MONTREAL — Day one has finished at the World Junior Hockey Championship. Here are five players of note who played on Friday.
Jack Eichel – U.S.
Did Rangers fans start the chant “Potvin sucks” in the first period of his first game at Madison Square Garden? It seemed goofy to me that fans at the Bell Centre booed Eichel every time he touched the puck in the Americans’ opening-game shoot-out win over the Finns. Supposedly the most knowledgeable hockey fans in any arena should be above that.
I suppose that they were (over-reacting) to a couple of flashy moves that Eichel made on a power play with Finnish players staying back, filling lanes rather than chasing him. Please. Any suggestion that Eichel was hot-dogging or anything like that is just groundless. It’s not even sensible. Eichel is a heck of a talent who can make sleight-of-hand moves at lightning speed in traffic and make them look easy.
Montreal’s re-introduction to the WJC could have been classier–Eichel wouldn’t have heard if he were skating in front the denizens of ye olde Forum circa the 1978 WJC. Sigh. Better times. Anyway, Eichel shut up boo-birds in the shootout. When he was carrying the puck up the ice you never had any doubt that he was going to score and he did with a surgical finish. Yeah, one day they’ll be telling their grandkids that they saw Eichel play in this tournament–they’ll leave out the part about booing him.
Noah Hanifin – U.S.
One NHL scout’s reading of the 2015 draft-eligible defenceman’s play after the U.S.-Finland game: “He was very solid. He has such great skating ability. In a couple of years he could be one of the best skaters on any blueline in the league.”
It’s a lot to ask of 17-year-old to go in against 19-year-olds in this tournament at the best of times but it’s even more challenging for defencemen that tender age. While the McDavid-Eichel storyline has been the focus, the No. 1 pick is likely not in play in this tournament but the third overall could well be. Hanifin made a heckuva case last night.
Julius Honka – Finland
The Dallas first-round pick is currently plying his trade with the Stars’ AHL affiliate–the Swift Current Broncos thought they were getting him back this season but his Finnish league team, at Dallas’ urging, made the case that Honka was simply on loan to the WHL club and not outright assigned there, a precedent that could shape relations between CHL and Euro outfits going forward.
Honka had good moments and a few rocky ones. He took a penalty in the second period when the U.S. sustained a cycle and he looked gassed giving chase. In the third he astutely read opportunities, came in from the point and forced Tyler Demko to make his best saves.
I’m not sure that Honka was the Finns’ best defenceman in last night’s tilt but he was the Suomi blue liner who looked to have the best pro upside. It might be that he was a little over-confident in his ability to raise his game going from the AHL to teenage tournament play.
Robby Fabbri – Canada
One thing that I noticed in the run-up to the Memorial Cup and the NHL entry draft was the disconnect between NHL scouts’ estimation of Fabbri’s ability and opponents’ take on him–while the scouts had good things to say about the Guelph centre, inevitably those who skated against him positively glowed about him.
“He was the best player on the best team [in the OHL] last season–not that complicated,” one OHLer told me. “He’ll be real good in the NHL, for sure.”
If other junior players were making the picks, Fabbri would have been a top 10 draftee and not No. 21 to St Louis last June. Maybe the first sign of the players being out in front of the scouts came when Fabbri stuck around with the Blues right up to the cusp of the regular season. His play in Canada’s opening-game rout of the Slovaks was a further indication, not so much the two goals so much as the speed and puck sense he exhibited.
He’s short and right now still punches out of the middleweight class but he’s an elusive target–hard to hit because of the pace he carries and fully charged battery. It’ll be interesting to see how he plays on the wing here, how he handles play in the corners. The ability to shift over to the right side might be his ticket to St Louis next season.
I thought he might have been a bit exposed as a still-in-development prospect in the loss to the physical Edmonton Oil Kings in last spring’s Memorial Cup final but he looks like a dynamic player here, one picked after a couple of more lauded kids who are watching the world juniors at home right now.
Josh Morrissey – Canada
When I was out in Prince Albert a few weeks back (riding the bus with the Seattle Thunderbirds on assignment for Sportsnet Magazine), I saw Morrissey look sluggish with a flat-lining Raiders team that fell without much resistance.
It could have been a bad stretch for the team. It may have been a bad game for Winnipeg’s 2013 first-rounder. He could have even known that the Raiders were looking to move him, which they did weeks later, sending him to the Kelowna Rockets.
Last night against the Slovaks, Morrissey little resembled the guy from the Seattle game. He was Canada’s most impressive defenceman, a statement that must carry a significant asterisk given that it’s hard to look bad in such a one-side tilt.