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Message: [QUOTE="jncuse, post: 5309144, member: 1969"] I don't see it as a torch being passed. But more like Canada does not hold the torch anymore, and its just balanced, where tournaments like this are determined by coaching, selection, chemistry, execution, discipline etc. The US team has a good mix and chemistry right now. Not sure if part of that is familiarity through their development program. This current Canadian batch is lacking something even though their draft status is higher than the US. Canada has more talent in terms of players under-20. (in fact the gap in numbers in first rounders was closer at times in 2010's where the US didn't do that well) - Canada had 23 first round picks age eligible for this tournament. The USA had 8. That gap was actually larger than it has been in past years. Yet the teams that were iced by the US showed more skill in my view. Part of it is player type, but I think a bigger issue is I have no clue what the Team Canada selection committee was doing. They were too cute in overlooking skill. By passed the leading scorer in the OHL (Misa), the best scorer in the WHL (Cristall) the top 2 D picked in the last draft from North America who are highly skilled. - If it was a pure under-20 tournament, truly best on best, I think Canada would have likely won. Add Bedard, Celebrini, and Zach Benson to Canada. Add Will Smith to the US. Adding the clearly two best players in the world under 20 to Canada probably would have made up for the lack of competency Canada showed in many areas. On to the next point ... - - That being said It just goes to show that if Canada has poor team selection, poor coaching, bad discipline / poor system execution, it has very little chance to win In the past it could pull it off because the talent gap was even larger. There was always the false narrative in Canada that we won because "we had more heart". We had clearly the most talent back then, its not more heart. - Things are fairly closely balanced right now, that even if Canada has good coaching, player execution, it can still lose to a country like the US. Its not going to get away with it when they do a mixed job. There was actually years in the 2010's where the US had more first round picks eligible for the tournament than now and they struggled. Chemistry matters, coaching matters, when the balance is not too far off between teams. [/QUOTE]

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