TSN reporter Mark Masters checks in daily with news and notes on Team Canada, which held a media availability at its hotel on Friday ahead of Saturday’s semifinal against Finland.
Team USA seemed stunned. After scoring 17 goals in four preliminary round games, the Americans were shut out 1-0 by Finland in the quarter-finals.
“It’s tough to take in right now,” said American sniper Cole Caufield moments after the buzzer sounded. “I didn’t think we gave it our best game. I don’t think we brought our ‘A’ game. We didn’t create enough the whole game.”
Finland could sense the American annoyance building as the minutes drained from Thursday’s elimination encounter.
“After the second period it was easy to see they were frustrated,” said Finnish defenceman Toni Utunen, “and they started to play a little by themselves so it was good for us.”
Team USA head coach Scott Sandelin summed it up.
“They played to their identity,” the Minnesota-Duluth bench boss said, “which we knew would be a hard game. We didn’t do enough offensively, we didn’t create a lot of time there, a lot of one and dones and not a lot of second chances and, obviously, they got the big power-play goal.”
“It was a tight game,” said Finnish coach Raimo Helminen, “but the game was in our hands almost the whole game. That’s what I felt on the bench. We worked hard, big time. They couldn’t get into the middle. They didn’t get too many chances. Our players were so together. They gave out almost nothing.”
“We played so well together and as a group,” said Winnipeg Jets prospect Ville Heinola. “That was our strength.”
This is what Team Canada is up against on Saturday in the semifinals. The Finns are deep, disciplined, patient and talented.
“A very good team,” observed Canada assistant coach Mitch Love. “A team that had an excellent hockey game yesterday. A team that doesn’t give you a lot so we got our work cut out for us. We expect their best and we have to be at our best.”
Canada’s scorching power play, leading the tournament with a 44 per cent success rate, will face a formidable roadblock in Finland’s second ranked penalty kill (86 per cent).
“They’re on top of you,” said Love, “just like their five-on-five game, so we’re going to have to be ready to make plays quickly.”
Finland is a team with a capital T and very comfortable against a North American opponent.
“Canada plays pretty similar to USA,” noted Heinola, “so we don’t have to change anything, we can play just like that game.”
Finland also appears to be getting stronger. Just like last year, they finished third in the group stage, but panic never set in. It’s all about peaking at the right time.
“Our first couple games, not our best,” said defenceman Lassi Thomson, an Ottawa Senators prospect who serves as captain, “but now we had a good game against USA so we’re going to play good next game and win a couple more.”
“We have more there,” vowed Heinola. “We played well, but we can play more. We can play more as a team. And sometimes we lose pucks when we’re in a bad position, but we can fix that.”
After frustrating USA, feisty Finns look to do the same to Canada
After frustrating the United States in the quarter-finals, Finland says they’re looking to do the same in the semi-finals to a Canadian team that plays a similar style to the Americans. The Finns also expect Canada’s returnees to be motivated to atone for last year’s overtime loss in the quarters.
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With a tight, structured affair expected, Canada will rely even more on the game-breaking ability of Alexis Lafreniere, who didn’t seem to miss a beat in his return from injury on Thursday. He scored a goal on the power play and also picked up an assist on the opening goal.
But there is actually one tweak the coaching staff wants to see in the Rimouski left winger’s game.
“He’s an unselfish player and we’d like to see him shoot more sometimes,” coach Dale Hunter told TSN’s Tessa Bonhomme after Thursday’s win.
“He’s probably more of a pass-first guy,” said Love. “He had a few looks, especially on the power play where he released the puck coming down that flank, and he scored on one of them and hopefully that brings some more confidence into his game.”
Even Barrett Hayton, who has seen Lafreniere assist on three of his five goals here, wouldn’t mind if his linemate kept the rock every now and then.
“You see his playmaking skills, but you saw last game he has a pretty elite release,” Canada’s captain said, “so definitely shooting the puck little bit more wouldn’t hurt.”
