Mason McTavish, right, celebrates a goal with Jake Neighbours against Russia during first period IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship exhibition action in Edmonton, on Dec. 23, 2021. McTavish is among the players named to Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
This is not the Olympic men’s hockey tournament that Canadians anticipated. The first for the likes of Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Mitch Marner, perhaps the last chance for another Golden Goal by Sidney Crosby.
There is no Auston Matthews nor a Tkachuk or two lining up for the Americans. Ovi is out for Russia. There is a Lean (Bergmann) playing for Germany but no Leon (Draisaitl). The Danes will make a debut at the Winter Games without Frederik Andersen in the net.
Fans everywhere looked forward to the return of NHL players in Beijing. Instead of competing on the world’s biggest stage, they will be in Canada and the United States making up some of the more than 100 games postponed this season because of COVID-19.
After participating in five successive Winter Olympics, NHL players skipped the 2018 Games in South Korea but were to compete in 2022 and 2026 as part of an agreement negotiated with the league.
The NHL opted out six weeks ago, however, and that caused a number of teams from 12 countries to engage in last-minute searches for athletes. Rosters were reconstructed by enlisting former NHLers, players from the KHL and other leagues in Europe and from the college ranks and major-junior level.
There is enough of a mixture of guys who are a bit past their prime and others who are relatively unknown or waiting to be discovered to make the outcome more inscrutable than usual.
Russia won in 2018 and should be counted as the favourite. China is new to this and Olympic officials are worried its inclusion could be an embarrassment. Denmark gets points for qualifying for the first time but has little chance. Six of its players missed practice because of illness on Thursday.
The Americans will likely be competitive even with a squad largely recruitedfrom the NCAA. Toss them into the blender with everyone else.
Canada has assembled an interesting group that is potentially medal worthy. Some are NHL castoffs playing out their careers in other countries. Some are youngsters filled with promise. Others are veterans who hope a good performance in Beijing will earn them one last shot at the big time.
The team trained in Switzerland for eight days before it travelled to China. Its first game in the preliminary round is Feb. 10 against Germany. The Canadians then play the United States on Feb. 12 and conclude round-robin play in Group A against China on Feb. 13.
Eric Staal, the team captain, is 37 and played 17 seasons in the NHL. After helping the Montreal Canadiens reach the Stanley Cup final last summer, he became a free agent.
As COVID-19 ravaged the league, he skated and stayed in shape and hoped somebody would call. Nobody called.
When the league pulled its players from the Winter Games, there he was with hand raised.
Perhaps because he had become a pest around the house, his wife and three boys urged him on.
“They were pumped,” Staal said. “They really pushed me to be here. They were over the moon when I got this chance.”
Staal won one Stanley Cup with Carolina and a gold medal in Vancouver in 2010 on a line beside Sidney Crosby and Jarome Iginla. A second would look great on his résumé when viewed by teams looking to bolster their lineups for the NHL playoffs.
“We’ve got great players, but we need to perform as a team and we need to have everybody on board,” Staal said. “It’s a tough tournament to win. You need everything to line up correctly.”
Jeremy Colliton, the Canadians’ coach, has other veterans to draw on including David Desharnais, Jason Demers, Mark Barberio and Adam Cracknell.
Desharnais, 35, was a productive centre for Montreal for eight years and was recruited from a team in the Swiss elite league. Demers, 33, played 699 games as a defenceman in the NHL, the last in 2021 for the Arizona Coyotes. Barberio, 31, played defence for three NHL teams and has been toiling in the KHL. A right wing, Cracknell, 36, played for seven NHL teams and has spent the past two seasons in the AHL.
“This is a great honourfor me,” Demers said. “It is going to be an amazing experience.
“We have a collective group of 25 to 30 guys all pushing in one direction. It is in our hearts and minds and when that happens a team is hard to stop.”
Among Canada’s young players, the best is 19-year-old Owen Power. The 6-foot-6 defenceman was chosen first in the 2021 draft by the Buffalo Sabres and is currently attending the University of Michigan.
“I had heard about him and the other day I caught myself watching him a bit,” Demers said last week. “He is very impressive.
“He reminds me a bit of [Tampa Bay’s] Victor Hedman. I am sure he could have played in the NHL immediately and that Buffalo would have won another 10 or 15 games.”
Other newcomers to watch include forward Mason McTavish and goalie Devon Levi.
A 19-year-old centre, McTavish was taken by Anaheim with the third selection in the 2021 entry draft and had two goals and an assist in games when he began the year with the Ducks. He was then sent to the OHL for more seasoning.
Levi, 20, had a .964 save percentage and led Canada to a gold medal at the 2021 world junior championship. He has started 24 consecutive games for Northeastern University in Boston this season and has a 16-7-1 record with a .948 save percentage. Northeastern is a top NCAA Division I program.
“Any time I have ever had success with a team, it has come because we had a good balance of youth and experience,” Staal said. “This seems like a great group and I like our balance.”
Canada was upset by Germany in the semi-final in South Korea four years ago, but rebounded to capture a bronze medal. Canada won the men’s gold in 2002, 2010 and 2014.
Perhaps the most intriguing among the Canadians in the midst of trying to rebuild his career is Josh Ho-Sang, the 26-year-old forward who signed a professional tryout offer with the Maple Leafs this summer and has been playing for the Marlies, their AHL affiliate.
A first-round draft pick of the New York Islanders in 2014, Ho-Sang has spent parts of three star-crossed seasons in the NHL. In 2019, after he showed up late for camp, the Islanders immediately sent him back to the minor leagues.
“I would have laughed in your face only months ago if you told me I would be at the Olympics,” Ho-Sang said last week. “The fact that I was even on anybody’s radar was amazing to me.
“I am continuing to try to grow as a person and a player. It is not an easy task but it is nice to know you are on the right track.”
Ho-Sang, who is from Toronto originally, said he owes a debt of gratitude to the Maple Leafs and general manager Kyle Dubas for giving him a chance.
“This wouldn’t have been possible without them,” Ho-Sang said. “It seems like I matter there and that inspires me to be better on and off the ice. I feel like I have a stake in something.”
Ho-Sang would love to be called up to the Maple Leafs. If any other team shows interest in him after the Olympics, he may defer.
“I am so grateful for everything Toronto has done for me,” Ho-Sang said. “I would take that into consideration very heavily. This is not something I would throw away.”
For now, his mind is set on helping Team Canada.
“It would be an injustice to myself to look beyond the opportunity I have right now. It is once in a lifetime and very fleeting.”
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
