Every Canada vs. USA matchup from a men's best-on-best tournament, ranked

On Saturday night, after over eight years of waiting, it’s finally back: Canada vs the USA in a best-on-best men’s hockey tournament.

OK, maybe the 4 Nations Face-Off doesn’t have quite the same claim to “best-on-best” status as some of the tournaments that have come before, given that there are only four teams competing. But those four teams are bringing the very best players they have available, so yes, this is a best-on-best matchup. And it should be a good one.

Tomorrow marks the 20th time in men’s hockey history that Team Canada has faced Team USA in a true best-on-best, by which we mean the Canada Cup, the World Cup, and the Olympics in years where the NHL sent its players. Canada has dominated the head-to-head with a record of 14-4-1, but it’s been closer since the dawn of the World Cup and Olympic era, and this year the Americans may be slight favorites.

We’ll see how it turns out, and whether we have to settle for just this one game or also get a rematch in next week’s championship game. For now, let’s look back on those 19 previous matchups and rank them from worst to best.

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Remembering the lesser-known stars who played for Team Canada in a best-on-best tournament

Last week, we built a roster of 20 Canadian stars who never got to play for Team Canada in a best-on-best tournament. It ended up being a pretty solid group, one that included big names like Ron Francis, Bernie Parent and Cam Neely. It was so good, in fact, that at the end of the piece I included a one-sentence throwaway line where I wondered if they’d beat a roster of the worst players who did get to play for Team Canada.

I should have known what would come next. Sure enough, a lot of you wanted to see that roster too. OK, let’s do it.

The rules will be the same as last week. We need twelve forwards, six defensemen and two goalies who suited up for Team Canada at a best-on-best, which is to say the Olympics (in a year when NHL players went), World Cup, Canada Cup or Summit Series. The only exception is that this time we won’t count the mostly forgotten 1974 Summit Series, since that was WHA players and would make this too easy. Goalies have to have been on the roster (including backups or third strings), while skaters need to have actually seen the ice for at least one game. Simple enough.

One caveat: A lot of this is going to feel like we’re knocking these players, and I hope it doesn’t come across that way. A typical Team Canada will feature some of the very best players in the world, and being a “bad” player on a roster like that is still pretty impressive. The idea here isn’t to say that these guys weren’t great players in their own right, since almost all of them were. But the bar was set pretty high by last week’s snub team, so let’s see what we wind up with here.

Goaltenders

We’ve got a few solid options here, and we don’t even have to pick on Pete Peeters (who actually won a Vezina two years after his 1981 meltdown against the Soviets). I considered Jose Theodore, who didn’t have a long stay on top but was a few years removed from an MVP season when he was Canada’s third string at the 2004 World Cup, as well as Reggie Lemelin, who’d had back-to-back years as a Vezina finalist when he made the 1984 Canada Cup team.

Instead, I’m going to go with a couple of cap-era guys who personify solid starters without ever radiating too much star power. Give me Marty Turco, who was the third option for the 2006 Olympic team, leading to this classic “always lead with the local angle” headline from Sault Ste. Marie.

We’ll back him up with Mike Smith, who rolled out of the sack to earn a spot at the 2014 Olympics. Neither Smith or Turco actually got to play in the tournament, but that just means they’ll be well-rested when we turn to them.

They might need to be, because our blueline is going to be… interesting.

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Remembering the biggest stars who never played for Team Canada in a best-on-best tournament

The Winter Olympics are here, but if you’re an NHL fan you may not have noticed. This was supposed to be the big showdown, a rare best-on-best international tournament that would determine the world’s top hockey nation. Instead, COVID delays gave Gary Bettman his opening to withdraw NHL players. What we’re left with is… well, some decent stories and some solid hockey, sure. But it’s certainly not a best-on-best on the men’s side, because the best aren’t there.

We might have to wait until 2026 for our next chance, or maybe we’ll get that World Cup in 2024. Either way, it will mean a long gap between opportunities for most of today’s stars. Connor McDavid, the best player in the world, has still never had a chance to represent his country in a true best-on-best – the NHL didn’t go to the Olympics in 2018 or 2022, and he was forced onto a hybrid Team North America in the 2016 World Cup. Now he’ll be closing in on 30 by the time he gets to put on a red maple leaf when the spotlight is brightest.

If it’s any consolation, McDavid isn’t alone. As it turns out, you can build a reasonably decent roster out of Canadian NHL stars who never got the chance to represent their country in a best-on-best tournament. So that’s what we’re going to do, with 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies worth of snubs and/or missed opportunities.

The ground rules here are that we’re looking for players who starred in the era of big best-on-best tournaments, which is to say nobody before the 1970s. “Best on best” means the Summit Series, the Canada Cup/World Cup, and the Olympics in the years that NHL players went, but not things like the World Championships or World Juniors, or the various all-star exhibitions that were played from time-to-time. And active players are allowed, but only if we’re pretty sure that they won’t be on a Canadian roster in the future, so no McDavid.

(Full discloser, I was originally going to include all of the major hockey counties in this roster, before realizing that pretty much all the selections would end up being from Canada. Apologies to my many American friends out there. If it’s any consolation, you’ve at least got that women’s hockey silver medal to look forward to.)

As always, we build a great adequate team from the net out…

Goaltenders

We’ll start off with what might be a controversial question: What do we do with goalies who were taken as back2ps or third strings but never saw the ice? On the one hand, they didn’t actually play in a best-on-best, which is what we said we were looking for. On the other, unlike skaters who never got into a game, the goalies would have at least pulled on the uniform, sat on the bench, and been (kind of) part of the game.

When in doubt, I usually lean towards the side that’s going to make things more difficult for me, so I’m going to say that goalies who suited up but didn’t play aren’t eligible here. That means no Eddie Belfour, (who was the third goalie at the 2002 Olympics), Marc-Andre Fleury (third string at the 2010 Olympics) or Ron Hextall (who was the backup at the 1987 Canada Cup but watched Grant Fuhr get all the action).

As it turns out, we can still get a Hall-of-Famer into the mix, although we have to go back a few decades to do it. Let’s start with Bernie Parent, who managed to win back-to-back Vezinas and even finish as Hart Trophy runner-up in the mid-70s, but was never invited to play for Team Canada. That includes the 1976 Canada Cup, where Gerry Cheevers, Glenn Resch, Rogatien Vachon and Dan Bouchard got the call. That sounds like a snub, but the reality is that Parent had a neck injury and was advised not to play. Bad luck for him, but good news for us, as he’ll be our starter.

