The only thing Team Canada does when I'm covering their games is win, baby. This has been the case ever since I landed in Prague last year.
The Canadians barely broke a sweat on Saturday night as they outshot the Slovaks 28-18 on their way to a 5-0 win.
In the first five games of the round robin, Canada has outscored its opponents 30-4 and has been pretty unbelievable at both ends of the ice. The Canadians boast an 18.29 shooting percentage—a whopping four percent above second-place Germany—and are also first defensively with a tremendous 95.88 save percentage, which is more than a full percentage point better than the second-place Czechs.
With everyone playing so well, the conversation among the press group after Saturday night's win focused on Ben Hutton. He didn't play a single shift against Slovakia, even though Team Canada was in full control of the game from start to finish.
Michael Traikos has the story:
Of course, Hutton is taking the situation in stride. He's the same age as most of the other guys on the back end but he wasn't getting invites to tournaments like the U18s or World Juniors like Morgan Rielly, Ryan Murray or Matt Dumba when he was younger.
Here's my breakdown of Canada's blue line, from NHL.com:
Even last year, the gold-medal defence was anchored by some top-tier guys—Brent Burns, Jake Muzzin, Dan Hamhuis and Aaron Ekblad. This year's group has done nothing, yet, on the NHL playoff side—other than Chris Tanev's five games for the Canucks on the run to the Stanley Cup Final in his rookie season in 2011.
Not surprisingly, Tanev downplayed his leadership role on the blueline when I asked him about it today:
"There's enough guys here who have won a lot for Canada," he replied. "Those guys are definitely the leaders. I'm just trying to watch what they do and learn how they lead."
What about playing an international-style game on the big ice?
"It's fun. It's a bit different but it's definitely fun. There's a lot of room out there, especially in the end zones. You can get in the cycle for a long period of time. That's a little different from back home."
Ice time is going to be at even more of a premium once Nashville Predators' defenceman Ryan Ellis joins the team on Monday. Ellis has a solid international pedigree, with three World Junior appearances, including a gold medal in 2009, and a World Championship appearance in Minsk, Belarus, in 2014.
It's hoped that Ellis will bring some punch to the Canadian power play, though he was unable to score in the playoffs for the Predators after hitting the 10-goal mark in the regular season for the first time in his career.
After tonight's late games between Switzerland-Sweden and Slovakia-Finland conclude, we have two days left in the round robin before the medal round seedings will be determined.
Canada plays France on Monday before wrapping up against Finland on Tuesday in a game that will almost certainly determine first place in Group B. Both unbeaten teams have already guaranteed themselves top-two finishes; the only question now is about the order and the opponents.
If the standings stay the way they are right now, Canada would cross over to play Denmark. The Danes moved up the standings again today thanks to a 3-2 shootout win over the previously unbeaten Czech Republic team. Our (former) boy Nicklas Jensen picked up another assist and scored in the shootout to help fuel the win. He's Denmark's leader in goals (4) and points (6).
I'd be very intrigued to see Jensen—and Jannik Hansen, and Nikolaj Ehlers and Lars Eller—go against Canada in the quarterfinal. Right now, though, the Swiss are poised to move back into fourth place in Group A if they can hang on to the 1-0 lead they've built over Jacob Markstrom and the Swedes.
I'm going to wrap up today with something from the "cute" department. Apparently Ryan Miller can feed passes as well as stopping pucks...
Horvat replied to that tweet—and looking back through his timeline, I see that he is still in Vancouver.
I'm starting to feel like it won't be long before this next generation of Canucks puts down its own set of deep roots, as players like Linden, the Sedins and Alex Burrows have done before them.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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