After another disappointing World Juniors, Hockey Canada has big questions to answer

OTTAWA — They didn’t practice.

Not once. In the entire tournament. “CANCELLED,” the nightly practice schedule said for their planned skates on Dec. 28 and Jan. 1, and again for their morning skate ahead of their quarterfinal matchup with Czechia on Jan. 2.

They had two full-team morning skates while in Ottawa but between their loss to USA on New Year’s Eve and puck drop against the Czechs, they didn’t skate at all.

And on Thursday night, when the puck dropped, they weren’t prepared. The Czechs scored 43 seconds in on their first shot of the game, and again with 2.4 seconds left in the first period — inexcusable times to give up a goal.

In a tournament that they struggled mightily to score in, they scratched two of the OHL’s leading scorers, Porter Martone and Carson Rehkopf. When one came out, the other went in and played little. Despite being OHL linemates — two-thirds of the league’s best line — they were never tried together.

They couldn’t make consequential changes to their disjointed power-play units because they didn’t bring the personnel to do so. (Mathieu Cataford, Tanner Howe, Ethan Gauthier, Cole Beaudoin, Luca Pinelli, Sawyer Mynio, Beau Akey and Andrew Gibson aren’t power-play guys at this level.)

But between Rehkopf and Martone, one of their options was also always sitting in the press box. In that way, it was fitting that it was Martone who scored on the power play to bring Canada to within one with Czechia.

They didn’t try Gavin McKenna on their first line until midway through the quarterfinal. By then they were down 3-1 in an elimination game.

Late in the second and through the first half of the third, they came to life, winning battles and races and playing with a desperation that matched the moment.

They nearly tied it playing that way, with Cataford bowling into Czech goaltender Michael Hrabal on a goal that was immediately and emphatically waved off for goaltender interference.

Still, head coach Dave Cameron, in what felt equally as desperate, chose to challenge it and Canada landed on the penalty kill — after a very quick review — midway through the third period. Though they killed the penalty, two minutes came off the clock and their momentum slowed. A game-tying goal from Bradly Nadeau with less than five minutes was just a temporary respite. Czechia scored on the power play with 40 seconds to play in regulation and put Canada out of their misery.

After their stunning loss to Latvia, it was “full marks” and talk of 6-8 goals worth of chances. Cameron said they win that game nine out of 10 times. The next day, management group lead Peter Anholt raised it to 99 out of 100.

After a 3-0 win against Germany on an empty-netter, a game that was 1-0 late and extended a scoreless-at-five-on-five drought to 120 minutes, it turned to “snakebitten.”

Against USA, it was discipline — 11 minor penalties from a team that looked off-kilter. Asked what he could do to address it, Cameron said there was nothing, that it was up to the players. The tournament was too short to bench players he said, a couple of weeks after Anholt and Program of Excellence head Scott Salmond had said there was a higher standard this year and talked up their preparedness.

They didn’t look prepared all tournament, and the program feels a long way from excellence. In fact, the back-to-back quarterfinal defeats is a first for Canada since the tournament moved away from its early days round-robin format to its current iteration in 1995. It’s easy to forget, but if not for a diving stretch save from Thomas Milic or Connor Bedard’s overtime heroics against Slovakia in Halifax, we might be talking about three straight quarterfinal defeats.

That doesn’t matter, though. Consecutive fifth-place finishes do.

And in the wake of this second disappointment, different from last year’s because it’s on home ice, those in charge, from Cameron to Salmond, Anholt and the rest of their management team (which includes Scott Walker, who flew to meet with returning leaders Brayden Yager and Tanner Molendyk to talk to them about that new standard, and Brent Seabrook, whose first foray into management has been to help build these last two teams) will have difficult questions to answer.

Why didn’t you practice?

Did you bring enough talent and why didn’t this roster construction work?

After all of the talk about being more prepared, knowing these players better, a return to the World Junior Summer Showcase and naming your coaching staff early, were you really more prepared?

And maybe most pressingly, should Hockey Canada entrust you to continue to lead the program?

I asked Cameron that first question postgame. “Because we’re exhausted,” he said of the canceled practices. “There’s no system for tired hockey players.”

There are excuses, if they want there to be, including that the penalties in this one felt more like questionable officiating at times than the selfish, unquestionable ones they took against USA.

The quarterfinal against Czechia was a great, down-to-the-wire game — as they always seem to be at the World Juniors. And sometimes you lose great games.

But if there’s truly a high standard at Hockey Canada, then not playing in a medal game for two straight years shouldn’t meet it.

(Photo of coach Dave Cameron on Team Canada’s bench: Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press via AP)