Sobering challenge awaits newly elite Sharks next seasonĪnd then he got to work rebuilding the team in his image. And as a group, the Penguins simply couldn't match the pace of the top teams in the Eastern Conference. But he also recognized that Pittsburgh's defense was built to win a war that was no longer being waged. They were infamously short of wingers who could skate with Crosby and Malkin, and were equally in need of capable bottom-six forwards. He had a core in place that could contend, but it didn't take long for Rutherford to identify some obvious organizational deficiencies.
“I know my experience will be able to help this organization,” he said. Rutherford, of course, didn't see it that way. But in win-now Pittsburgh? It felt like a stall tactic that would only waste prime years of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury. For an organization taking a long-term view to growth, it's an ideal approach. “They're forever fighting just to get to Olympic Games, forget about competing for anything at them.There's nothing wrong with hiring an experienced mentor to groom the next generation of managerial talent. “They're forever fighting relegation in world tournaments,” Krueger said. Now, with the benefit of drawing from a population of nearly 200 million, he has a shot. We just try to listen to them and play the right way.”įor a Slovenian like Kopitar, advancing to a final against Canada seemed only possible in a dream. “The guys that have been there before, they grab the lead and give us their words of wisdom. “We just talk a lot in the dressing room,” Sekera said. He said his team is using that limited experience to their advantage, but also rallying around the fact that this will be their best (and possibly only) chance to beat Team Canada. “Sure, they haven’t won any gold medals or World Juniors, but they’ve got some quality players.”Įurope’s Andrej Sekera is one of those five players to appear in a final, ultimately falling to Russia in the 2012 World Championship in Finland. They’ve got some pretty darn good hockey players - I mean Kopitar is arguably one of the best centres in the league. “They’ve got guys that have won Stanley Cups and things like that. “They’re all from little countries,” Thornton said. Joe Thornton, who met his wife in Switzerland while playing in the 2004-05 lockout and has a better grasp on European hockey than most Canadian-born NHLers, said it “wasn’t fair” to use experience as an indication of how this final might play out. “They’ve just never been able to do it with a team in a national team concept or in a tournament of this nature.” “So many players in this room understand what it takes to win at the highest level, to win at the Stanley Cup level,” Krueger said Sunday. They’ve done it in the NHL: Team Europe has won the second-most Stanley Cups (eight) in the World Cup of Hockey only Canada has more with 15. Team Europe president Franz Reindl said he’s received calls from the ice hockey federations of the Republic of Georgia, Portugal and even Mexico, cheering for them as the face of the faceless in addition to the eight flags Team Europe already flies.Įurope head coach Ralph Krueger said the only reason these players haven’t won more is because they are never really given a chance. It is also what makes it compelling, with Team Europe representing the peripheral hockey countries of the world in their bid for supremacy against Canada. That makes international experience one of the stark differences in the tale of the tape. No player on the pan-European team has won gold in any major international tournament, with only five players lucky enough to even appear in a final.
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The count going into this best-of-three final series for this World Cup of Hockey is Team Canada 55, Team Europe 0. In fact, Logan Couture is Canada’s only skater without a gold medal to his credit - missing out as a final cut on a few of those dream teams. That’s an average of three gold medals per skater. They have collected a staggering 55 gold medals in international competition, including at the World Junior Championship, World Championship, World Cup and Olympic levels. TORONTO - Team Canada’s players are running out of space in their trophy rooms.
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