World Juniors: Reinforcements on the way for Canada

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With a suddenly nervous and critical country peering over its shoulder, Canada is calmly turning to its bullpen as it steps into must-win territory for its hopes of finishing first in Group A at the world junior hockey championship.

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As for the goal of winning gold, the home team realizes it needs to immediately enter must-be-better mode.

Getting the call to replace the irreplaceable Matthew Schaefer — who suffered what’s being reported as a broken collarbone in Friday’s shocking loss to Latvia — is Sawyer Mynio, a point-per-game blueliner in the Ontario Hockey League also known for his solid defensive play.

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Expected to help rescue an attack that’s having trouble finishing is Carson Rehkopf, a big (6-2, 200-pound) forward who has 72 goals in his last 87 OHL games.

Both Mynio and Rehkopf were innocent bystanders as healthy scratches when Canada, the odds-on favourites to win the tournament when it began, shockingly came up short in a 3-2 final against Latvia that left it in need of a victory over Germany on Sunday.

As expected, Canada dropped into second place on Saturday, when Latvia gave the Americans a battle, but surrendered three consecutive goals in the middle period of a 5-1 loss.

With all teams now having played two games, Group A has the U.S. in front with six points, Canada with four, Finland with three and Latvia with two, while Germany is last with a zero in the column.

On the B side, Czechia and Sweden sit tied for first with six points, while Slovakia has three and Switzerland and Kazakhstan have none.

The Canadian players have been looking in the mirror.

“It was a bit of a (crappy) feeling,” top-line winger Bradly Nadeau said Saturday morning of digesting the loss to a Latvian team it was expected to beat in the same fashion Czechia throttled Kazakhstan (14-2) on Saturday and the U.S. pounded Germany (10-4) on Friday. “We all know what this group is capable of, and losing this game is not our standard. I think we’ll bounce back from it and come even harder.”

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Getting pucks on the net was not a problem as Canada held a 57-26 edge on the shot clock through three periods and the five-minute, 3-on-3 overtime.

Converting the opportunities was — again.

Not including the empty-netter scored by Schaefer to ice the tournament-opening 4-0 victory over Finland, Canada has just five goals on 96 shots through two games.

As good as Linards Feldbergs was in Latvia’s net, too many of the pucks he stopped came from the perimeter and with not enough traffic in front of him.

“We had shots. We also missed on a few,” said Nadeau, who added that, going forward, the Canadians had to be better at “keeping things simple, sticking to our game plan, and just working hard in all situations.

“We needed to score a (few) more goals, that’s obvious,” he added. “But I think that the effort was there. We just didn’t get the bounces to go our way and obviously didn’t get the result we wanted.”

Defenceman Oliver Bonk also noticed the sun came up Saturday, figuratively speaking.

“I don’t feel we played terrible last night,” Bonk said. “We didn’t play our best, but it wasn’t a horrible, terrible game from us. I think we just have to play how we played against Finland. We played a really good game against them. I think we’ve just got to get back to that.”

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Many armchair critics across the land are not interested in such reasoning.

They are oxymorons.

They have a short memory, forgetting the Finland game, and a long memory with the bitter taste of last year’s fifth-place finish in their mouths.

The latter is displayed in their lack of patience.

On social media, they are already ripping into Canada’s experienced decision-makers for not having on the roster guys like Michael Misa, the 17-year-old Saginaw Spirit forward who has moved ahead of Gavin McKenna as the Canadian Hockey League leader with 61 points (including 30 goals) in 30 games, and fellow Oakville native Nick Lardis, the 19-year-old Chicago Blackhawks prospect with 29 goals in 32 games for the Brantford Bulldogs.

The critics are also bemoaning the fact that Beckett Sennecke, the third-overall pick in last June’s National Hockey League draft who has 23 goals in 28 games with Oshawa Generals, but was a selection camp cut for the Canadian junior squad.

They are in no mood to hear any particulars about why these offensive stars are not on the roster.

Also under fire, as well as under pressure, is coach Dave Cameron for decisions like not having his Ottawa 67’s captain Luca Pinelli, who 69 goals in his past 94 games and is a guy Cameron regularly refers to as a natural scorer, among the eight players who all came up empty in the shootout, instead of Porter Martone, who had been collecting dust while playing a team-low 7:13 of Friday’s 65 minutes.

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Or having Bonk, who is used to playing the bumper on the power play, as the top guy, when his London Knights teammate Sam Dickinson has more than double the number of power-play goals than any other blueliner in the OHL.

Or the overtime penalty for having too many men on the ice when one player was too slow coming off the ice while another was too quick to jump on.

All of the complaints will be forgotten, of course, if Canada uses the Latvia loss as a wake-up call on a run to a gold medal.

“I thought we played really hard,” Peter Anholt, the voice of Canada’s management group, said of Friday’s game. “We controlled the puck lots. We created some chances. Their goalie was really good, and they defended really good. I think in most cases, 99 times out of 100 we win that game, but we didn’t, and you’ve got to give credit where credit’s due.

“Ultimately, we haven’t given up a 5-on-5 goal yet. We lost the specialty teams game (Friday). But I think, for the most part, this is a process. We know we’re in a world championship tournament. There are good teams, and you’re going to have some bumps along the way. That’s where we’re at.”

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Asked if he saw shades of last year’s team in the current edition, Anholt said: “No, not at all. Not in any way, shape or form. Our players and our coaches are really prepared. We’ve just got to take care of business going forward and we will still be in  good shape.”

Nadeau believes Canada will survive the loss of Schaefer, as big as it is.

“He’s a really good defencemen,” Nadeau said, “but we have a lot of good defencemen.

“I’m sure Schaefer would want us to win for him. So that’s the least we could do.”

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