2019 WJC Day 1 Takeaways: Canada pours the scoring on thick

Sportsnet’s Irfan Gaffar spoke with Ian MacIntyre after team Canada demolished Denmark in their opening game.

The 2019 World Junior Championship is off and running, and with four Boxing Day games complete, we look at some of the highlights and top performances.

FROST, COMTOIS ON SCORING SPREE

There wasn’t one star forward who was an obvious pick to lead Team Canada in scoring at the world juniors. This team’s strength is its variety of weapons and that couldn’t have shown any better than it did in a 14-0 win over Denmark on Wednesday, in which all but two Canadian players recorded a point — including goalie Michael DiPietro.

But leading the way in goals were a couple of high-impact players who are having terrific seasons. Morgan Frost (27th overall to Philadelphia in 2017), is third in the OHL with 58 points and leads the circuit with 38 assists, but had a hat trick against the Danes when the game was only half over. Comtois went a step further, scoring four times and they became the first Canadian teammates to record hat tricks in the same world junior game since Russ Courtnall and Dean Evason in 1983.

Comtois, the only returning Canadian from last year’s gold medal team, has come leaps and bounds from his 2017 draft year when his lack of production ultimately sank his stock from first-round hopeful to a back-half of the second-round pick. He bounced back last season with 44 goals and 85 points in the QMJHL and had a solid world juniors with six points in seven games for Canada.

Cosentino noted that last year’s WJC coach, Dominique Ducharme, really started to unlock Comtois’ potential.

“I think Dominique identified how he should play his game,” Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentino said on the Tape to Tape Podcast WJC preview. “Ducharme said hey man you wanna play in the NHL? You know what your fastest path to get there is? Have a look at the team that drafted you. Anaheim. Big, heavy, physical team. That’s the game you gotta play. You’re good enough on the skill side, that’s going to take care of itself when you need it. But you need to get down into the corner you need to bang and crash, play a power forward type of game, and once you dislodge the man from the puck go nuts buddy, use your skill.”

Anaheim has certainly benefitted and even got 10 games out of Comtois this season, posting seven points in that span. He’s back in the QMJHL, now with the Drummondville Voltigueurs, and comes into this year’s tournament as Canada’s team captain.

You can’t read too much into such a lopsided win and stiffer competition is really going to test the Canadians. But a start like this will bring on the confidence and if a 6-foot-2, 207-pound player with NHL experience like Comtois has confidence, he’s going to be really hard to stop in those corners when the going gets tough.[sidebar]

CZECH’S MARTIN DUO SHOWS UP IN NARROW OPENING WIN

You could see this group of Czechs coming. Not that they would enter the 2019 World Junior Championship as a heavy favourite, or even with high expectations of winning their first medal since 2005, but the Czech Republic was setting up to be a real hassle for the other members of Group A.

“The Czechs are that sneaky team in the whole event in my eyes,” Sportsnet’s Sam Cosentino said on Tape to Tape. “You think about the Ivan Hlinka (Tournament) a couple years ago. That was something they’d never won before, and they won that event. And this is that group, now a year and a half later.”

Martins Necas and Kaut were on that Hlinka team in 2016 and played centre stage in Day 1’s 2-1 overtime win against Switzerland. The result may have been closer than a potential surprise squad would have liked, but credit is due to a Swiss team that fought hard and outshot the Czechs 23-14 in periods two and three. Remember, these Swiss played Canada well in a 5-3 loss during pre-tournament action.

But when the Czechs needed difference makers, Necas and Kaut stepped up. Kaut especially stood out and finished the day with the game-tying goal and the primary assist on the OT winner, plus he generated a few other good opportunities with Necas.

Both are coming back from the AHL. Necas, a Carolina first-rounder in 2017, is operating at a near point-per-game pace for the Charlotte Checkers. Kaut, picked 16th overall by the Avalanche last summer, has 12 points in 26 games for the Colorado Eagles.

But the player who may lead this team in goals by the end of it all was held silent on Boxing Day. Filip Zadina will be a factor for the Czechs before long, though, and came within inches of scoring at least once, ringing a hard wrister off the crossbar that had long beaten goalie Luca Hollenstein.

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JACK HUGHES OFF TO IMPRESSIVE START

You hear it all the time that the WJC is primarily a 19-year-old event, but all eyes were on Jack Hughes as the Americans got their tournament started. The projected No. 1 overall pick in next summer’s NHL Draft, who Cosentino has called “Connor McDavid-light,” had a primary assist on the USA’s first goal. But in a game that didn’t have any offensive totals jump off the stats sheet, Hughes gave fans plenty to “wow” about.

It was all on display: elite edge work, speed, vision, a strong backhander — you name it, you saw at least a glimpse of the generational potential that is within this player.

https://twitter.com/McDonaghx27/status/1078100923908612097

Hughes has been the far and away top prospect in his draft ever since joining the U.S. National Team Development Program last season. He had 68 points in 36 games for the under-18 team last season and has 48 in 25 games already this campaign. In fact, when measuring by points per game, Hughes currently has two of the top three seasons in the program’s history. With only Auston Matthews’ 1.95 higher, Hughes’ current 1.92 points per game rate is plenty better than the likes of Phil Kessel (1.78), Clayton Keller (1.73), Jack Eichel (1.64) and, interestingly, Patrick Kane (1.58), who Hughes is most often compared to.

GOLDEN KNIGHT COMES UP BIG AS SWEDEN EXTENDS HISTORIC STREAK

In a forward-heavy top of the draft in 2017, Sweden’s Erik Brannstrom was the fourth defenceman off the board to Vegas at 15th overall. He was the first Swedish blueliner to have his name called, just two picks ahead of Timothy Liljegren who started the season well ahead in the rankings.

Now serving as Sweden’s WJC team captain, and with Liljegren out due to injury, Brannstrom is the go-to option for a nation historically great at developing defencemen.

In a 2-1 win over Finland to open the tournament, the Swedes were defensively superior and kept most of Finland’s offensive chances away from the front of the net until a late, furious push. And on offence, Brannstrom showed off his shot scoring two power play goals in different ways. On the first, he walked the blue line to open a lane and fired a wrist shot through traffic; on the second, he stepped into a one-timer and blasted a slap shot past Samuel Ersson (143rd to Philadelphia in 2018).

Then as the Finns were pressing in the final seconds, Brannstrom knelt down to block a shot with his shoulder and ensure the win.

At just 19 years of age, Brannstrom is tied for ninth in scoring among all AHL defencemen and is in for a big WJC. The Swedes have a few weapons from the back end between him and Adam Boqvist, who had a couple of assists and nearly had a goal of his own, but was robbed by Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen (54th overall to Buffalo in 2017).

The win not only sets Sweden up well in Group B with a game against Slovakia on Thursday, it also extends their winning streak to 45 straight games in the preliminary round of the WJC.

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