Due to the rapid development of drafted players at the pro level the Canadian junior team might be the youngest ever this December.
It's the existential question pondered and argued about by scores of junior-hockey coaches, scouts and fans: Can a 17-year-old survive - never mind thrive - in an under-20 world?
For a generation everyone presumed that a double-underage player couldn't handle the competition at the world junior tournament. The operating principle was basic and near-absolute: The world juniors weren't an under-20 tournament but rather a 19-year-old tournament. If that seems like the same thing you aren't reading the previous sentence closely enough.
No, the thinking was that a superior 16- or 17-year-old, the best in their years, could not compete with very good 19-year-olds. Exceptions were even rarer than generation-defining stars. Gretzky, yes, spectacularly. Lemieux, no. Lindros, a qualified success (second-leading Canadian goal scorer as a 16-year-old with the gold-medal winners in '90, more points with a sixth-place team the next year). Crosby was a spectator as a 16-year-old but a significant contributor (but not the lead player) on arguably the best team in red and white or possibly any other colours in tournament history.
You get my drift.
Some Canadian teams past were almost entirely made up of 19-year-olds - just a couple of 18-year-olds who were in position to return the next season.
The orthodoxy will be challenged this year. The conventional wisdom will be validated or ripped asunder. Or something.
By the reckoning of some, the Canadian team will have as many as five players eligible for the 2009 NHL draft and one who won't be eligible until 2010. If the team were picked tomorrow it would be the youngest Canadian team in the tournament's history - I'd bet that it would be the youngest among the elite teams ever. The five are: Oshawa centre John Tavares, a returning player from last year's under-20 champions; Windsor defenceman Ryan Ellis; Brampton forward Matt Duchene; forward Evander Kane of Vancouver; and Brandon forward Brayden Schenn. Windsor's Taylor Hall isn't going to land in the draft next spring because he's a late birthday.
A couple of things are in play here.
No. 1: Unavailable eligible talent.
The obvious one. If you go through the last couple of NHL draft classes you'll see an unusual number of players have been fast-tracked. Last winter Kyle Turris and Steven Stamkos had major roles for the Canadian team's championship in the Czech Republic and there might have been some hope that they'd get another shot in the under-20 program. However, don't hold your breath on Phoenix or Tampa Bay releasing them.
Sam Gagner wasn't loaned out by Edmonton last year, so there's no hope this year. There'd be a place for Brandon Sutter but he was rushed into Carolina's lineup and then suffered a concussion. Josh Bailey would be in the hunt but the Islanders have held onto their 2008 first-rounder because he suffered a hip injury.
Maybe Minnesota would see fit to loan Colton Gillies to the team - Wild management will do things out of the box - but that's no sure thing. There's a surprising number of defencemen who made their NHL clubs straight out of junior, including Drew Doughty in L.A., Alex Pieterangelo in St Louis and Luke Schenn with the Leafs. If there's a presumption more rock-solid than the notion that the under-20s are a 19-year-old tournament it would be the idea that 18-year-old defencemen are completely unprepared for the NHL.
No. 2: Players maturing earlier.
The 17-year-old of today and the 17-year-old of 10 years ago are very different players. The draft-eligible today are much more hockey-worldly, physically and emotionally prepared.
A decade ago the Canadian juniors created a stir when they took two draft-eligible to the under-20s: Vincent Lecavalier and Manny Malhotra. One factor was a weak class of 19-year-olds (just a couple of returning players from the previous world junior team). If Joe Thornton had been available instead of holding down the bench in Boston, Malhotra might have been cut loose - or not. Boyd Devereaux was the other player the Canadian officials hoped to take on the trip but no such luck. Even if Thornton and Devereaux were on hand, Lecavalier was going to be on the team. So consider Vinny.
By the end of that tournament - Canada's worst ever, narrowly dodging demotion to the B pool - Lecavalier was a lost soul. Not the worst player on the team by any stretch, but not an effective one at all.
(Jason Spezza was solid in his draft year, less so the next. Rick Nash was a non-factor as a draft-eligible.)
A lot of fans thought that Stamkos and Tavares were disappointments in their turns with the under-20 last year. Not even warm. Fact is, in a comparable situation to Lecavalier's, they shone. It wasn't just a matter of Canada icing a better squad. Fact is, they adapted to different roles than their usual ones and stepped up against better competition more successfully than Lecavalier. That's not to say that they are bound to be better players down the line than Lecavalier, that they have character, talent or something else that Lecavalier lacks. No, it just that they were different players at 17 than Lecavalier was - they had seen more, they had been coached more intensively, they had spent more time in the gym, they had dealt with media pressures, the whole shooting match. They both had more experience playing for Canadian teams and playing for them in Europe - a huge factor. Lecavalier was google-eyed on that doomed trip to Finland.
I wish I could come up with a draft-eligible defenceman (albeit a late birthday) who was as impressive as Drew Doughty was last January. Some would point to Jay Bouwmeester and make a good case - looking back on J-Bo's play, however, I think you could be impressed by his skill set but somehow it added up to less than the sum of their parts. I don't think that years into his pro career he has consistently displayed the savvy and game management that is clearly Doughty's strength. Doughty was the best d-man in the tournament and I don't know that you could say that about J-Bo. Yeah, J-Bo's plus-minus was a fat plus-11, but it was only narrowly the team's best and was inflated by Canada's 15-0 win over France. Yes, France. If Doughty had a chance to play the French, it wouldn't matter if they played on the frozen Seine, he might have beaten them by himself.
My theory, yours to rip holes in: Elite athleticism is a relative constant, with one great talent coming along every couple of years ... or five. Ignore the peaks for a moment. More broadly, players coming out of juniors today - let's say those in the 95th percentile - are better prepared (in training on the ice and off, in their coaching) than comparable players 10 or 20 years ago. And it's my belief, based on too many nights at a lot of tournaments, u-20s, u-18s and u-17s, that those in the top five per cent are not only better but better earlier.
The first under-17s I attended was the 2000 tournament in Timmins, ON. Ilya Kovalchuk was the best player for a Russian side that knocked off Ontario in the final. I went to the u-17s in London last winter and while no player there was a match for Kovalchuk in 2000, the depth of talent was superior - if you were looking to go five deep or cobble together a tournament all-star team. That five deep would include names that I mentioned along with Tavares as likely under-age candidates for this year's Canadian under-age team. If you were to press me I'd rate Duchene as the best player in London, Schenn and Hall one slot below, but you could have thrown a blanket over them.
It wasn't just that the '91 birthdays are an unusually strong and talented group - no, they were a more advanced group. Players' development moves much faster now. When we see an unusually young Canadian lineup, 17-year-olds in the under-20, it won't be a one-off. That's how teams at the world juniors will look from now on - much more junior.