I thought about trying to slip in Billy Smith as the backup, since he was hurt before he could get into the 1981 Canada Cup tournament and was snubbed in 1984. But his injury came in warmup, which means he was actually in uniform, so it feels a little dicey. Instead, I’ll make Eric Duhatschek happy by going with Mike Vernon, who was good enough to win a pair of Stanley Cups but couldn’t find his way onto a Canada Cup team.

If we need a third-string option, we could look to guys like Chris Osgood, Kirk McLean, Braden Holtby and J.S. Giguere. But with Parent and Vernon, we should be pretty well set. Let’s see if we can build a decent blueline for them.

Defensemen

Hey, here’s a fun thing I learned while doing this exercise: Defense is by far the hardest position to fill.<2p>

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Who wins today, 2016’s Team North America or Team Everyone Else?

Five years ago this week, hockey fans got their first look at the roster for what would become one of the most unique teams in international sports history. In organizing the 2016 World Cup tournament, the NHL went off the board with their decision to include a Team North America, an unprecedented combo platter of Canadian and American stars who were 23 or under.

Did it make sense to have two counties combining for an entry in an international tournament, let alone when those two nations were rivals? Not really. Was it fair to weaken those countries’ main rosters by ruling out some of the game’s best young stars? Probably not. Was the whole thing a good idea? It’s fair to say that the initial reaction was mixed.

But then we got a look at the first draft of the roster, and even a traditionalist had to be intrigued. That initial March 2016 list featured 16 names, including established stars like Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel. They’d eventually be joined by a group that included Auston Matthews (who’d yet to play an NHL game) and Mark Scheifele.

We weren’t sure if they’d be all that good, but we knew they’d be fun. It turned out they were both, stealing the show at the tournament with a run-and-gun style and all sorts of skill. They failed to medal, but beat Finland and Sweden. In terms of NHL star power, the future looked bright.

Five years later, the future is here. So today, I want to tackle a question sent in by Puck Soup listener Manny: Could a reunited Team North America beat an all-star squad made up of everyone else in a series played right now?

It’s a big ask. We’ve got a huge swath of the league to choose from, including stars who were too old for Team North America consideration, guys who hadn’t entered the league yet, and a handful of snubs. And we’ve got the benefit of hindsight, because while most of the 2016 team holds up well, a few haven’t seen their pro careers pan out as well as we all expected. Team Everyone Else should have a big advantage. But Team North America has Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews, so let’s do this.

One caveat: We’re doing North American players only. I originally thought about making it the kids against the world, but throwing names like Victor Hedman, David Pastrnak and Nikita Kucherov into the mix just tilts the scales too far in one direction. It’s Canadian and American stars only, and if you show up in the comments going “Uh, Leon Draisaitl?” then you have to do ten pushups and we all get to make fun of you. Let’s see where this takes us.

Forwards

Let’s start with the main course, because the Team North America forwards are ridiculous. McDavid, Matthews and MacKinnon may be the three best players in the league right now, so we’re absolutely loaded with top-end star power. But we’re not completely top heavy, with some excellent options for all four lines. Some of the names aren’t exactly Hart candidates, like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. J.T. Miller or Vincent Trochek, but they’ve developed into very good players.

In fact, among the names on the final 2016 roster, there isn’t a single one that you’d describe as a bust five years down the road. And the only ones who’ve struggled to establish themselves as legitimate top-end players are Brandon Saad and maybe Jonathan Drouin.

Here’s how my Team North America lines would look in 2021:

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What's the fourth-best Canadian international hockey moment?

Last Friday was the 10th anniversary of Sidney Crosby’s golden goal, the overtime winner against the United States that delivered Olympic gold in front of a delirious Vancouver crowd.

It was a remarkable goal that still holds up as a “where were you” moment to this day, and the anniversary spurred a rush of pride and patriotism among Canadian hockey fans. But it also prompted something else, something far more rare and wonderful: a good tweet.

Specifically, a tweet by user @thupka1982 asking a seemingly simple question: What’s the Mount Rushmore of Team Canada goals? In other words, which four stand above the others as the best and/or most memorable in Canadian international hockey history?

I’m going to take the liberty of expanding the question to not just goals, but moments. The beauty of the question is that the first three are obvious. Just about everyone would give you the same list: Crosby’s Golden Goal, Paul Henderson’s winner in 1972 and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux teaming up to beat the Soviets in 1987. You can’t get hockey fans to agree on anything, but I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t have those three moments on their list.

But what’s No. 4? That’s where it gets interesting. Today, with permission from our pal @thupka1982, let’s break down some of the candidates.

Darryl Sittler’s fake shot

The game: The inaugural Canada Cup in 1976 was meant to expand on the success of the 1972 Summit Series, with the expectation that we’d get a rematch between Team Canada and the Soviets. Instead, Canada ended up facing an underdog Czechoslovakian team in the final.

The moment: Canada won the first game of the best-of-three in a 6-0 blowout. But they had a tougher time in Game 2, needing a late goal to send the game to overtime. That’s when this happened:

Why it’s in the running: It was the first great international moment to happen in sudden death, and it’s an absolute beauty of a goal. (Side note: Don Cherry has tried to claim the credit for the move, which may or may not factor into where you rank it.)

The case against: Not having it come against the Soviets hurts the case a bit, as does the fact that it wasn’t a must-win game for Canada.

Bottom line: It’s definitely in the conversation, although I’m not sure there’s room on our Mount Rushmore for two games from the 1970s.

John Slaney plays the hero on home ice

The game: Heading into the 1991 World Junior Championship, Canada was the defending champs. But they’d never won back-to-back tournaments and had never won the tournament on home ice. They had a chance to make history on both fronts when they faced the Soviets in their final game of the tournament, with the winner taking gold.

The moment: Late in a 2-2 tie, a draw in the Soviet zone ended up with the puck sliding back to Canadian defenseman John Slaney, who had time to step into the shot of his life.

