Reflections on gold, Part One

Oh, the beauty of hindsight coupled with the beauty of sparkling gold. It makes this one of the easier blog entries I’ve ever had to write up. Congratulations to Canada’s junior team for winning their fifth-consecutive championship. Before the tournament started head coach Pat Quinn said this team would not be able to rely on one line to win gold. Quinn, and a lot of talking heads, believed a tournament win would require a 22-man effort. Mission accomplished. So with the gold in the bag, the Loudest Man in the Room takes a look back at the performances we saw-- in two parts. In goal, we’ll start with Chet Pickard. Pickard is in the midst of a superlative season with the Tri-Cities Americans, following his CHL goalie of the year award last season. That didn’t get him into very many games in this tournament though. To Pickard’s credit, he played well when called upon, and was professional in putting the team ahead of himself. A controversy between the pipes can kill a team’s chances and chemistry in a heartbeat. Pickard made sure that didn’t happen. The man of the hour Monday night was Canada’s number-one goalie Dustin Tokarski. The talk leading up to the final was that Tokarski is a big-game goalie. He showed his mettle at the Memorial Cup last May, and showed it again Monday night. There’s no doubt Tokarski struggled at times in this tournament, but he came through when his team needed him most. Looking back at the top defence pairing’s performance, I showered Colten Teubert and Thomas Hickey with praise in the early part of the tournament, but they didn’t seem to find another level in the later stages. Against the Russians in the semi final, and against the Swedes in the final, Hickey showed a propensity to being knocked off the puck and making bad decisions with it. Teubert showed a lack of footspeed, and was often beaten to the outside. These two young men still have very bright futures in hockey and will make the LA Kings very proud in the future. I just didn’t see them take their game to the next level. I also showered Cody Golobeuf with praise in the early days of this tournament, only to see Golobeuf’s ice time cut dramatically as the games got more important. I still feel Golobeuf played well, and certainly beyond my expectations and his reputation would have thought. His partner PK Subban had a superlative tournament. Subban showed incredible skating and puck-handling abilities. Heading into this tournament I wondered if Subban would ever be good enough defensively to play every day in the NHL. Turns out Subban’s got some game. His end-to-end rushes energized the Canadian offence and provided a spark whenever he went for one. His defensive play was more than good enough to be named to the tournament all star team. His unwillingness to lose banged home the puck that put Canada ahead in the gold medal game. Hickey was the captain of this team, but nobody led the way Subban did. Canada’s unorthodox decision to bring eight defensemen led to this team using two different power play specialists. Both Alex Pietrangelo and draft-eligible Ryan Ellis played big roles in Canada’s tournament best power play. Pietrangelo struggled at times, but overall played a strong game when put in the quarterback role. Ellis meanwhile, was nothing short of amazing. Looking ahead, he will need to get stronger and meaner to become an elite defender, but his work on the power play was some of the finest work I’ve ever seen. He was calm and patient and almost always made the right play with the puck. His work at the line was the catalyst for the work the forwards did down low, and allowed Canada to run the one-three-one power play they did. And I lost count of how many times he made great plays to keep the puck in the zone. I can’t find Ellis’ ceiling as a player. All of which brings us to the defence pair I was critical of earlier in the tournament. I wrote that I’d need to see another level from Tyler Myers and Keith Aulie-- and they showed it. Aulie didn’t crank it up quite the way Myers did, but he was part of the best pairing on the ice during the final. Myers was the other half of that pairing and was lights-out. Save for Tokarski, Myers was undoubtedly the best player on either side of the ice in the final. You’ve got to appreciate a big, strong defenseman that can skate, makes great passes and clears the front of his crease with tenacity. I’m a Myers believer after that final, and I look forward to watching him in Buffalo in short time. Tomorrow we look at the forwards.