The last line of defence: If Canadian under-20s are going to make a run at gold at the World Junior Championship, they’re going to need better goaltending than they received last winter in Finland when they failed to get out of the quarter-finals. Based on the list of players invited to the selection camp released by Hockey Canada Tuesday, an NHL goaltending consultant suggested that an uptick in net is a pretty solid bet for the tournament hosts.
The three goaltenders who’ll vie for the No. 1 spot are Everett’s Carter Hart, Kamloops’s Connor Ingram and Owen Sound’s Michael McNevin, and that’s roughly descending order in terms of the betting line. It’s pretty much Hart’s to lose.
Here was the goaltending consultant’s thumbnail evaluation of Hart, a second-round pick of the Philadelphia Flyers last June: “He’s a calm, controlled kid who reads the game well, [is] athletic enough with a high compete level. The kids on the team know that he’ll give them a chance to win. He’s not a freak athlete, more of a consistent type. I see him as a solid NHL prospect who can make a run at a NHL job, a starter or back-up, in four or five years time.”
| Name | Team | GP | Min | Record | SO | GAA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carter Hart | Everett | 20 | 1151 | 13-3-3-0 | 3 | 1.67 | .937 |
| Connor Ingram | Kamloops | 21 | 1233 | 11-9-1-0 | 1 | 2.19 | .932 |
| Michael McNiven | Owen Sound | 19 | 1076 | 13-5-1-1 | 1 | 2.29 | .920 |
All that is well and good, but the question is how does Hart, a native of Sherwood Park, AB, compare to those who’ve been in the Canadian net in recent tournaments. According to the goaltending consultant, Hart is an improvement from last year’s netminder Mackenzie Blackwood formerly of Barrie, these days in the New Jersey system. “Blackwood is an emotional kid and he’d let things get to him: He’s a great athlete, but he’s not consistent and when things went sideways for him he didn’t deal with it well.”
In bygone days, Canada rode goaltending to gold—whether it was the likes of Jose Theodore or Jimmy Waite or Carey Price. Canada won back in 2015 with Zach Fucale, but it’s fair to say that he was far from the team’s best player, just good enough to hold on for a white-knuckle one-goal win in the final. Said one NHL scout yesterday: “It’s not always the best NHL prospect [in this tournament] just who’s best that day. Dustin Tokarski [who backstopped the Canadian gold-medal winners in 2009] was nobody’s idea of a future NHL No. 1, but he battled. Hart has a lot more upside than Tokarski for sure, but the same sort of drive.”
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Potential loaners
The Arizona Coyotes have assembled a lot of young talent on their depth chart, maybe as much as anybody in the National Hockey League. Still, they’re in an unusual position coming up to the 2017 world junior tournament. The Coyotes could loan two players currently on their roster to the host Canadian team: forward Lawson Crouse and defenceman Jakob Chychrun. Neither is playing that much for the Coyotes lately and both might benefit from gaining some ice time and confidence with tournament play.
For Crouse it would be his third trip to the under-20s—he might have played his best hockey in that first go, providing industrial-strength physical forechecking for a team that won Canada’s only gold in the past six WJCs. If he would return for a third bite at the apple he’d be a likely pick to wear the ‘C’. And more than that, he’d provide muscle up front, something that has been in short supply when Canada has disappointed over the years.
If the Coyotes are willing, Crouse would be an important addition to Canda’s world junior team. (Sean Kilpatrick/CP)
Hockey Canada invited Chychrun to the selection camp last December but he was a cut, not such a surprising one—he had gone into the 2015-16 season as a projected top-three pick in the draft but fell out of the top 10. That he has stuck around with the Coyotes to this point is not such a big shock, given his size, maturity and skill set. That said, the transition to the NHL would have certainly been easier for him if the Coyotes had more veteran talent in the lineup, if there were an experienced blueline mentor who could guide him.
A lot of GMs have balked at loaning players off their NHL rosters to the under-20 program. The classic example years back was Joe Thornton, who was playing a few shifts a game in his rookie season in Boston (with Pat Burns basically spoon-feeding Jumbo ice time), but Harry Sinden decided to keep him around. That same year Edmonton declined to send Boyd Devereaux to the U-20 team even though he was a healthy scratch. NHL GMs’ priority is the roster for their big club—that’s the stuff that keeps them employed.
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And sometimes the loans don’t work out, with no example more painful than Vancouver sending Jake Virtanen to play for Canada in Finland last winter. A sixth-overall pick in 2014, Virtanen was supposed to be a finisher on the wing. Never even close. Virtanen struggled mightily—he had been a practice player with not a lot of game time going into the tournament and couldn’t flip the switch. He really only stood out when he acted out. When last sighted, Virtanen couldn’t stick with the Canucks this fall and was sent down to Utica a few weeks back. Vancouver might have been able to manage Virtanen worse though I’m struggling to think how.
The Coyotes could have been in an even more unusual position of having three teenagers to loan to Canadian team, but they returned centre Dylan Strome to the Erie Otters last week. Strome will get his second shot at the WJC and he had a few very good moments for a team that needed a few more to get past the host Finns in the quarters.