What’s crazy is how quickly Lafreniere, who has 23 goals in 32 QMJHL games this season, silenced any concern about his left-knee injury (bone bruise and muscle strain). Is he really 100 per cent?
“I believe so,” said Love. “He looked it. His first shift he had a pretty nice hit so it looks like his body’s physically there.”
“It felt really good,” Lafreniere said nonchalantly after the game. “It’s fun to be back and be with the boys.”
“He’s a star,” said Lethbridge forward Dylan Cozens. “He’s unbelievable. Every time he has the puck, he’s got his head up and he’s looking to make a play. He’s a threat.”
Lafreniere insists he never once considered leaving Ostrava.
“I was scared a little bit, but it was good recovery with the docs,” he said. “My knee twisted a little bit and I went down. It was scary a bit at the start, but after I felt good.”
Lafreniere looks no worse for wear as Canada pummels Slovakia in quarters
After what looked like a devastating knee injury to top player Alexis Lafreniere, the surging Canadians have now won three straight. Lafreniere looked great in his return as nearly everything went right for Canada in the win, except for the loss of Nolan Foote, who was ejected from the game in the first minute for what was deemed a hit to the head. Was the ejection warranted? TSN’s World Juniors panel weighs in.
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A reliable defensive stalwart for Team Canada, Jacob Bernard-Docker has worked hard to improve his shot over the last year.
“Just shooting a lot in the cage and working on forearm strength,” the University of North Dakota defenceman explained. “It’s always something I’m trying to get better at.”
Bernard-Docker is also spending time watching video of elite shooters he admires regardless of position.
“I know he’s a forward, but Auston Matthews is the one guy who comes to mind,” he said. “You look at him and he just pulls the puck like no one else in the league, it’s pretty fun to watch.”
Bernard-Docker, who has three goals in 17 NCAA games this season, showed off a slick move in the quarter-finals against Slovakia firing home his first World Juniors goal.
“I saw the winger sliding out a bit so just tried to change the angle a bit and had a screen in front,” he recalled.
Hunter liked what he saw from the Senators prospect and the rest of his blueliners, who combined for five points against the Slovaks.
“Our D were getting pucks through and that’s a key,” Hunter said. “Every team blocks so many shots and we did a good job of moving along the line and getting shots through.”
Canada d-man Bernard-Docker improves shot by studying Leafs’ Matthews
Jacob Bernard-Docker scored his first goal of the World Juniors in Canada’s quarterfinal game against Slovakia on Thursday. He spoke to TSN’s Mark Masters to explain how he’s been working on his shot and said he takes inspiration from Auston Matthews.
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Rasmus Sandin left Sweden’s final preliminary-round game after getting slashed on the left wrist. Again, in the quarter-finals, the defenceman took a hack to the same sore spot and was sent to the room prematurely.
Is he playing through pain right now?
“Yeah, a little, maybe, but it’s not too bad, it’s getting better,” the Toronto Maple Leafs prospect said.
Does Sandin feel like the Czechs were targeting him?
“I’m not trying to think about it too much,” he said. “I don’t know if they’re trying to hit my wrist or not. I’m trying to focus on my stuff.”
“It says what kind of character he has,” said coach Tomas Monten. “He wants to play.”
Sandin plays a top-pair role for the Swedes with teammate David Gustafsson, a Jets prospect, calling him the best defenceman in the tournament.
They will lean on Sandin heavily in the semifinals against Russia.
“The Russians have a good individual team,” Sandin noted, “they got some really good individual players. We got a really good team. We’ve come together really well as a group.”
Playing through pain, Sandin believes Sweden’s team can beat Russia’s individuals
Rasmus Sandin has continued to compete for Team Sweden in the World Juniors despite dealing with a wrist injury. When asked if he believes opponents have been targeting his wrist, Sandin said he’s not worried about it and only focused on what he can improve.