Why it’s in the running: It’s not the greatest goal on the list, although it might challenge for the best celebration. But this moment, along with the crowd reaction and TSN’s coverage of it all, may have been the one that elevated the world juniors from a vaguely important tournament to a Canadian institution.

The case against: In terms of big names to score a crucial goal, Slaney doesn’t exactly rank up there with Crosby or Lemieux or Sittler. Then again, when it comes to the world juniors, that might be part of the appeal.

Bottom line: It’s probably hard to explain to younger fans, but this one really was a huge moment back in the day and set the stage for other great WJC moments to come. Like this one …

Jordan Eberle’s buzzer-beater

The game: Canada and Russia renewed international hockey’s greatest rivalry at the 2009 world juniors in Ottawa. Canada had won four straight golds, but the Russians held a one-goal lead late in the game.

The moment: With the goalie pulled and Canada pressing in the final minute of the third, Ryan Ellis made a play at the blue line to keep the puck in the Russian zone. After an extended scrum along the sideboards, the puck squirted free to Jordan Eberle in front of the net.

Why it’s in the running: There may not be a goal in Canadian hockey history that came out of nowhere quite like this one. One second, the puck was by the boards as the game ticked away; the very next, Eberle was somehow all alone in front of the Russian net. The whole thing played out almost too quickly for a fan’s brain to process in real time, which made it one of the great “Did I actually just see that?” moments ever.

The case against: Memory is a funny thing. You know Canada went on to win the game, but do you even remember who scored the winner in overtime? Nobody did because the game was decided in a shootout, which is kind of lame. Another piece you may not remember, with shades of the Miracle on Ice: This wasn’t the gold medal game. It was the semifinal.

Bottom line: The fact that a goal that didn’t end a game or a tournament is still remembered to this day just drives home how insane the moment was for those that watched it live.

Filling out a World Cup roster for Team Canada’s B-Team

We’ve spent the last week or so on this site having some fun with the World Cup. Or rather, with the lack of a World Cup, since the NHL in its infinite wisdom has apparently decided that hockey fans don’t want to see best-on-best tournaments anymore. We’re not so sure about that, so we’ve been coming up with our best guess at what the various rosters would look like if the World Cup were revived.

That’s always a fun exercise for any country. But it gets especially interesting for Team Canada because the country continues to produce more talent than anyone else. No matter who you pick for a roster, you’re going to end up leaving out a bunch of stars who’d be easy picks for pretty much any other team in the tournament. Sometimes, it feels like Canada could do pretty well with a second entry.

So let’s do that. We’ll scratch off all the names that wound up on Eric Duhatschek’s Team Canada entry, and see what we can do with the rest of the options. Call it the Canadian B-Team.

We’ve still got plenty of talent to choose from, and we should be able to put together a decent team. More than decent, actually. In fact, it’s tempting to wonder: With some savvy picks, can we build a roster that’s good enough to give the real Team Canada a run for its money?

No. No, we cannot. That team has Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby. It has Mitch Marner on the fourth line. It has the reigning Norris winner on the third pairing. They’re good.

But can we build a Canadian B-team that could give some of the other countries in the tournament a run for their money? I think we can. Let’s find out.

Forwards

I admit that I was hoping Eric would get cocky (or maybe just have a senior moment) and leave McDavid off of his list. No such luck. In fact, Canada A snaps up the three leading Canadian-born scorers since the start of the 2017-18 season in McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and (believe it or not) Brad Marchand.

But somewhat surprisingly, the next three leading scorers are all available, so we’ll happily build our first line around Steven Stamkos, Claude Giroux and Jonathan Huberdeau. That’s a solid start. Stamkos is a decorated veteran of international best-on-best, and we’ll make him team captain. Huberdeau is on his way to his second straight 90-point season and is still in his prime; he might be one of the most underrated offensive stars in the league right now. And Giroux is a talented scorer who gives us some versatility because he can play multiple positions. Plus picking him keeps my chimney dry.

We’ll build our second line around a pair of teammates from Dallas, as Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn form two-thirds of a decent unit. Neither one is dominating this year, and Benn’s actually been pretty disappointing. But it speaks to the strength of Team Canada that he’s even here, since I can’t imagine too many other countries would be slotting a recent Art Ross winner onto the B-Team’s second line. We’ll make this an all-Central unit by adding Matt Duchene, who suited up for Canada at both the 2016 World Cup and 2014 Olympics.

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Puck Soup: Unemployed coaches edition

In this week's episode of the Puck Soup podcast:
- The Sharks fire Peter DeBoer
- The Jim Montgomery mystery
- The NHL unveils a four-point plan to combat player abuse
- Another Akim Aliu horror story
- We won't have a World Cup in 2020
- The Red Wings are quite bad
- Evaluating the micro-cores
- And lots more

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>> Get weekly mailbags and special bonus episodes by supporting Puck Soup on Patreon for $5.

Grab Bag: World Cup pros and cons, when a streak isn’t a streak and Rick Bowness bites his tongue

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- The pros and cons of holding another World Cup of Hockey
- A debate about losing streaks
- An obscure player who did not qualify for this week's Team Brother roster
- The three comedy stars
- And a YouTube clip of Rick Bowness trying very hard not to say what he really wants to say

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Can Team Canada be beaten? Yes, and here's how it could happen.

The 2016 World Cup of Hockey ended last night. You'll never guess who won.

Wait, of course you will. It was the same team that always wins, at least for the last decade or so.

Last night, Canada used a late third-period comeback to beat Team Europe 2-1, finishing off a two-game sweep of the final. That left Canada with a perfect 6-0-0 record for the tournament, and going back to the playoff round of the 2010 Olympics, Canada has now won each of the last three best-on-best tournaments, not to mention 16 straight games.

And so we appear to have an international dynasty on our hands. And while that's great news if you're a proud Canadian, it's not exactly a good thing for hockey fans in general. The sport has a long history of international tournaments providing some of its most memorable moments, from Paul Henderson to Dominik Hasek to Mario Lemieux to Tommy Salo. But those tournaments only matter if there's some suspense involved. Right now, Canada is the best and everyone knows it. If one team is completely unbeatable, then why should anyone bother to care about the next best-on-best event? Maybe it would be better for fans to just skip the international events and only worry about the games where we don't already know the ending.

