The World Cup of Hockey Final gets underway tonight. It will feature the biggest surprise of the tournament in Team Europe taking on the juggernaut that is Team Canada. There will be plenty of NHL teams represented but the Blue Jackets will not be one of them. All six of their participants were eliminated over the weekend.
Team USA was the first to be eliminated. Their loss in the second game against Canada was enough to end their tournament. The USA had another game after that against the Czech Republic which they lost 4-3. The US and Finland were the only teams to not win a game in the tournament.
Much has been made about Team USA and how they were put together. They were not optimally built but this wasn’t a bad team by any stretch. With some good coaching they could have been fine. They did not get good coaching and that made a bad situation even worse. I’ve
written already about some of the roster moves John Tortorella has made, they were not good. His post-game comments really didn’t help the situation. Torts talked a lot about caring and how much guys care, and I really hope he doesn’t carry that mindset to Columbus. You give any player a jersey with their country on it they are going to care. It doesn’t make them good players. There was no good reason to playing Justin Abdelkader the minutes he was and no reason to have him practicing on the top line with Patrick Kane.
The worry for fans in Columbus is Torts is going to play players like Gregory Campbell and William Karlsson over players like Sam Gagner, or Oliver Bjorkstrand, because Campbell and Karlsson care more. If you want to scratch a guy for a game to send a message fine, but if this happens with any sort of regularity it could be detrimental to the Blue Jackets season.
Sergei Bobrovsky’s incredible tournament continued through the weekend. He was great against Finland, shutting them out over 21 shots. Russia needed that win to earn a spot in the semi-finals. This wasn’t a great Finnish team but they do have some talent and Bob had to be sharp to get the shutout. Bob then had to take on the Canadians. He did what he could to keep the game close. He stopped 16 first period shots, and 15 in the second. Russia held a 2-1 lead for most of the second period and entered the third tied 2-2. In the final frame Canada piled it on with three goals to take the game 5-3, and end the tournament for Russia.
Bob finished the tournament with a .930 save percentage in four games. Among goalies who played in at least three games he ranked fourth, behind Carey Price, Jaroslav Halak, and Henrik Lundqvist. I think this tournament was great preparation for the season for Bob. He and Halak were the only goalies to play in all of their teams games. Bob faced way tougher competition then he would see in pre-season games, and played on a team similar to Columbus in that they allow a ton of shots. Bob faced an average of 36 shots per game in the tournament, and he will have plenty of games with the Jackets were he sees that many shots. If he can post a .930 save percentage in the regular season, he could singlehandedly carry the Blue Jackets into the playoff conversation.
Team North America’s tournament ended with Russia’s win over Finland. Team North America defeated Sweden in their final game, but missed a shot at the semis due to the tie-break. The big thing to come out of that game for Jackets fans was Ryan Murray did in fact play. Murray was hurt in practice and was a game time decision for that contest. Murray was good to go and was not held back against Sweden. He played an even 20 minutes including a team leading 6:25 on the penalty kill. This tournament proved that he and Seth Jones can handle top pair defensive responsibilities. They had to match up against players like Ovechkin, Backstrom, Kopitar, Barkov, etc. and they did not look out of place even shutting them down at times. They of course had help from the forward group, but they both looked really really good. It is going to be a lot of fun watching them continue to develop this season.
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