A few takeaways in the aftermath of the 2015 world junior hockey championship:
1) How does Canada set up for a defence of the world junior championship when the puck drops in Finland in December?
There won’t be a lot of carry-over from one tournament to the next, to be sure. This Canadian team was built for winning now rather than now and going forward. The roster was made up predominately by 19-year-olds, 1995 birthdays. The most conspicuous exception was Connor McDavid, a ’97 birthday, who’ll most likely be playing in Edmonton or Carolina, but certainly nowhere as remote as Finland next holiday season. Both goaltenders are ’95s. The lone ’96 on defence is Joe Hicketts, a support player more than a lead guy in the grand scheme of things. If healthy, he should be back, given that he signed with Detroit as an undrafted free agent last fall and he won’t be anywhere near the Wings for three or four seasons given their slow-cook approach to development.
Canada’s best hopes are found up front. Two ’96 birthdays in Jake Virtanen and Robby Fabbri would be eligible but no guarantee to be back. Until he went down with injury in the quarters against Denmark, Fabbri had the more prominent role in this tournament, playing beside Nic Petan and Nick Paul on a third line that was more skilled and effective than other opponents’ second units. Virtanen was shuffled around a lot and played with an edge (and sometimes a petulance) that ran counter to his reputation as a kid with a cannon shot but not much else.
It might turn out that both Fabbri and Virtanen will be playing with St. Louis and Vancouver, respectively, next season. So then it’s down to Lawson Crouse, a ’97 birthday whose name will be called early at the entry draft in June. He did yeoman work for an underage player on a grinding line next to Frederik Gauthier and Nick Ritchie in this tournament and should be back in Kingston and with the under-20 team — though stranger things have happened and less likely players have stuck with NHL teams straight out of the draft.
Even when you dig down to cuts from the selection camp, do you find any prospects for continuity? The cut that surprised most folks, Oshawa’s Michael dal Colle, is a ’96 but he has every shot of being with the New York Islanders next fall. It looks like he has outgrown major junior at this point.
So if you’re keeping score, this year’s team had seven returnees but next year’s is at best four and maybe fewer than that. Not necessarily dire, mind you — the ’06 team defended the gold in Vancouver with but one returning player, Cam Barker, from that dominant squad from Grand Forks. You have to figure it will be a younger team trying to win in Finland next winter, a tall order given No.’s 2 and 3.
2) Finland’s high-end talent will be back. While the Finns won just one game in their defence of the 2014 championship, they took the U.S. to the wall in the opening game and didn’t lay down against the hosts either. Their most impressive players were forwards Mikko Rantanen, who’s eligible for the draft in June, and Jesse Puljujarvi, who’s in the 2016 draft class.
Kasperi Kapanen is a ’96 birthday and you’d pencil him in for a place with an NHL team next season if his rights weren’t owned by Pittsburgh — that’s going to be a tough nut to crack. If he’s in North America next year, he might be in a position like Curtis Lazar or Anthony Duclair, 19-year-olds on the fringe of rosters of NHL teams needing playing time that can’t be scrounged up with the big club. Most likely he’ll be in Finland for another year — few Finns are in a rush to come over after being drafted.
3) Sweden came to Toronto with a team that, while impressive in the opening round, looked far too young against a Russian team of guys who, physically, looked to be 19 going on 30. Ten Swedish skaters were ’96 birthdays and one was a ’97. You wouldn’t count on William Nylander being back (see No. 4) but if half your roster is made up of players from your preliminary list the previous year that’s a great head start.
4) William Nylander, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ first-rounder last June, disappeared before our very eyes in the Swedes’ loss to Russia in the semifinals and to Slovakia in the bronze-medal game. Granted, he was in a tough position — he was expected to be the go-to offensive catalyst on a young team.
It was all going fine in the preliminary round and he racked up some impressive numbers. He showed considerable skill with the puck. That said he lived out on the perimeter. The Russians kept pushing him farther out until he was backing onto the Lakeshore. That much you could have expected and can live with — he’s still a work in progress, still a player who’ll have to get a lot stronger and sturdier to physically compete in the NHL.
More problematic, Nylander at times looked disengaged when things weren’t going his way, even petulant. He couldn’t move the needle on the feisty meter. Swedish scouts and officials in attendance were rolling their eyes over the surrender in his game and, based on his performance in prime time, Leafs fans would worry that he might find too many soul-mates in the Toronto dressing room as it presently stands.
5. News came down in the aftermath of the final that the New York Rangers were sending Anthony Duclair back to the QMJHL. Duclair’s world juniors started sensationally and he impressed in fits and starts thereafter. He turned out to be a great fit beside Sam Reinhart and Max Domi on the first line. All points for that.
Duclair had been assuming that he was heading back to the Rangers after the WJC, according to sources close to principals. The Remparts thought there was an 80 to 90 percent chance Duclair was headed their way — only injuries with the big club would have him back on Broadway after the tournament.
Give credit to the Rangers on two counts. One: their loan of Duclair to Hockey Canada beats the mess the Oilers made of their handling of Leon Draisaitl. Two: Quebec is the right place for Duclair to finish the season; there’s no point in calling him back to play fourth-line minutes or be a healthy scratch, a waste of precious development time. The Rangers have to make sure that Duclair doesn’t see this as a demotion or a failing grade — a message that might be hard for him to accept at first.