This is a problem. And it's lead to some handwringing over whether Canada is just too good for these tournaments to be worth watching anymore. So today, let's try to push back on the idea of Team Canada as an unstoppable juggernaut. Hard as it may be to find today, there are small signs of optimism for everyone else. Here are eight reasons why the rest of the world should hold out some hope of beating Team Canada someday soon.

Reason No. 1: Team Europe almost beat them

Let's start with the most recent sign of optimism: Team Europe actually hung in there. For 55 minutes last night, they looked like they were even going to get a win.

That was a surprise. On paper, Team Europe wasn't even one of the tournament's stronger teams. A collection of players from the hockey world's less competitive nations, Team Europe wasn't expected to make the playoff round. But it did, upsetting Team USA along the way, and then it surprised Sweden in overtime. That set up a matchup that most of us assumed would be a Canadian cake walk.

But it wasn't. Team Europe played Canada tough in Tuesday's opener before dropping a 3-1 decision, and it was even better last night. And to be clear, this wasn't a case of a team getting badly outplayed but managing to keep the score close. Team Europe held the edge for long stretches, outshooting Canada and giving itself a real chance to win.

How did Team Europe do it? Mainly by being a well-coached team playing a disciplined and getting strong games from just about all of its key contributors. And sure, in the end, it still wasn't enough. But for a more talented roster, it might have been.

So it can be done. Now we just need to find someone who can do it.

Reason No. 2: Help is on the way

Your mileage may vary depending on which country you root for, but there's plenty of young talent that should be making waves in the NHL by 2020, and much of it isn't Canadian. Names like Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine, Jack Eichel and Leon Draisaitl are all set to break through. Johnny Gaudreau and Evgeny Kuznetsov already have, and they'll be even better next time around.

Two years is too small a sample to draw any big conclusions from, but it's worth remembering that the last few drafts have been top heavy with non-Canadians. The rest of the world has accounted for 15 of the 20 top ten picks from the last two drafts, with Canada having just five. The next wave of talent to hit the league may not be as Canadian as we're used to seeing.

(Of course, for this point to work, you have to ignore that one of those Canadian players is Connor McDavid, whose work on Team North America at the World Cup was so impressive that plenty of hockey people were openly wondering if he's already the best player in the league. He's going to be ridiculously good. Sorry, rest of the world. Barring an alien abduction, McDavid is going to ruin you for the next two decades.)

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

What worked and what didn't at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey

It was a tougher series than most had expected, but in the end we got the result we were all waiting for.

Team Canada claims the World Cup once again, winning yet another best-on-best tournament by sweeping a surprisingly feisty Team Europe in two straight games.

Last night’s 2-1 comeback caps off a tournament that packed a decent number of twists and turns into its two-week schedule. We saw a new format with two new teams, a nice underdog story, and one so-called contender that turned out to be anything but.

It wasn’t perfect, or even especially close. But the World Cup certainly had its moments.

The 2016 edition marked the event's first appearance in 12 long years. Now that the tournament is done, let's take a look back at what worked and what didn't, and how we'd fix the problems that stood out.

What worked: The end result

Let's start with the obvious: The best team won. Canada's march through the tournament was yet another dominating performance by a nation that's getting used to them. The country now owns an international best-on-best win streak of 16 games and counting, dating back to the 2010 Olympics. And they've won three straight tournaments and five of the last six.

It wasn't always like this. Canadian fans of a certain age will remember the mounting panic around the turn of the century as the national program was going on a decade between major titles, including disappointing losses at the 1996 World Cup and the 1998 Winter Olympics. But since then, a focus on skilled players and defined roles has restored Canada to its place at the top of the hockey world. They came into the tournament with the best roster on paper, and it wasn't especially close.

Of course, the games aren't played on paper, and by its nature, hockey is a game where anything can happen in a short tournament. A sudden slump or a hot goaltender can be all it takes to create an upset, and the Russians briefly had Canada on the ropes in last Saturday's semi-final.

But there would have been something unsatisfying about seeing a team as stacked as Canada lose on a fluke. Instead, they bulldozed everyone on their way to the final, just like we all expected them to. And while Team Europe proved a far tougher opponent than anyone expected, the best team still won.

If that's the whole point of a tournament like the World Cup, then the last two weeks were mission accomplished.

What didn't: The suspense factor

So yes, the best team won, and the tournament got the result it deserved. But from an entertainment perspective, Canada's continued dominance is starting to wear on these events.

It's all well and good to get to the happy ending, but a little suspense along the way would be nice.

These days, best-on-best hockey tournaments aren't about figuring out who the best team is. We already know that going in. Instead, they're largely about seeing whether anyone can play David to Team Canada's Goliath.

That can be fun in its own right — everyone loves an underdog story – and you can bet that when the day comes when someone finally pulls it off, hockey fans outside of Canada will be cheering them on. But over the last decade or so, it's just not happening.

And that might be an issue going forward, both at the World Cup and at any future Olympics. This is the entertainment business, and audiences don't typically want to sit through a long story if they already know how it's going to end.

In the same way that watching basketball's Team USA "Dream Team" was cool at first but has lost its luster over the years, seeing Team Canada roll through each and every major hockey tournament will eventually get old.

Maybe it already has.

How to fix it: The NHL could get creative with the format, either at the World Cup or elsewhere.

One suggestion that comes up often is a second Team Canada entry, either by splitting the program regionally or by creating a "B team" of players who didn't make the main squad.

There's also reportedly been talk of a Ryder Cup-style series that would pit a North American team against the best of Europe, or even Canada against the world.

But a more realistic fix might involve simply being patient. National programs tend to go through cycles, and right now it feels like Canada is at its peak while most of the other countries are struggling.

It's unlikely to stay that way. Countries like Finland and the USA have good young talent on the way, and Russia and Sweden will regroup. That doesn't mean that anyone will push past Canada as hockey's top nation, but we don't need them to — we just want somebody to narrow the gap enough that there's some uncertainty around the results.

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Ranking the World/Canada's Cup five Game Twos

Tuesday night's Game 1 of the World Cup final, which saw Team Canada earn a 3-1 win over Team Europe, sets up a do-or-die Game 2 Thursday night. A Canada win would end the tournament, and the trophy will be in the building, unless the league has come to its senses and thrown that ugly thing into a raging bonfire instead.