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What message did the Leafs give Sandin when they loaned him from the AHL to Team Sweden?
“They pretty much said, ‘Good luck. Go win silver,'” Sandin said with a chuckle. “That was pretty much it. But, I don’t want to listen to that too much.”
It was Marlies GM Laurence Gilman and the Marlies coaching staff, who offered the tongue-in-cheek parting shot.
“This is one of the times I’m going to try to not listen to my coaches,” said Sandin with a laugh.
Sandin said he hasn’t had much contact with folks back home since arriving at the World Juniors although he is still exchanging messages with William Nylander.
Sandin on message from Leafs management: ‘Go win silver’
Leafs defenceman Rasmus Sandin spoke to TSN’s Mark Masters to share his thoughts on Toronto’s fantastic play as of late and an interesting message he received from the team’s management as he headed overseas to take part in the World Juniors.
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Nils Höglander is putting on a show at the World Juniors. The Vancouver Canucks prospect leads the tournament in scoring with 10 points and he pulled off the lacrosse move in the opening game, one of his five goals.
What stands out the most?
“His creativity in the offensive zone,” said Gustafsson. “I mean, sometimes I just give him the puck and just watch, just stand by and watch him doing what he does best.”
“He’s so fun to watch,” marvelled Sandin. “To see his goals, his moves in small areas out on the ice is surreal to see.”
Nils Hoglander is changing the game from behind the net, but this time he can’t put it home. ? pic.twitter.com/668mw6OKx6
In the quarter-finals, Höglander scored the opening goal against the host Czechs and then put his finger to his lips.
“He’s got kind of his own swagger,” said Sandin. “He’s a little bit different. He might not be a typical Swede, but he’s a guy you like to have on your team. He can do it all. He can do a lacrosse goal as everyone saw this tournament. He can dangle, he can hit, he can skate. He’s a huge addition for our team.”
“He can do whatever he wants to,” said Gustafsson with a smile. “He has confidence in it and he’s a skilled player.”
‘Might not be a typical Swede’: Hoglander showing off skill and swagger
Sweden’s Nils Hoglander has put on a show at the World Juniors, showcasing unorthodox, high-skill techniques and gaining the attention of many who have watched the tournament with his flamboyant personality. His teammates Rasmus Sandin and David Gustafsson shared their thoughts on Hoglander’s game.
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Is Utunen ready to break Canadian hearts again?
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m excited for tomorrow.”
Last year, Utunen scored the overtime winner against Canada in the World Junior quarter-finals in Vancouver. He beat fellow Canucks prospect Mikey DiPietro and silenced the sellout crowd.
“It was a huge goal and I hope to see something similar tomorrow,” he said with a smile.
Utunen still has the puck he used to score that goal. He keeps it in a safe spot in his dad’s house. And sometimes he’ll watch the video of that magical moment. What goes through his mind?
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to explain that feeling, what happens after the goal.”
It was a special moment for Utunen and not just because the magnitude of the game. The fact is Utunen simply doesn’t score much. He has just one goal in 71 career games with Tappara Tampere in the SM-liiga.
Utunen, however, did score two goals against Canada back on July 31 in the World Junior Showcase in Plymouth.
What’s the deal? Does he only score against Canada?
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a laugh. “Last four goals, three of them were against Canada.”
So, he’s feeling good going into this one?
“Yep,” he said with a grin.
Canucks prospect Utunen rarely scores…unless he’s playing Canada
Toni Utunen isn’t known for his scoring, but when he does score, it seems to be at Canada’s expense. The Canucks prospect broke Canadian hearts at last year’s tournament with his overtime-winner, and also netted a pair against Canada at the World Junior Summer Showcase in July. Ahead of the semi-finals, the Finnish defenceman jokes about his success against the red and white.
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Team Canada did not hold a practice on Friday, with only backup Nico Daws and Dawson Mercer skating. It was the first time the team stayed off the ice since Christmas Eve.
