If you’ve travelled overseas you know the first couple of days suck. Your hours are all messed up. Your back and legs and butt are sore from sitting in those crappy seats for way too long. Don’t even ask about your gut from the in-flight gruel. There’s some type of rule that it takes you a week to adjust for every time zone you pass through, but it’s that first week and especially those first few days that your head was swimming. Friday night it was Victor Hedman’s head that was swimming. Less than a minute into the game, the opening shift, Hedman was stumbling off the ice and looked ready to go to bed.
In all of these tournaments Canadian teams try to take the physical initiative from the opening bell–just remember Steve Downie taking out a Russian defenceman with a 100-foot charge in the WJC final in Vancouver three tournaments ago. A lot of the Russians laid down their sticks right then. That’s the template for the tournament, for every game. That’s how it was Friday night.
It should have been a meaningless exhibition. On a lot of levels it was. No points were earned. No seeds were on the line. No one was playing for a spot on the team.
In soccer they’d call it a friendly. Friendly it wasn’t though. You knew that much a few seconds into the first shift when John Tavares–yes, John Tavares–took a run at Victor Hedman along the wall at centre ice. Yup, John Tavares. Not quite Downie Redux. Still, if Tavares was taking the body, you knew his team-mates were going to be doing the same. Tavares was probably doing Hedman a favour, letting him know what was in store. Hedman was probably too jet-lagged to get it–after all it was after midnight back in Stockholm. A few seconds later he had his head down at the blueline when Tavares’s winger Dana Tyrell dropped a bomb on him in the open ice about six-feet-six-inches from the boards–which wouldn’t be a problem for most but definitely an issue if you’re 6’7″ like Hedman. “That set the tone for us,” coach Pat Quin said after Canada’s 4-2 win at the ACC. We don’t have a lot of hitters and the guys with skill need the way — and [Tyrell] did right off the bat.”
Not that Hedman ran and hid. He didn’t miss a shift and showed eveidence why he’s the No. 1 pick in 2009 NHL draft in a lot of NHL scouts’ minds. Still, it made the Swedish players who were still trying to find their legs under them a little skittish.
Tavares scored a couple of shifts later and Canada never trailed in the game. Hedman scored shorthanded in the last minute to make the numbers on the scoreboard look a little tidier. Still the game showed why the Swedes should still be considered a danger team here. You can read too much into a national junior side’s first exhibition after crossing the Atlantic–actually, if you read anything at all, you’re reading too much. Canadian team always stumble and stagger in their first exhibitions before WJC and under-18s. Teams that have won titles looked like crap their first time in their game sweaters. The Swedes practiced twice on Wednesday and again Thursday and Friday morning. They had to be weary. Not that weariness stopped defenceman Erik Karlsson (Ottawa’s first-rounder last year) from trying to throw a flying elbow at John Tavares in the third period when the game was into garbage time. The Swedes look big enough and skilled enough to be a challenger, if not the challenger down the line. They’re something to worry about but you can say the same for the fact that Canada is playing with 12 forwards instead of the 13 that teams usually carry at the WJC–there’s less margin for error, no room for injury … and if you’re playing this sort of game. injury seems almost inevitable. Quinn has it right. They’re aren’t a lot of crash-and-bangers in his line-up so a few guys will have to play outside their usual game. Tyrell wasn’t available after the game because he was getting treated. No reason to worry, just to cross fingers.
“That set a tone for us,” said coach Pat Quinn. “We had some good responses from other guys after that. We don’t have a lot of hitters and the guys that have that skill need to show the way – and he did right off the bat.”