There have been seven World and Canada Cups in international hockey history, but we didn't get to see a Game 2 in all of those. Twice, in 1981 and 2004, the format called for a one-game final. But it's been best-of-three in the other tournaments, which gives us five Game 2 to work with. So today, let's take a look back at those five games, and rank them from worst to best.

As always, this is opinion only, and if you disagree, then you're wrong.

No. 5 – 1984: Canada 6, Sweden 5

The road there: Canada stumbled through the 1984 tournament, going 2-2-1 through the round robin and barely making the playoff round as the fourth seed. But Team Canada earned a trip to the final thanks to an overtime win over the Soviets in the semi-final, and they were facing an upstart Swedish team that had beaten them in their round robin meeting and had just embarrassed the Americans with a 9-2 blowout. The Canadians took the opener by a 5-2 final, but the second game proved closer.

Game 2: The game looked like a laugher early on, with Canada scoring four times in the first seven minutes and adding a fifth before the first period was over. A Paul Coffey goal early in the second made it 6-1, setting the stage for a furious Team Sweden comeback. They scored three unanswered goals to close out the second period, and draw to within 6-5 early in the third. But that was as close as they came, as Canada held on for the win and the series sweep.

The aftermath: This turned out to be the first of three straight Canada Cup wins for Team Canada, and remains the only finals appearance by Team Sweden.

The bottom line: What looked like a laugher wound up being a reasonably entertaining contest. But the game everyone remembers from the 1984 Canada Cup will always be that semi-final thriller with the Soviets.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

World Cup final preview

So, uh... just like the NHL drew it up, right?

As expected, the three-game final of the World Cup of Hockey will feature the two playoff teams from Group A. That was the group that was built around Team Canada and Team USA, and sure seemed to have been designed specifically to get those two rivals into a marquee final matchup that would pack the building, boost TV ratings and have sports fans all around North America buzzing.

Canada held up its end of the bargain, running the table in the round robin and then beating Russia on Saturday night. But Team USA's grit-induced meltdown became the story of the tournament, and it opened the door for Team Europe to sneak into the playoff round instead. They then went into Sunday's matchup with Sweden as a heavy underdog, only to come through with a shocking 3-2 overtime win.

That would be the same Team Europe that many fans didn't want to see in the event at all, given that the whole point of the tournament is supposed to be finding hockey's top nation, and "Europe" isn't one. The same was true of the 23-and-under Team North America, of course, but at least those kids were fun. This European mash-up couldn't even settle on an anthem to play.

But now Team Europe is in the final, two wins away from being crowned international hockey's greatest... whatever they are. And all that's standing in their way is Team Canada. Sure, it seems like a tall order, but when you weren't even supposed to exist in the first place, winning two hockey games shouldn't seem all that tough.

Game 1 goes Tuesday night. Game 2 is on Thursday. And Game 3, if necessary, will be played Saturday. Spoiler alert: It won't be, but we'll get to that. Let's take a look at our two finalists.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

What's next for the World Cup's round robin losers?

We're down to four in the World Cup of Hockey. After yesterday's action, the round-robin portion of the proceedings is officially in the books and half of the tournament's teams have been sent to the sidelines.

The semifinals take place over the weekend, with Russia facing Canada on Saturday night and Sweden up against Team Europe on Sunday afternoon. We'll have a full wrapup on Monday, which will give us a chance to break down those four teams, how they got there, and preview the best-of-three final.

So today, let's focus on the four who didn't make it that far. Here's a look at each of the teams that were knocked out in the round robin, and where they go from here.

Team USA

We may as well start with the team that has everyone talking. Well, "talking" may not be the right word. "Criticizing?" "Brutalizing"? "Ruthlessly burying on Twitter?"

Take your pick. And just about all of it is deserved, because Team USA stands as easily the tournament's biggest disappointment. They weren't necessarily expected to win it all, but they did seem to have a clear path to the playoff round at a minimum (one made all the more easy by a format that just happened to leave them and Canada in a group with two of the tournament's weakest teams). At the very least, you figured they'd work in a win somewhere.

Instead, they immediately burned through any margin for error by dropping a stunner to Team Europe in the opener. In the process, they turned their matchup with Canada into a literal must-win, one they had to have to stay in the playoff hunt.

In theory, that should have been fine. This is a team, after all, that made it very clear that they'd designed the roster specifically to beat their northern neighbors. They loaded up on heart and grit, with a healthy dose of agitators to pester Canada's stars. They even brought along Brandon Dubinsky, whose main claim to fame has been suckering Sidney Crosby. And the roster featured so much leadership that they felt the usual captain and two alternates couldn't hope to contain it.

And overseeing it all was John Tortorella, a choice for coach who made it clear that this was going to be a sandpaper squad. When he's not barking at the media or trying to fight the other team, Tortorella is known for demanding a hard-nosed style with plenty of blocked shots and bloodied noses. Sure, he was chosen as coach at least partially because he wasn't working in the NHL, then almost immediately took the Columbus job. No matter. Tortorella's hiring left no doubt about what this team wanted to be.

Reigning NHL MVP Patrick Kane was held scoreless in three games. Photo by John E. Sokolowski-USA TODAY Sports

And for a brief moment, it looked like it all might just work. Team USA earned a win in its first exhibition game against Canada, taking a 4-2 decision in a game that featured plenty of scrums and at least one cheap shot. Canada won the rematch one night later, but the message had been delivered. The players bought in, promising that they would beat Canada just as long as the contest was decided by grit.

All of which made it all the more depressing to watch Tuesday's showdown, in which the Canadians largely toyed with their rivals on the way to a 4-2 win that eliminated Team USA from playoff contention. Dubinsky didn't even play, despite facing the one player he was brought aboard to neutralize. And maybe that was just as well, since it was almost embarrassing to watch guys like Justin Abdelkader being completely ignored while trying desperately to get under the skin of somebody, anybody, in red and white.

By the end, the whole thing just felt kind of sad. As Joe Thornton later pointed out, Canada had plenty of toughness of its own—it just happens to also double as skill. Trying to beat Canada at playing hard-nosed hockey is like challenging the whole country to a poutine-eating contest. It's not going to end well for you.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Avenge me: A history of teams paying back round robin losses

We're two games into the round robin portion of the World Cup, and we've already seen a handful of upsets, with favorites like Russia and the United States already tasting defeat, and in the case of the Americans, already being eliminated. With one game to go and some of the four playoff spots still up for grabs, fans around the world are no doubt panicking over the games their teams let get away.

