Gare Joyce

Gare Joyce writes regularly on junior hockey for Sportsnet.ca. A veteran journalist, Joyce is the author of Future Greats and Heartbreaks: A Year Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts, When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game and Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm. He also writes for ESPN The Magazine, espn.com and several Canadian magazines.

OTTAWA-- A lot of casual hockey fans presume that NHL executives and scouts congregate at the WJC in search of talents, with the hope of finding as-yet-undiscovered talent. I'm sure it's happen at some point, just not at any of the ten tournaments I've worked.

It's really about checking the progress of well-known entities, watching them under the stiffest tests and greatest pressure. Fact is, most players here have been on the radar for at least a couple of seasons. Most of the best here are already drafted, e.g. Sweden's first-line centre Oscar Moller is L.A.'s property, Cody Hodgson Vancouver's. NHL scouting directors already have thick files on John Tavares, Victor Hedman and others who are eligible for the first time in June are already. They're not be discovered, just measured.

A few teenagers will step on the ice tonight with questions marks beside their names. They hope to erase those and insert exclamation marks at the end of 60 minutes (or however long the gold-medal final takes to sort out).

Jacob Markstrom: Is the last line of Sweden's defense the next great goaltender? There was a lot of talented goaltenders in the 2008 NHL draft. In one mock exercise, I predicted that there'd be four that would go in the first round--okay, it ended to be four in the first 34 picks. Close enough in horseshoes and hand grenades. Markstrom will get the start for Sweden will start in tonight's gold-medal game and he'll have to fall down and not get up to damage his status among the NHL scouting fraternity. The consensus is that he has been the best goaltender in the WJC and it's not even close for second. The first goaltender selected, Chet Pickard, will watch tonight's game from the bench. The second one selected (by Detroit at No. 30, one pick ahead of Markstrom) was Thomas McCollum, the U.S.'s No. 1 whose tournament can only be described as regrettable. Last winter one scout told me that he regarded Markstrom not only as the best puck-stopper available but as a franchise goaltender. "He's the type of goaltender that you'd want to make captain," the scouts said. "Not many goaltenders are leaders--it's not in their personalities. It is in Markstrom's." It's not just a pleasant rink-side manner that Markstrom has going for him. He is absolutely huge and technically near-perfect. Some in Hockey Canada would welcome a measurement of Markstrom's equipment (they're sure that his glove is beyond the legal limits). If Markstrom were to stand out in a Swedish victory at Scotiabank Place, it would look like Florida made a heckuva pick at No. 31.

Angelo Esposito: Will the former projected No. 1 pick play in the NHL? It seems like a decade ago that Esposito arrived in Quebec and was mentioned in the same breath as Sidney Crosby. Didn't work out that way. Everyone who follows junior hockey even casually is familiar with his story. Three times cut from the world junior team. The fall from Central Scouting's No. 1 mid-season North American skater to the Penguins' pick at No. 20. Shipped to Atlanta, the NHL's Elba. Longshot to get invited to the team--one cscout told me that AE had "no chance to get invited" and that he had been "playing very poorly ... no commitment." He beat long odds to make this team but even here, playing in tandem most of the time with John Tavares, Esposito hasn't impressed the critics. "He's easy to play against," one scout told me. "Does anyone worry about having to play against him they way they worry about Tavares or Cody Hodson or Filatov or Moller?" You know the answer. It's not that Esposito doesn't have game--he scored a great short-handed goal in the third period of the SF win over the Russians. But he has had a minimal impact in the WJC playing beside the tournament's best forward. A great game or even a few great shifts or at least one great clutch play could restore limited faith.

John Tavares: Did the Russians find a way to shut him down? Tavares single-handedly got Canada back in the game vs the U.S. "I've seen him do a lot of amazing things here and in the O but that second goal he scored in that game blew me away," Canadian assistant coach Dave Cameron says. Yet the Russians shadowed Tavares pretty effectively in the SF. That's the type of treatment he'll be bound to see in the gold-medal game. If he can shake/skate out of his shadow vs the Swedes Canada's chances are a lot brighter (ditto Tavares's of being a league-defining player at the next level).

Tyler Myers and Keith Aulie: Is bigger better? The Canadian blueline looks like a front line of a decent CIAU basketball team. Maybe the idea was that these two could shut down teams by holding hands at the blueline and grabbing the boards on either side of the rink. Gawd, I'm old enough to remember that back in the 70 some folks wondered if Bob Dailey was going to be too tall to play in the NHL--what was a giant then is just good pro size now. These two struggled mightily in the SF vs Russia. The Russian forwards ran around the two trees like a bunch of squirrels. When Myers was felled by a shot I expected the cry to go up: "Tim-mm-ber." Pre-tournament, I thought these two might be split up, the stay-at-home halves to play beside d-men like P.K. Subban who'd jump up into the rush. It's not like any of Canada's opponents have to worry about that with these two on the ice. Myers played well (if a little awkwardly) for Quinn at the U18s and played himself into high first round with his performance. Myers was still regarded as something of a project and Aulie was considered even more so. Maybe Quinn, who was a giant in his time as well, thought that this was the shape of things to come. Has yet to play out that way.