Zdeno Chara is 39 years old. Never has he looked so old than on Thursday night when Jack Eichel and the young stars of Team North America drilled Team Europe in World Cup of Hockey action.

It wasn't a fair fight.

Europe brought a knife to a young guns fight.

Team Europe GM Miro Satan must be kicking himself for not infusing more speed and athleticism into his roster.

Too late now.

Chara has the dubious distinction of being the oldest player participating in the World Cup. The big Slovakian reflected on his career and the new trend of NHL teams playing their talented kids early and often in today's NHL.

"When I came in the League, or when you're talking about 10, 15 years ago, younger players were being developed slowly through the process of going through the junior teams, the American League, and then they get slowly put into the lineups to make sure that they grow as players and kind of develop properly," Chara told NHL.com on Saturday.

"Now it's kind of the whole process has really sped up. You can see that young players are making huge strides and overstepping these developing stages and just going right into NHL teams and being impact players."

Chara is an astute observer.

Not only has player development advanced and accelerated since the NHL lockout of 2004-05, but the grotesquely skilled young stars are bypassing the bus rides and greasy spoon diner food of the minors and debuting on center stage in their NHL draft city.

Team Europe's average age on it's roster is 31 years of age. Team Europe's average age is 20.

Team Europe is a loose collection of aging skilled players from eight different countries that have never played together in tournament play. Man alive. Team Europe could not have looked any worse than it did on Thursday night. From my leather recliner, it looked like Chara and the Europe squad mailed it in. They didn't even compete with the young stars of North America. Like hoyty toyty country club members who got punked by the caddies at the annual club championship.

Call it ignorance or call it arrogance.

Call the cops. Team Europe was assaulted.

Chara and his teammates looked like a group of individuals that had spent their summer on the luxury yachts at Lake Como in Italy and on the on the manicured lawns of their posh country clubs.

Problem being, Team North America looked like a focused, fit, and fast group of young assassins who spent the entire summer eating correctly while working out twice daily at Gary Roberts' fitness factory in Toronto.

From my vantage point, it looked like Team North America gave a damn about the World Cup of Hockey in it's summer training sessions while Team Europe acted like it would rather be anywhere else but on the ice with a bunch of zit faced kids.

The result was telling. Nathan MacKinnon led his young stars to a 4-0 shellacking of Team Europe on Thursday night.

It was embarrassing and painful to watch. Team Europe versus Team North America was by far the worst game played thus far in the exhibition round of the World Cup Of Hockey. I've watched each and every pre-tourney games and I can say unequivocally that Team Europe is the worst team in the tourney thus far. Finland-Sweden has been a grudge match. Canada-USA has been downright dirty and nasty. Russia-Czechs has been a gritty, competitive mini-series.

I say that because they have some high-end performers in Anze Kopitar, Marian Hossa, Mats Zuccarello to name a few who should have inspired their teammates to raise their level of intensity to another level after they watched from the bench the terrifying speed and skill that the young stars brought to the rink.

The same two teams meet again tonight in Montreal.

Will Chara and Team Europe show their opponent respect or will they look down their noses at the young stars tonight?

"The first game is always an adjustment," Chara said. "It's obvious that half of the team didn't play any games yet, the other half were playing on the big ice, different systems, different teammates, coaches, all that stuff. So, yeah, you could tell that our first game was all over the place, so we are looking for making these adjustments, being better, improving, and, yeah, I'll be ready for the next game."

You better adjust, Z.

Todd McLellan isn't fooling around. He is going for the jugular. His team has nothing to lose in this tourney. Team North America is the gimmick team, right?

McLellan will attack Team Europe with perhaps the most dangerous trio in the NHL with Johnny Gaudreau skating alongside Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel tonight.

Chara and Roman Josi were a combined -4 in Thursday night's game against Team Nitro Acceleration.

It won't take long into the rematch with McEichDreau to see if Chara and his European teammates are taking the game seriously.

Ready or not, the under 24s are not asking for permission.

They are hoping to be begging for forgiveness.

***

On this, the fifteenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, I'm thinking of the victims and the first responders who lost their lives.

Never. Forget.

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