A morning skate is set for at 11 a.m. (5 a.m. ET) on Saturday at Ostravar Arena.
Christine Sinclair scored one final goal at B.C. Place, helping the Portland Thorns to a 6-0 victory over the Whitecaps Girls Elite team. The soccer legend has announced she’ll retire from professional soccer at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season. (Oct. 16, 2024)
At his first news conference as England’s newly appointed head coach, Thomas Tuchel – a German – was asked on Wednesday what message he had for fans who would have preferred an Englishman in charge of their beloved national team.
“I’m sorry, I just have a German passport,” he said, laughing, and went on to profess his love for English football and the country itself. “I will do everything to show respect to this role and to this country.”
The soccer rivalry between England and Germany runs deep and it’s likely Tuchel’s passport will be used against him if he doesn’t deliver results for a nation that hasn’t lifted a men’s trophy since 1966. But his appointment as England’s third foreign coach shows that, increasingly, even the top countries in the sport are abandoning the long-held belief that the national team must be led by one of their own.
Four of the top nine teams in the FIFA world rankings now have foreign coaches. Even in Germany, a four-time World Cup winner which has never had a foreign coach, candidates such as Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Austrian Oliver Glasner were considered serious contenders for the top job before the country’s soccer federation last year settled on Julian Nagelsmann, who is German.
“The coaching methods are universal and there for everyone to apply,” said German soccer researcher and authorChristoph Wagner, whose recent book “Crossing the Line?” historically addresses Anglo-German rivalry. “It’s more the personality that counts and not the nationality. You could be a great coach, and work with a group of players who aren’t perceptive enough to get your methods.”
Not everyone agrees.
English soccer author and journalist Jonathan Wilson said it was “an admission of failure” for a major soccer nation to have a coach from a different country.
“Personally, I think it should be the best of one country versus the best of another country, and that would probably extend to coaches as well as players,” said Wilson, whose books include “Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics.”
“To say we can’t find anyone in our country who is good enough to coach our players,” he said, “I think there is something slightly embarrassing, slightly distasteful about that.”
That sentiment was echoed by British tabloid The Daily Mail, which reported on Tuchel’s appointment with the provocative headline “A Dark Day for England.”
While foreign coaches are often found in smaller countries and those further down the world rankings, they are still a rarity among the traditional powers of the game. Italy, another four-time world champion, has only had Italians in charge. All of Spain’s coaches in its modern-day history have been Spanish nationals. Five-time World Cup winner Brazil has had only Brazilians in charge since 1965, and two-time world champion France only Frenchmen since 1975.
And it remains the case that every World Cup-winning team, since the first tournament in 1930, has been coached by a native of that country. The situation is similar for the women’s World Cup, which has never been won by a team with a foreign coach, though Jill Ellis, who led the U.S. to two trophies, is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in England.
Some coaches have made a career out of jumping from one national team to the next. Lars Lagerbäck, 76, coached his native Sweden between 2000-09 and went on to lead the national teams of Nigeria, Iceland and Norway.
“I couldn’t say I felt any big difference,” Lagerbäck told The Associated Press. “I felt they were my teams and the people’s teams.”
For Lagerbäck, the obvious disadvantages of coaching a foreign country were any language difficulties and having to adapt to a new culture, which he particularly felt during his brief time with Nigeria in 2010 when he led the African country at the World Cup.
Otherwise, he said, “it depends on the results” — and Lagerbäck is remembered with fondness in Iceland, especially, after leading the country to Euro 2016 for its first ever international tournament, where it knocked out England in the round of 16.
Lagerbäck pointed to the strong education and sheer number of coaches available in soccer powers like Spain and Italy to explain why they haven’t needed to turn to an overseas coach. At this year’s European Championship, five of the coaches were from Italy and the winning coach was Luis de la Fuente, who was promoted to Spain’s senior team after being in charge of the youth teams.
