VICTORIA – You know who was Team Canada’s biggest fan on Wednesday? Swiss coach Christian Wohlwend.
He loves Canadian hockey. Says it should kick butt always. We’re the best. Period.
But, strangely, the team doing the hoofing in the second period Wednesday was Switzerland, which left boot prints on Canada in what turned out to be a jittery 5-3 win for the Canadians in their first warmup for the world junior championship that begins on Boxing Day.
“Canada has 337 players in the NHL and 400,000 junior players,” Wohlwend said when asked about the game. “And we have 13 NHL players and 16,000 junior players. It’s a huge difference. Canada should beat us every day, every night. They should beat us 10-0 with so many players. We do an unbelievable job when you think about it, when you compare.
“Yodelling, you know what’s yodel? We have very good yodels in Switzerland. And you guys will come to a yodel competition and you guys will have no chance. No chance against us. But us is opposite (in hockey). We beat you guys twice. And here was a close game. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.”
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We believe Wohlwend was referring to Switzerland’s upset of Canada at the 2006 Olympic hockey tournament and last spring’s world hockey championships in Denmark, where the Swiss won 3-2 in the semifinals.
But he is dead wrong about yodelling. Ever heard of Hank Snow? The Yodelling Cowboy from Nova Scotia?
Switzerland also beats Canada in watch making, chocolate manufacturing, railroad punctuality and international money laundering. But hockey? Mostly, Canada wins.
There are some important things to consider about Wednesday’s near-miss for Team Canada. First, it was just the first of three exhibition games for Team Canada. Second, only one Canadian player, forward Maxime Comtois, understands through experience the kind of pressure Team Canada is under because he is the only returnee from last year’s gold-medal winning squad. That’s all we can think of as mitigating factors.
Canadian goalie Mike DiPietro, the Vancouver Canucks draft pick, was not very good, allowing three goals on the first 11 shots he faced and looking poor on two of them. And Swiss netminder Luca Jan Hollenstein finished with 36 saves and was the best player other than Comtois.
The Canadian leader had two goals and two assists, blew up Swiss players on bodychecks and was so good you wondered how the Anaheim Ducks returned the 19-year-old to junior in Drummondville, Que. He scored seven points in 10 games in the National Hockey League in October, which, two months later, still has Comtois leading Ryan Kesler by a point in Anaheim scoring.
Comtois represents the apparent strength of this team: a deep, hugely talented group of forwards who may be able to score Team Canada out of problems they encounter in goal or on defence.
Halfway through Wednesday’s game, which drew a sellout crowd of 7,000 fans at 5:00 p.m. PT on a weekday on Vancouver Island, shots were 27-6 for Canada.
The score was 4-1 on goals by Comtois, Cody Glass, Owen Tippett and Jason Studnicka. But Valentin Nussbaumer scored for Switzerland on a beautiful breakaway at 13:07 of the second period, and Tobias Geisser made it 4-3 at 18:43, scoring into a semi-open net when DiPietro lost track of the puck on a rebound off the post.
“I’m glad that’s going to be the worst game we play because as we move forward we’re going to be a lot sharper and tighter as a group,” Glass said. “I’m looking forward to the rest of this tournament. I want to make Canada proud and less than a gold medal, it’s a disappointment. We’re coming here to win gold. That’s our mindset.”
The Canadians played better in the third period but couldn’t get any more pucks past Hollenstein before Comtois fired into an empty net from his own blue line with 28 seconds remaining.
“It’s a thin line between winning and losing in this tournament,” Comtois said. “We showed a lot of poise in. . . the third period to close the game.
“It’s our first game together. A lot of guys didn’t know what to expect. So it’s a good thing that this one is out of the way.”
Team Canada’s next tuneup is Friday against Slovakia at Save-On-Foods Arena in Victoria. Canada opens the 2019 world junior championship on Boxing Day in Vancouver against Denmark.
“I don’t know if they got nervous,” Canadian coach Tim Hunter said of the second-period bobble. “They just didn’t go out and compete as hard. You go in (the dressing room) after the first period and you’re telling them we had a good period and everything has gone well. I think they kind of took that as a pat on the back and everything is good and we don’t have to go out and compete as hard. After the second, I just asked for some maturity and leadership to go out and finish the game the right way.
“We just took our foot off the gas a little bit. They got themselves back in the game by competing and playing hard, and we just didn’t play as hard as we could have in the second. But our guys learned from it and we got better in the third and that’s what we want. I hope that’s our worst game through this whole process. You can’t take your foot off the gas. Coachable moments for the video session tomorrow.”
