MONTREAL — When it comes to its roster selection for the WJC over the years, Hockey Canada’s issues have never really been with the middle of the line-up. Not even the last kids chosen. No, as counter-intuitive as it might seem, the toughest calls and, yeah, the missed opportunities were those passed over who might provide high-end talent, players who might be top-six forwards.
In retrospect, it can be hard to imagine how some players were passed over.
My favorite example: The Canadian team in ’99 desperately struggled to score but cut Mike Comrie in favor of nine forwards who would never score as many as 20 goals in a NHL season. In an injury-shortened career, Comrie scored 30 or more twice and hit the 20-goal mark twice more. If memory serves me, he had two goals and a helper or two in the last exhibition game before he was cut.
And now, submitted into evidence, Max Domi, who has arguably been Canada’s best player in through the first two games in this tournament and unarguably one-third of the team’s best line. Domi, the Arizona Coyotes’ first-round pick in the 2013 draft, has been skating on left wing with Sam Reinhart at centre and Anthony Duclair on the right side.
In the wake of 4-0 win over Germany Saturday, media types asked Domi a lot of questions about his tongue-wagging celebration that he flashed after scoring Canada’s only even-strength goal. For the record, he has done it since he was a kid and his teammates here have given him some grief about.
He was also asked about his father, the former Maple Leafs’ tough guy turned telecom-pitch-guy Tie Domi. For the record, the son says dad gives him grief about over-passing despite some sage advice to let fire from Tie’s good friends, Mario Lemieux and Mats Sundin.
Okay, with that out of the way, what are we to make of Max Domi not being invited to the Canadian juniors’ selection camp a year ago? How the heck did he not play for Canada?
“Last year is behind me,” he said.
It would be news if it wasn’t, but let’s look at it anyway.
For better or worse, Hockey Canada has been using the Subway Series as a major tool to evaluate its candidates for its WJC roster. I understand the rationale: You get to see an elite player in with other elite players and against international opponents, a higher plane that you’re average CHL game. Still, it seems like a crapshoot to me — a one — or at best two-game window, sometimes just a handful of shifts working beside players that you might have practiced with at Hockey Canada’s WJC summer camp if at all. Give the Subway Series some weight, okay, but to depend on it too much seems like an ill-advised policy.
I remember watching the OHL stars play the Russians in Oshawa a little over a year ago. Domi skated on a line with Connor McDavid, which would seem like a pretty good opportunity to showcase his stuff. There might not have been more teenage talent on the ice in the world when McDavid and Domi were out there with any other eight skaters. And Domi set up Kerby Rychel for a goal in the second period to help the OHL claw back from a 2-0 hole. Still, the OHL lost the game and Domi and McDavid never really meshed, at least in the estimation of the Hockey Canada braintrust in attendance.
I talked with the WJC team’s head scout Ryan Jankowski briefly after the game and he had been at the side of Brent Sutter, head coach of last year’s team. I had the distinct impression that Domi’s chances of landing on the roster of the 2014 took a nosedive that night. Domi’s chance to leave a better impression was compromised—Sutter wasn’t going to be taking in the second OHL-Russia game. The guy who needed to see it most would have to rely on the scouting reports of others—Domi was held off the scoresheet and missed on a penalty shot in regulation and shootout attempt.
Further reducing Domi’s shot at an invitation was the matter of a new approach to the evaluation camp. It was Sutter’s idea to invite just a couple of bodies over the minimum—there would be enough to insure against injury before heading for Europe but no real internal competition on the tournament’s eve.
Domi’s chances last year were also hurt by perceptions—an offensively gifted player like him won’t work out if not playing as a top-six forward, so the conventional wisdom goes. Guys who can make a puck dance aren’t attentive to their defensive responsibilities, another widely accepted “truth.” Winners are made of role players, another line in the handbook. All this flew in the face of Domi’s body of work—his London Knights team had won successive OHL titles.
Canada wound up finishing fourth sans Domi. Watching him here must make Hockey Canada wonder what might have been—and wonder what they should going forward so that players in his profile aren’t passed over again.