This fall I will be watching the World Cup of Hockey but I’m anticipating Team Canada to be my backup team. My heart will be with Team North America as two Oiler centers look to play a large role on the young team’s success.
With the under 24’s of American and Canadian descent being pooled into their own team, it’s easy to find skill on what might otherwise be considered a “weak… team due to all that youth. Every 1st Overall Pick from Nugent-Hopkins down to Auston Matthews (who have the right passports) will line up on Team North America. RNH, MacKinnon, Ekblad, McDavid, and Matthews are going to be able to bring a lot to the table. After those there’s another wave of players in Gaudreau, Eichel, and Scheifele who aren’t lacking any skill in their own right.
Bottom line is this young North American team is going to have at least 3 really good lines and right now it looks like an Oiler will center 2 of them. As per Mark Spector this morning the lines look like this:
Drouin McDavid Scheifele (363 games) Gaudreau Eichel Saad (527 games) MacKinnon RNH Larkin (611 games) Miller Couturier Matthews/Trochek (546 games)
Rielly Ekblad Gostisbehere Trouba Murray Jones
The top three lines are all very, very good. They are all blindingly fast and more than capable of putting up points. Mark Scheifele trains with Connor McDavid in the off-season. Craig Custance reports that Scheifele believes McDavid is faster now than he was a year ago. This can only be explained by two things:
1) The History channel guy is right. It’s Aliens. 2) Witchcraft.
But in all seriousness, McDavid looks like he’s gotten a lot stronger over the summer and if that has translated into more speed then this tournament is the first place we are going to see it. I legitimately cannot wait for this thing to get started so I can watch this young man play.
His line with Drouin and Scheifele is going to be expected to provide offense and they should be able to do just that. McDavid had the 3rd highest points per game in the NHL and the 2nd highest Points per 60 minutes 5v5 in the league. Scheifele had the 6th highest Points per 60 minutes 5v5 in the NHL. Drouin is coming off a breakout Playoffs where he had 14 points in 17 post-season games with the Lightning. He’s going to get once heck of an opportunity playing with that line.
Nugent-Hopkins gets to share a line, for now, with rookie standout Dylan Larkin and speedster Nate MacKinnon. Injuries limited Nugent-Hopkins to just 55 games. He missed the vast majority of that to a broken knuckle that required extensive surgery to repair. He returned before the end of the year but he wasn’t particularly close to be being 100% healthy. When he joins the Oilers he will probably take on a similar assignment to what he has with Team North America. The expectation is that he will see more difficult matchups which allow that Eichel line to feed on offensive zone starts and (relatively) easier opposition.
MacKinnon tallied 52 points in 72 games with the Avalanche. Unquestionably that organization is hoping MacKinnon will take another step forward in his development. He has all kinds of raw natural talent. Dylan Larkin posted 45 points in 82 games with the Red Wings. He’s one of the very few teenagers to have stepped onto the Red Wings team as a full-time player in the last 20 years. These two with Nugent-Hopkins have a combined 611 NHL games of experience. This makes them the most experienced line on the North American squad.
McDavid and the Nuge will also factor into Team North America’s penalty killing plan. This morning in practice the forward PK pairs were:
Saad RNH Larkin Miller McDavid Scheifele
I would expect that McDavid and Scheifele will truly be the 3rd PK option but McDavid was 11th in shorthanded shots per 60 minutes this year. Saad was number 1. These units are capable of surprising opposing power plays with some shorthanded offense.
I’m Canadian so cheering for Team Canada is usually the default setting. When it comes to the Olympics, World Juniors, and Wolrd Championships it will be Team Canada every time. However, at the World Cup of Hockey my allegiance is with these two young Oilers on the exciting North American team. I can’t wait for games to get going. Thursday night this squad will take on Team Europe. I’ll be watching.
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