After two games of pre-tournament play at the World Cup of Hockey, some questions facing Team North America have been answered.
But there are still plenty more.
The young squad faced off against Team Europe twice, winning both matchups by a wide margin — they shut out the Europeans 4-0 on Sept. 8 and followed it up with a big 7-4 victory on Sunday.
We know the under-24 squad is fast, we know they can score, and we don’t have any concerns about team chemistry (and we haven’t even seen all the dynamic line combos yet).
But can they win when the pressure’s on?
“We’re going to have to win a game 2-1 at some point,” head coach Todd McLellan told reporters after the game. “More importantly, I don’t think we (can) win five or six games in this tournament by scoring five every night.”
Team general manager Peter Chiarelli is on the same page as his head coach.
“We can score, we can drive possession, we’re learning to defend,” Chiarelli said during a Hockey Central at Noon appearance on Monday. “Our challenge will be playing without the puck, and in a tighter game.”
Chiarelli didn’t read too much into Game 1’s decisive win, as Team Europe had several different factors to contend with, including recent Olympic qualification games and extended travel time, and believes Team Europe will prove to be tougher competition once the tournament gets into full swing on Sept. 17.
“In our division, I think it’s going to be a task to get into the top two, and I think the same would apply to [Europe],” he said of round robin play. Team Europe is in Group A along with Canada, the Czech Republic, and USA while North America will have to prove itself against Sweden, Finland and Russia if they want to advance.
“We’re going to be facing heavier play, which we’ll have to get used to,” said Chiarelli, acknowledging that his team has yet to put its physicality to the test, a la Canada vs. USA. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. We want to get out of our division first.”
“Right now what I’m seeing on our team is that we can score a lot and we’re going to give up chances, too,” he said. “We’re starting to tighten it up a bit, but that just may be, in a short period of time, what we are.”
We’ll learn more about his under-24 group when they play the Czech Republic in another pre-tournament matchup on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. ET.
Chiarelli also discussed the play of Auston Matthews, the team’s overall style, potential line combinations, and who’s got control of the crease. Here are a few excerpts:
On his “very positive” assessment of NHL rookie-to-be Matthews:
He’s getting better everyday. He makes plays, he’s strong, he can really shoot the puck. He’s a good kid, and he plays the two-way game. He’s been really good. I’ve been impressed with him.
On Team North America’s full-throttle scoring—and whether they should learn to buckle down:
Well, they just keep going, and they’re so fast … we built the team on speed. We preached it from the beginning in the opening meeting: ‘Let’s put [our opponents] on their heels.’ We may have certain limitations with experience and we don’t have a lot of championships on our roster, but let’s just put these guys on their heels. You can preach this, you can practice it and then it’s going to be hard to pull back on it when you’re mid-game and mid-round-robin. This is what we’ve built, so let’s stick with it.
On whether he believes Connor McDavid and Johnny Gaudreau will be a good fit going forward:
We’ll see. They have the puck a lot. We’ve been experimenting, and I know we’re probably going to experiment a little bit going forward into this next game. It’s pretty exciting when they’re playing pitch-and-catch and they’re always looking for each other, so they could end up ultimately starting the round robin together, but you’re probably going to see some different combinations next game.
On if he’s handing the crease to Matt Murray:
I don’t want to commit to anything, but he had a really good first game and he’s got all that experience with the playoffs. Now it looks like it might be his job to lose.
