toby91_ca

Not sure about that. I don't know who played all the time on the 4th line, but I do know it included Cullen and Fehr. I'd say those two were certainly well above your average 4th liner in terms of offensive ability. I do think people get caught up a little too much in what made other teams successful the year before (including GMs) though. That said, there is some truth to the comments that the league has changed, you need guys that can skate on all lines, a simple grinding defensive 4th line is a thing of the past I think.

One thing I already knew from watching the cup being award on the ice, etc., but what was also in this is that he has an 8 year old son. I remember watching and thinking "that's his son?" How old is Rutherford? I guess he had his son either at 59 or 60.

Marchand? He's not French

I was referring to World Championships, not World Cup.

I agree somewhat. Normally, the World Juniors is far higher on my list than any other international tournament. I have zero interest in the World Championships, literally zero, if the best players aren't playing, doesn't matter to me. I think the Olympics have trumped the World Juniors though....but World Juniors is always a great holiday tradition for me. Seems like a different team wins every year lately, although, with most guys only having the opportunity in a 2 year window, the teams change so much, there are some waves in results. It wasn't that long ago, 2005-2009 that Canada won 5 in a row. Only once in the last 4 years have they finished with a medal (silver), before that, they had a stretch of 14 years in a row with a medal.

Dustin Penner, almost 10 years ago. The only other one in the last 20 years was Gratton.

It's funny, on sports radio one the way home last night they were talking about the busy sports scene in Toronto last night...World Cup of Hockey finals getting started and Blue Jays playing game 1 of their most important series of the year. However, I'm thinking about tomorrow, it's entirely possible that Team Canada will win the World Cup of Hockey and the Blue Jays will clinch a playoff spot, with both games in Toronto and finishing around the same time. I'm not going to go to either game and plan to be as far away from downtown as possible, the streets would be a nightmare to navigate.

Apparently, Pittsburgh needs to trade for Bergeron and Marchand, or Boston needs to trade for Crosby.

Looks like the Wings will be icing 4-5 regulars and the Pens even less.

Well, in any other year, pre-season games would have started a week ago and regular season games would be starting next week.

The big mistake by the US team was that they built a team to beat Canada, but forgot they had to play against other teams as well. Not my opinion, this was admitted by Lombardi.

It's strange because the Russians used to develop defense first and had elite d-men in the 70s and 80s, even a lot of the forwards were defense first.

I feel bad for Ovechkin because you just know he's going to be asked about the head to head with Crosby again after this game. This will be make Crosby 23-0 in the his last 23 games with Team Canada (ignoring exhibition games). 14-0 for Price. This is all their games, not against Russia. Edit: I just checked, they've actually only played against each other 4 times in international competition, including tonight....Canada 4-0. 2005 World Juniors, 2010 Olympics, 2015 Word Championships and 2016 World Cup.

I'm not sure what the middle part of that is saying....but are you saying you want Russia to win? Why???

Anyone see Kessel's tweet after Canada eliminated US?

Lots of US / Canadian examples of this with the best Cdn hockey players playing for NHL teams in the US and having children while playing there, or having US wives, etc. Classic example of the dual citizenship is Brett Hull.

Actually, he is...holds dual Russian and Finnish citizenship....but his hockey nationality lies with Team Finland. Edit...nm, I see you've edited your post.

Couldn't find much on Larkin other than notes in the post game summary that suggested he didn't play a single shift after Russia went up 4-1 (putting him at -2). Doesn't say he was benched, but I think it's pretty obvious...would have heard more if there was an injury. He also didn't play that much up to that point either (only 5 min and change, 16 min into 2nd period). Edit....on the game itself, I only saw the 3rd period and both teams looked pretty bad on D...maybe it was just the 3rd period, but I doubt it as NA has looked to show their age in that department in most of the games I've seen. I suspect SWE and RUS will be the teams to get through, but you never know, NA will have to hope to beat SWE and RUS lose to FIN

Dude, Larkin is playing for Team North America and his coach is Todd McLellan. Edit: also, the list you posted is out of date, it's from last year. Not all of those coaches are still around, but it makes perfect sense that the vast majority of the top 15 would be Canadian. At this time last year, 24 of the 30 head coaches in the league were Canadian, not sure what it is now. But, the top 15 in that list were not Canadian, the top 15 included both P. Laviolette (US) and T. Richards (US).

Did Larkin get hurt? I missed the 1st two periods.

I'd be shocked....well, at least surprised. With this type of tournament, anything can happen, but I still don't see it happening. In a 7 game series, they wouldn't have much of a chance at all....but any team has the ability to beat any other team in this tournament on a single occasion.

100% sarcasm right, especially reference to Arizona? I'm hoping so, but I can never tell with print

I agree that he probably gets more hate than he should, but it is natural fan behavior. He probably gets more than most though for some reason. I can understand some complaining about the team continuing to sign him, I know I was scratching my head when they signed him to close to $3M after a year in which he scored 4 goals and 8 points. Maybe a lot of that has to do with the Flyers fiasco and maybe that has something to do with the angst against him as well. But really, that's not his fault....should he turn down the money? That's the logic, but in reality, when it comes to salary cap area, or even before, most fans (me included) tend to look at a player's salary and assess if he's worth it.....especially in the off-season. I know you suggest Cleary has given a lot to this team over the years, but let's not pretend he made huge sacrifices to do so, or that the Wings were his charity case. They did pay him around $20 million to stick around over the years.

52%, 12 US born players, 11 Canadian

Even better, been a while since I've had one of those, but always loved them.