A coronation for Canada? Or will King Henrik and the Tre Kroner’s play spoiler?
I don’t want to throw dirt on Tortorella since his tenure in New York was mostly positive…but boy was that a rough tournament for him and Dean Lombardi, not to mention the players.
Canada is so on top of their game right now that it’s hard to see any team beating them in a best of 3 final series. The only way they will lose this tournament will be if they lose in the semi finals which is one game winner take all. Any team can get lucky and win one game.
The American team are going through a brief period where most of their best players are either too old or too young. Some of the best talent they have is on the under 23 North American team. Torts coached our team in Vancouver recently with disastrous results, we are friends-off with him on the west coast.
To be honest, I have only been paying cursory attention to the whole tournament. I have heard that the actual hockey being played is worthy of the NHL playoffs. Just haven’t been interested enough to follow closely or watch.
That said, I don’t know how anyone stops Canada now. Swedes have the best chance, but Canada’s roster is probably historically good.
Canada hasn’t lost a hockey game since the preliminary round of the 2010 Olympics. It seems this generation of players don’t know how to lose a game. I hope the Europe team can take a game from them in the finals because that would be good for the game in the 8 countries that are represented on that team and for hockey in general. I wouldn’t bet any money on that happening though.
I’ve been watching a lot of the tournament, I will reserve my main comments until after the cup is handed out… obviously I’m rooting for Canada and especially Carey Price’s international win streak (could probably go to HOF on his international play alone). However, I think Europe is a fantastic story about uniting as a team when there was no reason or expectation to do so.
Kudos to Team Europe for their performance in the World Cup. 25 players from 8 different countries with no past and no future together gave Canada and the hockey world all they could handle and then some. A heartbreaking loss when they gave up 2 goals in the last 3 minutes of the second game to lose 2-1 and give Canada a 2-0 games victory to answer the big question leading up to the tournament - Hockey is Canada’s game.
This generation of players -led by Crosby- will certainly go down in Canadian lore. That second Cup and most recent international gold vaults him into rarefied hockey air.
