Saturday afternoon Team Canada's quest to repeat as World Junior champions came to a disappointing finish as they fell at the hands of the hosts, Finland, 6-5 in a thriller.
Naturally when a team wins there is no shortage of praise being thrown around but when a team loses it is a much different story; especially when it comes to Canadian hockey.
People tend to need a scapegoat to blame a bad result on and in this game Devils prospect Mackenzie Blackwood seemed to be on the receiving end of a lot of it.
There's hot garbage, then there's dumpster fire, then there's Mackenzie Blackwood, who is a law student trying hockey for the first time.
— Ben Massey (@Lord_Bob) January 2, 2016While Blackwood did struggle mightily against Finland he is not the sole person to blame for the loss.
Going into the game Finland had the top ranked power play and what did Canada do? Took nine minor penalties. It's pretty hard to win that way.
Naturally many have soured on Blackwood and based their opinions of his future - almost entirely negative - off an underwhelming three games at the World Juniors.
@ToddCordell I would take Nedeljkovic over Blackwood base solely on how he rose to the moment in the world juniors. Blackwood was pathetic
— Aleks Dobrich (@dobrich91) January 2, 2016I don't think that is fair to Blackwood, though. Far from it.
Blackwood owns an absurd .932SV% through the first half of the OHL season despite playing behind a blue line with three good defensemen in Barrie. He not only leads the OHL in save percentage but the entire CHL (OHL + QMJHL + WHL).
For comparison sake Team USA's goaltenders Alex Ndeljkovic and Brandon Halverson own much lesser save percentages at .912 and .895. This isn't a slight at those two but rather puts into perspective how good Blackwood has been this season.
Despite Blackwood posting much better numbers in the OHL people are fawning over Ndeljkovic (hey there, recency bias) because he played better in an extremely short tournament.
It's worth noting Blackwood entered the World Juniors cold having just served an eight-game suspension so he wasn't exactly in a groove and ready to put his best foot forward.
Nobody will pay attention to that, though. They will focus on a couple underwhelming starts for Blackwood, a couple real good ones for Ndeljkovic and base their opinions accordingly.
Again, I'm not knocking Ndeljkovic. I like him a lot as a prospect and he has been very impressive at the World Juniors. I'm just pointing out that as good as he has been it's important to remember Blackwood has out performed him over a much larger period of time. Think about that next time you base your opinion on Blackwood's future off a couple of games.
By all accounts Blackwood has dominated the OHL this season and has quickly emerged as one of the top goaltending prospects in all of hockey.
A couple rough outings at the World Juniors doesn't change that.
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