Portugal for the first time looked outside its own borders or Brazil, with which it has historical ties, when it appointed Spaniard Roberto Martinez as national team coach last year. Also last year, Brazil tried — and ultimately failed — to court Real Madrid’s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, with Brazilian soccer federation president Ednaldo Rodrigues saying: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a foreigner or a Brazilian, there’s no prejudice about the nationality.”
The United States has had a long list of foreign coaches before Mauricio Pochettino, the Argentine former Chelsea manager who took over as the men’s head coach this year.
The English Football Association certainly had no qualms making Tuchel the national team’s third foreign-born coach, after Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson (2001-06) and Italian Fabio Capello (2008-12), simply believing he was the best available coach on the market.
Unlike Eriksson and Capello, Tuchel at least had previous experience of working in English soccer — he won the Champions League in an 18-month spell with Chelsea — and he also speaks better English.
That won’t satisfy all the nay-sayers, though.
“Hopefully I can convince them and show them and prove to them that I’m proud to be the English manager,” Tuchel said.
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AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire in Paris contributed to this story.
TORONTO – Bobby McMann watched from the press box on opening night.
Just over a week later, the Maple Leafs winger took a twirl as the first star.
McMann went from healthy scratch to unlikely offensive focal point in just eight days, putting up two goals in Toronto’s 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday.
The odd man out at the Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, he’s slowly earning the trust of first-year head coach Craig Berube.
“There’s a lot of good players on this team,” McMann said of his reaction to sitting out Game 1. “Maybe some guys fit better in certain scenarios than others … just knowing that my opportunity would come.”
The Wainwright, Alta., product skated on the second line with William Nylander and Max Domi against Los Angeles, finishing with those two goals, three hits and a plus-3 rating in just over 14 minutes of work.
“He’s been unbelievable,” said Nylander, who’s tied with McMann for the team lead with three goals. “It’s great when a player like that comes in.”
The 28-year-old burst onto the scene last February when he went from projected scratch to hat-trick hero in a single day after then-captain John Tavares fell ill.
McMann would finish 2023-24 with 15 goals and 24 points in 56 games before a knee injury ruled him out of Toronto’s first-round playoff loss to the Boston Bruins.
“Any time you have success, it helps the confidence,” he said. “But I always trust the abilities and trust that they’re there whether things are going in or (I’m not) getting points. Just trying to play my game and trust that doing the little things right will pay off.”
McMann was among the Leafs’ best players against the Kings — and not just because of what he did on the scoresheet. The forward got into a scuffle with Phillip Danault in the second period before crushing Mikey Anderson with a clean hit in the third.
“He’s a power forward,” Berube said. “That’s how he should think the game, night in and night out, as being a power forward with his skating and his size. He doesn’t have to complicate the game.”
Leafs goaltender Anthony Stolarz knew nothing about McMann before joining Toronto in free agency over the summer.
“Great two-way player,” said the netminder. “Extremely physical and moves really well, has a good shot. He’s a key player for us in our depth. I was really happy for him to get those two goals.
“Works his butt off.”
ON TARGET
Leafs captain Auston Matthews, who scored 69 times last season, ripped his first goal of 2024-25 after going without a point through the first three games.
“It’s not going to go in every night,” said Matthews, who added two assists against the Kings. “It’s good to see one fall … a little bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders.”
WAKE-UP CALL
Berube was animated on the bench during a third-period timeout after the Kings cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-2.
“Taking care of the puck, being harder in our zone,” Matthews said of the message. “There were times in the game, early in the second, in the third period, where the momentum shifted and we needed to grab it back.”
PATCHES SITS
Toronto winger Max Pacioretty was a healthy scratch after dressing the first three games.
“There’s no message,” Berube said of the 35-year-old’s omission. “We have extra players and not everybody can play every night. That’s the bottom line. He’s been fine when he’s played, but I’ve got to make decisions as a coach, and I’m going to make those decisions — what I think is best for the team.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