But while the round robin is obviously important – you have to make the playoffs to win the whole thing – it's worth remembering that the results of individual games don't necessarily tell us much as much as we might think about what will happen in the playoff rounds.

In fact, the history of the World and Canada Cup tournament is filled with surprising round robin results that ended up getting flipped down the line. So in an effort to calm some nerves, here are five times that overreacting to a round robin result would have steered you wrong once the eliminations games began.

1976: Czechoslovakia 1 – Canada 0

In the first ever round robin game in Canada Cup history, Canada made a statement by crushing Finland 11-2. They went on the beat Sweden and the U.S., and they closed out the round with a win over their arch-rivals from the Soviet Union, winning those three games by a combined score of 11-3.

But in between, they dropped a surprising decision to Czechoslovakia. Vladimir Dzurilla outduelled Rogie Vachon at the Montreal Forum, turning aside all 29 shots he faced in a 1-0 win. The game was an instant classic, described at the time as one of the best ever played.

The two teams finished at the top of round robin standings, setting up a best-of-three final. But there was no repeat of Dzurilla's heroics – Team Canada blitzed him for four goals in the first period of the opening game, sending him to the bench and paving the way for a lopsided 6-0 win. Game 2 was more entertaining, with Canada jumping out to a 2-0 lead just three minutes in before a Czechoslovakian comeback set the stage for Darryl Sittler's tournament winner in overtime.

1981: Canada 7 – Soviet Union 3

By 1981, the Soviet Union was coming off a relatively rough stretch of international play. They'd won their usual Olympic gold in 1972 and 1976, but been upset by Team USA's Miracle on Ice squad in 1980, lost the 1972 Summit Series, and failed to even make the final of the 1976 Canada Cup.

When they met Canada in 1981 in the final game of the round robin, both teams were undefeated and battling for first place. The game was tied at 2-2 heading into the third, but Canada erupted for five straight goals in what ended up being a 7-3 laugher. Even with star goaltender Vladislav Tretiak sitting out due to illness, the result was an embarrassing one for the Soviets.

Both teams won their semifinal game to advance to a one-game winner-take-all final in Montreal. With Tretiak back in goal, most fans expected a closer game. Instead, they got an even bigger blowout. But this time, it was the Soviets who ran up the score, earning an 8-1 win and handing Canada what still stands to this day as its most embarrassing international loss.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Eight names with the most to gain -- or lose -- from the World Cup

The round robin portion of the World Cup has officially hit the halfway point. And that means that for four of the eight teams, the tournament itself is half over, since they’ll be going home empty-handed once the round wraps up on Thursday night.

We don’t know which teams those are yet, and there’s still plenty of time for this year’s tournament to take a few more twists and turns. But it’s fair to say that the pressure is building. And for some of those who are front and centre in this tournament, the pressure has been higher than for others.

So today, let’s take a look some of those who find themselves under an especially bright spotlight this week. Here are the eight names who have the most to gain – or lose – from their time on the World Cup stage.

Team Canada: Carey Price

Canada is a bit of a funny team to find a pick for. As the host team and overwhelming favorite, there’s no team in the tournament that’s under more pressure as a group – even one loss will be reason for panic across a nation. But the roster is stacked with so much talent that few individual players really stand out as being directly under a microscope.

But Price is an exception. After missing most of last year with an injury, his performance in the tournament will be watched closely for any hint that he's not 100 per cent back to his old Hart Trophy form.

Fans of Team Canada will want to see him do well, although with Braden Holtby and Corey Crawford waiting in the wings, it's not make-or-break. But fans of the Montreal Canadiens will be living and dying with each shot on net, hoping that their franchise player looks like his old self.

Saturday's opening-night shutout against an overmatched Czech squad was certainly a good sign. If Price is back to his old tricks, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. But if he struggles, even briefly, well…. Montreal fans aren't the sort to panic, right?

Honourable mentions: When Habs fans need a break from overanalyzing Price, they can overanalyze new acquisition Shea Weber. Sidney Crosby will be under the spotlight because he's Sidney Crosby. And after taking over the GM duties from two-time winner Steve Yzerman, Doug Armstrong will take plenty of heat if Canada doesn't win it all.

Team USA: John Tortorella

We tend to focus on players in these sort of pieces, but there's no question that coaches and GMs can come under just as much scrutiny, if not far more. That's especially true for a team like Team USA, who made plenty of roster decisions that were widely questioned, all in an apparent effort to build a squad that would have the best chance at beating Canada.

After Saturday's disastrous opener that saw them drop a 3-0 decision to an underdog Team Europe, the Americans are in serious danger of missing the playoffs.

The heat on the management group has been cranked up, and there's lots more to come if Team USA can't come through in a literal must-win against Canada tonight. Plenty of that will fall on the shoulders of GM Dean Lombardi, who had the final call on the roster. But Lombardi still has two Cup rings in the last four years and plenty of credibility to draw from, so he'll get at least some benefit of the doubt.

Not so for Tortorella. He may have a Cup ring of his own, but 2004 was a long time and three jobs ago, and his reputation has taken a beating in recent years.

The coach already put himself in the spotlight earlier in the tournament with his musings on the national anthem, and he made that spotlight even brighter with some odd lineup decisions, including Saturday's puzzling scratch of Dustin Byfuglien and tonight's apparent line combos.

Tortorella's hard-nosed style is well-known, and he has a team that seems to have been designed in his image. If that team turns out not to be good enough, the coach will end up wearing that.

Tortorella still has his defenders, and Team USA can silence the doubters with a big effort tonight against the team they were built to beat. But if they can't pull it off and end up going home before the final four, there will be plenty of finger-pointing to go around. And a lot of them will be aimed behind the bench.

Honourable mentions: Yet another Hab makes an appearance, as Max Pacioretty was called out by Tortorella during the exhibition round. Patrick Kane will be under plenty of pressure as the team's best player, and his ugly defensive gaffe in the opener didn't help matters.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Early World Cup observations

(Editor's note: The following is from an email exchange Sunday night between Dave Lozo and Sean McIndoe, aka Down Goes Brown.)

