Team USA Has Lots of Lessons to Learn Ahead of Team Canada

Team USA’s loss to Team Europe on Saturday seems to be looming large as Canada approaches tomorrow.  As the Americans face a must win game here’s a look at what went wrong against Europe and what needs to be done to turn it around against Canada.

Needless to say Team USA’s performance on Saturday was disappointing.  The team that had so much hype about their chances to contend for the World Cup of Hockey Championship went out and got outplayed by a Team Europe that had been flat through most of their pre-tourney warm-up.  The US decided to get away from the style of hockey that had produced wins in the first pre-tournament game against Canada and the third game against Finland, and they paid for it dearly with a 3-0 loss.

The loss was so bad in the minds of Team USA supporters that many of the USA Hockey greats ripped the team.  The normally outspoken Jeremy Roenick offered the harshest criticism saying on twitter “Seriously??? That’s the best USA can give??? Defending champs if u look at it literally. That’s a joke!! Europe embarrassed us. Wake up!!!”

This team was intentionally created with a certain identity to be physical and disrupt the games of more skilled finesse teams like Canada.  So much so was the commitment to this vision that the management of Team USA decided to pass on many of the most talented US born scorers out there like Phil Kessel, Kyle Okposo, and Paul Stastny.  That decision might have contributed greatly to this first game loss against Team Europe and could have implications going forward.

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Team USA might be equipped to match up to Canada, but last time I checked there are two other teams in Group A and four in Group B not named Canada that the US must beat.  Also when a team stumbles like this it to an opponent they took for granted, it can really kill the confidence of a squad.  With Canada looming tomorrow Team USA will need all the confidence they can get.

“It was just tough to score,” Minnesota Wild forward Zach Parise explained to the AP. “There are guys that have different roles and different jobs on the team. Guys that play with grit, play hard — but it was just tough to score for us tonight.”

The issue that Parise brings up is that it was just tough to score, and sure hard work is great but it alone does not put the puck in the net.  So with that explanation many are asking if the US has a ton of role players who are the real pure scorers?  Brett Hull after the game on ESPN explained it best saying that hitting is great but if you don’t put points on the board what good is it?  Hull continued that he could have had a hat trick in that game at age 52.

Sure Team USA had their looks against Team Europe, and plenty of them.  The shot total was tilted massively to the US who peppered Jaroslav Halak with 35 shots, while US goaltender Jonathan Quick only saw 17 shots.  So really to expand on what Hull said earlier, it’s about finishing, and right now Team USA is lacking in finishing power.  Even if Halak is playing very well the US should have been able to put a puck by him, after all Team North America rang him up for a combined 11 goals in two games.

No doubt Team USA needed to score more, because to win a hockey contest a team must score at least one goal.  However, for all these questions about their scoring why are there not just as many about the team’s horrible discipline that caused key turnovers resulting in goals for Team Europe?

Patrick Kane who is normally accustom to making teams pay for their mistakes on the scoresheet caused one of the worst turnovers of the game.  His showboating in the offensive zone led to a turnover that caused the 2 on 0 that led to Leon Draisaitl and Wild forward Nino Niederreiter to play tick-tac-toe and beat a helpless Quick for Europe’s second tally of the game.  Add to that that the first goal of the game by Gaborik was the result of a 2 on 1 created by a bad pinch of defenseman Ryan McDonagh, it’s obvious Team USA has other issues other than scoring.

Turnovers and odd-man rushes killed the US and it was obvious.  Lack of scoring was one thing, but these mistakes put the wind out of their sails.

I guess you could blame the team for a lot of the situations that Quick was put in, but he needed to play a little better.  Three goals on 17 shots is not a god performance by any measure of the word.  He needed to be better than that.

So heading into tomorrow’s contest with Canada, Head Coach John Tortorella has to do a lot of work.  Whatever he did to prepare the team for their first pre-tournament game against Team Canada, he’ll need to dust off that plan and execute it.  He had this team playing well earlier he’ll need to find that and fast.

They’ll need find a whole lot more confidence tomorrow as well.  Max Pacioretty offered the best observation on the team’s need for confidence saying that “In a tournament like this, we don’t have time to try and find our confidence. Right from the start, we need to be able to play our game.”

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So to state the obvious this is a must win game for Team USA tomorrow and against the most talented team in the tournament that is a hard situation to be in.  The lessons from the Team Europe will need to be taken to heart as well.  Team USA needs to realize that they lost to Team Europe because they couldn’t execute, and find a swagger back to their game if they even want to have a chance against Canada tomorrow.