getting it on net and this team struggled a lot in the tournament with trying to pick corners on low percentage plays.
• I'll be happy if Hastings never touches this tournament again. His decisions were really, really poor. Says a lot about him that when the team needed a late goal, and with 6 skaters on the ice, he doesn't have Chmelevski out there. Instead, the line he went with played the whole time and he never got his best player out there. Are you kidding me?

Agree with all of this, but especially the Poehling part. Crazy that he basically won MVP off a great 10 minutes in the Sweden game.

 

[ChicagoBullsFan]

Thanks to Team USA for great and exciting U20 WJC gold medal game.
I understand that each of you guys is very disappointed right now.
But hold your head high and be proud of your team they did their best and that's all what you can ask.

This was 1 goal game which could have gone other way.
This is hockey sometimes you win sometimes you lose.
See you in U18 WJC's in April.

 

[William H Bonney]

Skill in what aspect? I only watched live and when you watch live you miss a lot, especially when you're watching for entertainment, so I admit I could be missing quite a bit.

But we never could even hold it in the offensive zone long enough to get the offense set up, I'm not sure what skill on the back end would have helped with that for. It wasn't that we couldn't break out or we couldn't get in but that every time we got in, they took the puck away behind the net and then played it back out. Miller did try some more complicated breakouts and he struggled when he tried that, but typically we just had the center come back to start low or got it out to a speedy winger and basically never had any real problems moving it through the zones. Maybe more creative passers on the back end? That probably could have helped actually, because when we got set in the zone we had a lot of low quality shots instead of quality passing. I'll think more about that.

I don't disagree with your points as this wasn't a great cycle team, partly due to player selection and partly due to the line formations.

I'm just not a fan of leaving skill behind, especially when this defense would have been more skilled if they chose the most deserving players. Skill helps in all aspects, but specifically in three areas:

• Pucks on net.
  • There was only 1 defenseman (Quinn) in the top 10 on the team in shots on goal. That's simply not good enough and when your only offensive defenseman doesn't score, you're not going to get enough scoring from your backend. Too many defenseman either couldn't get it on net or wouldn't even try. It was very common for this defense group to just chip it back down the wall, even when they had a shooting lane, which puts a huge strain on the forwards to constantly do all the work. Tonight the Finnish defense were directly involved in all 3 goals and started/finished 2 of them on shots. Did a Team USA defenseman even have a dangerous shot tonight?
• Offensive zone keep-ins.
  • Anecdotal, but it didn't feel like this defensive group was very good at holding the puck in the offensive zone at the blue line. I think it's a combination of two things: taking a lot of similar players where their first instinct is to retreat and having two of your three pairs using off-hand defensemen on the right side. And when they did hold the line, they were often just chipping it back up the wall and rarely looking for a shot as I mentioned (off-hand roles are a big factor) which made the team easier to defend.
• Powerplay.
  • With Quinn hot-and-cold all tournament, they had no other true PP quarterbacks to utilize as they left one of the best 19 year old PP quarterbacks in the world (Reilly Walsh) at home. Anderson is a two-way defenseman, but he's not a guy that should be quarterbacking a PP. The PP wasn't that effective even if they were leading the tournament in % heading into tonight (ending up finishing second in %) as their PP % wasn't even good in the grand scheme of this tournament. They only had 7 PPGs and 4 of those came in the first 3 games. Instead, they left home Walsh, the PP quarterback of the best PP in the NCAA. He has 5 PPGs in 12 games this year, which is 2nd best amongst defensemen in the NCAA, 2 behind a player that's 3 years older and has played 8 more games than Walsh. Even if they didn't trust Walsh to take a regular shift, they still should have taken him for the PP alone, especially since it was clear they never planned to play St. Ivany (nor did he force their hand).

That's not to say taking the more skilled defenseman improves the result. It could just as easily lead to worse team defense that wasn't worth the boost in potential offense. My comments are less about the result of this tournament and more about USAH management continually overthinking things and forcing some predetermined structure to a team instead of taking the best players. For example, USAH has enough depth that we shouldn't be having players (i.e. O'Brien and St. Ivany) barely touch the ice in 7 games. It's one thing for a player to play their way into a permanent bench warmer, but O'Brien and St. Ivany barely played, even in the easy games to start the tournament. That's on the management and staff for picking the wrong players. And if they didn't think the depth was good enough to select 13 forwards and 7 defensemen worthy of playing, it's still inexcusable as they should have at least chosen players to come along for the experience that are eligible to return next tournament.

 

[ps241]

It's hard to say for certain. I agree there was certainly a need for more skill on the backend. A guy like Walsh would have definitely provided more offense from the backend. I think the staff hoped Miller would provide some of it, but he wasn't ready for a big role here. The question is would the team defense have dipped by more, if any, than the offense would have increased by adding more skill?

I honestly think allot of it was to do with the system the coach was using. I was shocked at how USA weren’t activating the D when the forwards had control in the O zone. USA did very good on the attack but once they were in the zone trying to cycle the Finns would collapse 5 skaters and outman the cycle while both D would remain very high by the blue line and not pinch and rotate. It was really conservative. Clearly Q Hughes was a different beast but even he didn’t pinch allot to maintain the zone pressure. It seemed like the system this coach was using?

