OAKVILLE, ONT. — If there’s any feeling-out process at all during a short evaluation camp, it certainly evaporates quickly. So as Team Canada’s World Junior Championship hopefuls hit the ice for a couple sessions on Day 2 of camp in Oakville, the urgency ratcheted up in a hurry.
“Day 1 is good to meet everyone, get to see everyone’s face and get to know everyone,” said Nashville Predators 2023 first-rounder Matthew Wood. “And then today it’s kind of, you have to bring your stuff. It’s a short camp. So the nerves they have to be gone.”
After a couple morning sessions at the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex where the crew of 30 invitees were split into two groups, everyone came together for a spirited scrimmage session in the early evening. The coaching staff used the ice time to run different scenarios, having five-on-five play mixed in with some special teams work as well as a little three-on-three run.
The different forms of game action come in advance of Canada playing two contests on Tuesday and Wednesday versus a Canadian University U Sports all-star squad.
“I think it was just an extra hour of some evaluation and trying to put some guys in into some positions where we feel they fit on our roster,” said head coach Alan Letang. “It added a little bit of structure to our game. I know the first few skates, there was a lot of flow, a lot of passing. This gives them the opportunity to have to stop, battle a little bit and just get prepared for the two games coming up.
“The biggest thing is just getting a little bit of structure, because it’s not fair to those guys if we just throw a puck out and play the U SPORTS team and three guys start chasing [it] because they’ve [all] played three different systems [with their club teams]. So if we can get a little bit of structure, get guys on the same page, it just makes the game better and makes the evaluation a little bit better.”
As for the three-on-three work, Letang chuckled when asked if that was a nod to the way the past two world juniors have ended. In 2022, Canada claimed gold on Kent Johnson’s three-on-three extra-time winner versus Finland; In ’23, it was Dylan Guenther starting a Canadian celebration with his three-on-three OT goal against Czechia.
“You’ve got to think it becomes pretty important as you get down to it,” he said with a grin. “So we can introduce it a little bit early and continue to work on it.”
Only a few goals were scored during the scrimmage session, but a nice one belonged to Conor Geekie. The six-foot-four Arizona Coyotes prospect was sent in alone on Mathis Rousseau and whipped a hard, low shot past the goalie on the glove side. Surely that caught Letang’s attention, however, the coach actually brought up another sequence when asked about Geekie’s showing.
“Three-on-three, he loses the puck and then and then I think he gets mad and just bullies two more guys and gets it back,” Letang noted. “He’s got to be a horse for us. He’s got to be that guy and I love his confidence. He’s got some swagger in our dressing room and some confidence [and] we need that.”
Canada is also going to require some quality goaltending in Sweden if it is to collect a third straight gold medal. There’s a sense it’s a bit of a jump ball right now in terms of which goalies between Rousseau, Domenic DiVincentiis, Scott Ratzlaff and Samuel St. Hilaire are tabbed for the team. St. Hilaire stopped a couple of breakaways in the scrimmage, though Letang didn’t tip his hand in terms of whether or not any one puck stopper really impressed him.
“I thought I thought they all made some pretty good saves,” he said. “It was nice to see them get some game action and some traffic. I think these next two games will be a real good evaluation of where they’re at. We all know how (it) goes; there’s a lot of pressure when you (start the tournament). We’ll try and put a little bit on them here and see how they do. But they’ve all handled it well and they’re prepared for these next two days.”