Lozo: OK, so now that we've both made bad jokes on Twitter about Green Day canceling shows at the World Cup, I thought I'd email you to see how your Sunday is going. Me? Two fantasy football losses, 2-1 in my picks pool with two games pending, and I want to believe Alex Ovechkin touched that puck at the end of the Sweden game.

Here are my three thoughts about the World Cup so far:

1) Team USA will lose to Canada and their tournament will be over after two games, which cracks me up because the NHL did everything it could to get USA and Canada into the semis.

2) Team Europe is great because they are old, like me, and really stuck it to Torts, another thing I enjoy.

3) This isn't World Cup-related, but I've been crapping like an untrained dog during a thunderstorm, so some of these emails may come from the toilet.

Ps: You know Canada has gold in the bag, right?

---

DGB: Hi Dave...

Both of my fantasy teams are 0-2, and I don't actually mind because I made a conscious decision at the beginning of the season to just accept that the entire hobby is just dumb, stupid luck and no rational person should care about it. Check back with me next week at 0-3 and find out how that's going.

Oh hey, speaking of dumb and stupid, let's start with Team USA. I haven't understood most of what they're doing all along in this tournament, from hiring Tortorella to the roster selection to benching Dustin Byfuglien on Saturday. They were never going to be the favorites, but they've got enough talent to at least have a shot. But they seem to want to do it with one hand behind their back, all in the name of grit and heart and compete and all of the other buzzwords that badly run hockey teams seem to love.

But all of that said, there's a part of me that could still see them pulling off the upset tomorrow night. They have the goaltending to make it happen, and if they get a bounce or two maybe they can make it happen. It's also possible that they already all hate Tortorella and can't wait to quit as soon as things go bad, but I can see the US winning this one. And besides, the best possible result would be a USA team that bragged about being built to beat Canada doing that, then finishing 1-2 and missing the playoffs anyway.

Am I crazy?

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Lozo: Are you crazy? Absolutely. Fantasy football is the greatest thing ever created, as it allows us to fill gaping voids in our lives with legal gambling. This email is sponsored by DraftKings.

I know that as a Canadian, your default setting is to be all, "Oh geez, USA can do this and anything can happen because we Canadians are a humble people and want to take it one game at a time." I call bullshit! Bullshit, I say!

Do we have the goaltending to steal this one? Yes. Will that goaltending be in net? No. Jonathan Quick has squeezed a career out of two great months in 2012 playing behind a dominant 5-on-5 team in the postseason and now because of that and a fluky showing in a 1-0 loss to Canada in Sochi, Americans have deluded themselves into thinking Quick can steal a gold medal. And by Americans, I mean Dean Lombardi, the Kings GM who put together this deficient team.

And beyond that, this USA team isn't good. And yeah, we're not dressing Byfuglien, perhaps our best defenseman, and yeah, we left Phil Kessel, Tyler Johnson, Kevin Shattenkirk and other great players home in the name of grit and Abdelkadering, but how about Patrick Kane only getting 4 minutes in the first period against Europe? Or Max Pacioretty on a third line? Or Max Pacioretty on a fourth line in practice Sunday? Torts is really the crazy one. Jack Johnson is on this team!

The ideal ending to this tournament is Team North America beating Canada in the final on a Jack Eichel penalty shot in overtime, allowing me to claim that as a USA gold.

I did not write this on the toilet.

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>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Grab bag: World Cup trade deadline day

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- We're making some World Cup trades. No, it doesn't make any sense, just go with it.
- Debating team North America
- And obscure player joins the Double Name Club
- Looking back at Team USA's 1996 World Cup run
- And a YouTube look back at the game that started it all: NHL 92

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

World Cup Preview

The World Cup of Hockey gets underway Saturday, with the start of a round robin that will see each of the eight teams play three times. The two best records in each group move on to the single elimination semis before a best-of-three final. If that sounds like a quick tournament, it is—the whole thing will wrap up in two weeks, tops, which doesn't leave much room for slow starts or building chemistry.

In theory, that means that anything can happen. In reality, this isn't exactly an even field. There's a clear favorite, a handful of teams with a puncher's chance, and some serious long shots.

Oh, and even though it's an international tournament, a quarter of the teams aren't real countries. Don't ask.

Today, we break down the best and worst of each of the eight teams.

Group A

Let's be honest... this group exists in order to get Team Canada and Team USA into the semifinals, potentially setting up the NHL's dream matchup in the final. It would be a surprise if it didn't play out that way.

Team Canada

International history: There have been 12 true best-on-best tournaments played since the inaugural Canada Cup back in 1976. Canada has won eight of those, including four of five since the turn of the century.

Biggest NHL stars: The entire team is packed with them, so much so that P.K. Subban, Taylor Hall and Kris Letang aren't here even though they'd all be first-line players on most others team in the tournament. They've got the best player in hockey (Sidney Crosby), each of the last two Vezina winners (Carey Price and Braden Holtby) and the reigning Norris winner (Drew Doughty). They're good.

Coach: Mike Babcock, who gets to spend two weeks with this group of all-stars and then go back to coaching the Maple Leafs.

GM: Doug Armstrong, with help from pretty much every other NHL GM other than Steve Yzerman, who bailed after leading Canada to back-to-back Olympic gold medals.

Strength: As always when it comes to Team Canada, the depth up front is ridiculous, so much so that when Jeff Carter got hurt, they just swapped in a former MVP in Corey Perry, and when Tyler Seguin went down this week, they could turn to one of the league's best two-way centers in Ryan O'Reilly. Think of this way: Depending on how the lines shake out, superstars like John Tavares, Joe Thornton and Ryan Getzlaf will be asked to play supporting roles. That's scary.

Weakness: While the forward ranks are stacked, it's almost entirely with natural centers, which could create some issues with guys having to make quick adjustments to playing out of position. And the blueline, while good, is nowhere near as stacked as the rest of the roster.

Realistic best case: They run the table, going undefeated in front of the hometown crowd and winning yet another international title.

Realistic worst case: Pretty much anything short of that would be considered a disaster.

Most likely outcome: There are no sure things in international hockey, where every game can be crucial and one hot goaltender can singlehandedly stop a powerhouse. But it will be a surprise if Canada doesn't win it all.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

A complainer's guide to the World Cup

The World Cup of Hockey is fun. Along with the Olympics, it’s the only true best-on-best tournament on the international hockey landscape. It’s played on NHL rinks under NHL rules, so there’s less of an adjustment for the league’s fans. And it doesn’t even interrupt the season. All in all, it’s a pretty hard concept not to like.