 

[Machinehead]

Really, I feel bad for the kids.

As fans, we get another kick at this in 12 months. Many of them don't.

 

[William H Bonney]

I honestly think allot of it was to do with the system the coach was using. I was shocked at how USA weren’t activating the D when the forwards had control in the O zone. USA did very good on the attack but once they were in the zone trying to cycle the Finns would collapse 5 skaters and outman the cycle while both D would remain very high by the blue line and not pinch and rotate. It was really conservative. Clearly Q Hughes was a different beast but even he didn’t pinch allot to maintain the zone pressure. It seemed like the system this coach was using?

It could be that too. You're not going to get me to defend Hastings as I thought the team made it as far as they did in spite of him.

 

[SK94]

Heavy loss and missed opportunity. It feels like Finland is always a difficult opponent for us and these statistics support it. 2010s big games against Canada, Russia, Sweden and Finland. This includes U18 and U20 tournaments.


Finland-USA 3-4

Losses
2016 U18 semi-final
2018-U18 final
2019 U20 final

Victories
2010 u18 semi-final
2015 u18 final
2017 u18 final
2010 u20 QF

Finland has done a great job but it shouldn't be that difficult for US. Fact is that USA should beat Finland with much higher percentage.

Canada-USA 2-7

Losses
2013 U18 Final
2011 U20 SF

Victories
2011 U18 SF
2012 U18 SF
2015 U18 SF
2016 U18 Bronze medal game
2010 U20 Final
2013 U20 SF
2017 U20 Final

Russia-USA 3-5

Losses
2014 U20 QF
2015 U20 QF
2016 U20 SF

Victories
2013 U18 SF
2018 U18 QF
2017 U20 SF
2018 U20 QF
2019 U20 QF

Sweden-USA 1-10

Losses
2018 U20 SF

Victories
2010 U18 Final
2011 U18 Final
2012 U18 Final
2013 U18 QF
2014 U18 SF
2017 U18 SF
2010 U20 SF
2011 U20 Bronze medal game
2013 U20 Final
2106 U20 Bronze medal game

U18 Gold medals in 2010s
USA 6
Finland 2
Canada 1

U20 Gold medals in 2010s
USA 3
Finland 3
Canada 2
Russia 1
Sweden 1

Extra
USA-Canada U20 Preliminary round games
Dec 31, 2009 USA-Canada 4-5
Dec 31, 2011 Canada-USA 3-2
Dec 30, 2012 Canada-USA 2-1
Dec 31, 2013 USA-Canada 2-3
Dec 31, 2014 Canada-USA 5-3
Dec 26, 2015 USA-Canada 4-2
Dec 31, 2016 USA-Canada 3-1
Dec 29, 2017 Canada-USA 3-4

Canada-USA 5-3

These statistics show that the USA Hockey has done a great job but goals must be even higher.

 

[Arhidia]

fun team to watch. I loved the way the brothers
passed to each other

 

[Smitty93]

Not winning gold sucks, but you have to remember that we've come a long way. Four straight medals (longest active streak). Medaling 7 out of the last 10 years, which more than doubles our total since the tournament.

Personally, this year's team never felt like a gold-medal winning team, though it was a down year for every country.

I'm excited for next year, where the team should be even better, whether Hughes is there or not.

 

[NUhockey]

This was a fun one. I've always enjoyed this tournament but having my alma mater representing USA for the first time ever (with not one but two players) was special.The fact that both Madden and Primeau were positive difference makers made it even better.

As for this roster it seemed like they were just one or two star players from being the sure fire best team. They could've used another offensive threat from the blue line but the team defense was pretty good overall.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Too many lumberjacks on Defence imo. Not enough skill and skating.

I see your angle here.

I'd like to have had more skill on the back-end, and I think there were a lot of bad decisions by the decision makers with the defense. I actually agree that it hurt the team by not taking more skilled players, but I thought our worst defenseman in this tournament was our most skilled defenseman. I thought the forwards were the bigger problem than the defense. The defense could've been better and it lacked top-end talent in the older age group, but I didn't think that was the main reason we lost.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Not scoring on so many PP's drains your mentality, and I think its harder to win close games when that happens. Too many forwards that had no consistency. They'd appear for 1-2 games and then disappear for 3 in a row. I don't know if we had a forward who was good in every game. Jack Hughes was the closest to it, and that speaks to the problem, considering he didn't play in every game and he was the youngest of the forwards.

I didn't think we picked the best defensemen and I think that hurt the team, but given what we did have, I thought they had a pretty decent tournament.Kemp did much better than most would've expected. Samberg was solid, Samuelsson and Miller could've been better but its hard to expect under-agers to be better than around average. Anderson was in too big of a role, but wasn't awful. Our worst defenseman in this tournament that played regularly was the consensus best defenseman on the team, Hughes, so I think its hard to fault the defense too much, considering we didn't pick a great group of defensemen to begin with.

Primeau also got outplayed in the final. I didn't think he was bad in this tournament or this game, but UPL was better. I thought Hastings was too conservative in not giving Knight a chance. Would he have done better than Primeau in this tournament? I don't know, but I don't see the logic in giving minutes to Keyser over Knight.