Also, I have to feel like we were one of the "younger" teams in that Showcase. For example, Tampa had 25-year-old in their top line. If we would've gone with that threshold, we would've had guys like Livingstone on board.
On top of that, we left guys like Kulonummi home to start in Liiga whereas Carolina brought a guy in a similar situation like Heimosalmi to their roster.
Carolina is understandably in a different situation than any other team in the NHL, since they don't have an AHL affiliate, so it's understandable enough that Heimosalmi, even others like Unger-Sorum or Gunler, Vondracek, any of their Europeans who may be loaned back were needed to just to round out a prospect team? Anyway, we filled such gaps by.... using near-NHL players like Stastney, Evangelista, and Afanaseyev instead of bringing over our European kids! So I don't think that's necessarily an argument in our favor.
It seemed to me like all the teams had a pretty similar mix of older guys plus new draftees, I wouldn't nitpick things much on that level.
All the games were close enough they pretty much could have gone either way, I thought, so I wouldn't read too much into the 0-3 result. Play those same teams 3 more times it could be 3-0 for us. I thought the goalies we faced played really well, all 3 of them. Alnefelt is fairly well established in the AHL already, Well, Waeber is like 27 years old also, so if you want to go age-ism, he's coming from extensive Swiss league experience and no wonder he stood out when we put 40 shots on him in the Florida game.