But as we’ve explained in the past, not liking things is what hockey fans do. It’s kind of our thing. So with the 2016 World Cup officially getting under way this weekend in Toronto, we’d better start digging for something to complain about.

To get you started, here are a half-dozen reasons to be irrationally annoyed with the World Cup.

The teams are all weird this year

The World Cup evolved from the Canada Cup, a tournament that began in 1976 and ran five times through 1991. All of those tournaments were six-team affairs, and with one exception they all featured the Big Six of international hockey: Canada, Russia, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Finland and the USA. (West Germany replaced Finland at one tournament, in 1984). When the World Cup debuted in 1996, the format expanded to eight, with Czechoslovakia splitting into a Czech team and a Slovak squad and Germany being added to round out the field.

You may notice something about those teams: they’re all countries. That’s because the World Cup has always been an international tournament, one that pits teams representing individual countries against each other to determine world supremacy, or at least bragging rights. This might sound familiar, since it’s the standard format across all international sports and is just kind of taken for granted. It’s simple, it works, and you’d think it would be reasonably tough to screw up.

Enter the NHL. This year, the league decided to get creative, keeping the Big Six and then adding two new teams to the World Cup that don’t represent actual counties. The first is Team Europe, made up of players from countries like Slovakia, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark. It’s an unusual approach, but you can kind of see where the NHL is thinking here. None of those countries have enough talent to contend on their own, but combining them into one team at least gives fans a chance to see stars like Anze Kopitar (Slovenia), Zdeno Chara (Slovakia) and Roman Josi (Switzerland), who’d otherwise be excluded from the action.

But for the final team, the NHL just dropped any pretense of this being an international competition and let the marketing department take over. They came up with something called Team North America, which will feature players from Canada and the US who are 23 and younger, in a transparent attempt to highlight some of the league’s up-and-coming stars while trying to appeal to younger fans. The team has scary uniforms and just enough skill and speed to at least be vaguely threatening, and if you focus on that you might even manage to forget that the entire thing doesn’t make any sense.

You have to at least hand the NHL some credit for thinking outside the box here, given the league’s traditional aversion to ever trying anything new. But what we’re left is an international tournament that features eight teams, only six of which are actual countries, all because the NHL decided it had to come up with a weird solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

>> Read the full post at The Guardian

Ranking the Team North Americas through the years

The World Cup is just days away, and much of the recent buzz has been around Team North America. The new entry, made up of some of the game’s brightest young stars, has already beaten Team Europe in a pair of exhibition games.

They’re fast, they’re skilled, their uniforms are kind of cool, and they’re gaining credibility as a dark horse to make some noise, if not win the whole thing. It’s all led to talk that the Team North America concept, originally thought to be a one-time deal, could end up becoming a permanent fixture in future World Cups.

But today, let’s forget about the future and turn to the past, with what could make for a fun hypothetical: What if there had always been a Team North America? What if every Canada Cup and World Cup had featured a team of the best 23-and-under Canadian and American players of the day?

Let’s find out. We’ll go back over each of the seven Canada and World Cup tournaments, and figure out what a Team North America roster would have looked like.

First, some ground rules. We’ll use the same criteria that the 2016 tournament is using, meaning players have to be 23-or-under as of October 1 in the year the tournament is held. As with this year, we’ll allow players who don’t have NHL experience, but limit the roster to players who’ve at least been drafted.

As best we can, we’ll ignore the benefit of hindsight and try to go by a player’s reputation at the time of the tournament, meaning some late-blooming stars may be passed over. And to keep it simple, we’re going to pretend that everyone is healthy and available.

(All research for this post was conducted using the tools at the indispensable hockey-reference.com.)

We’ll count the seven teams down from worst to best. And as it turns out, that means we’ll begin at the beginning.

No. 7 – 1976

Up front: There are some recognizable names here, including Bryan Trottier, Lanny McDonald and Clark Gillies, but it’s not a star-studded group. Despite being in the middle of the record-breaking 70s, we’ve got only one 100-point scorer, and it’s Pierre Larouche.

The blue line: Denis Potvin is the big star here, not to mention the team’s best player. Ian Turnbull would be there too. And since the real-life teams decided to allow WHA players, we will too, which lets us scoop up Mark Howe.

In goal: There’s not a ton to choose from; we’re probably rolling with John Davidson as our starter and hoping we don’t need to turn to a backup.

Worth noting: This would really be a Team North America in name only; other that Howe, I’m not sure a single American would make the squad.

Overall outlook: They’d have been fun to watch, but there’s just not enough talent here to compete with the world’s best.

No. 6 – 2004

Up front: We have to go back over a decade for the last World Cup, which means we just miss out on the Sidney Crosby era. But we do pick get to include players from the ridiculously stacked 2003 draft, one that’s often considered one of the best ever.

The biggest name would be Rick Nash, who’d just won a share of the Rocket Richard as a teenager. He’d make a nice first-line combo with soon-to-be Senator teammates Jason Spezza and Dany Heatley. It gets thin after that, though, with big names like Joe Thornton and Vincent Lecavalier just missing the cutoff, and the team wouldn’t have a 60-point scorer.

The blue line: A solid group, one likely built around Jay Bouwmeester, Dan Hamhuis and John-Michael Liles.

In goal: In theory, this would be considered a strength, since you’d have the only two goalies since 1968 to go first overall in Rick DiPietro and Marc-Andre Fleury.

You’d likely see DiPietro as the starter, given that he was coming off a decent year and wouldn’t be widely considered a bust until a few years (and one big contract) down the road.

Worth noting: That 2003 draft class doesn’t end up helping as much as you’d think it would.

Patrice Bergeron makes the team, and maybe Dustin Brown does too. But future stars like Shea Weber, Ryan Getzlaf, Dion Phaneuf, Ryan Suter and Corey Perry were all still waiting to make their NHL debut, so it’s unlikely you’d see any of them on the team.

Overall outlook: It’s not a bad squad, but it’s impossible to look at it without thinking about how much better it would be if we’d have had even one more year to work with.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet