Claimed:Season 43 World Cup Preview: Part Two (Team Canada) [Final 6/6]

[Tagger 2,722]

What everyone's competing for, the VHL World Cup. Not Pictured: The actual VHL World Cup

 

With the World Cup only a season away, fans are started to get excited in preparation for hockey’s biggest international tournament. Since there’s only a matter of months now before teams are to be selected, players will be making sure to put their all in this upcoming season as they chase for a spot on their national team’s roster. In this six part series, we’ll be looking at the six teams set to feature in the World Cup, whether their potential squad has improved or gotten worse since the Season 40 World Cup and predicting how they will perform in the upcoming tournament. After looking at Team USA in the first part of the series, we will turn our attention to their North American rivals for part two, Team Canada.

 

Season 40 World Cup

Team Canada waved goodbye to their trophy ambitions early on in the Season 40 World Cup

 

While they were considered to not quite be at the same level as Team USA, Team Canada were still predicted to be one of the two teams that could pose a legitimate threat to Team USA’s expected World Cup victory. General Manager Ryan Power was not afraid to make some bold decisions regarding his team selection and nothing showed this more than the selections of Gifford Shock, Nicholas Caprivi and Sachimo Zoidberg, a trio of players who were not set to make their professional debuts until after the World Cup. While they came into the tournament with both a solid offense and defense, undoubtedly their strongest assets were their goalies. Brick Wahl and Mike Szatkowski Jr. were both Season 36 franchise players in the prime of their careers and either of them could have walked straight into the starting job with at least four of the five other World Cup teams. Canada were strong throughout the opening phase, finishing with seven wins and avoiding any upsets as their only losses were against fellow trophy contenders Team USA and Team Western Europe. The majority of their stronger play actually centered around their younger players, with Don Draper leading the team in points from the blue line while Season 40 VHLM Player of the Year Sachimo Zoidberg was their greatest goal scoring threat. Despite their strong performance in the opening phase, it wasn’t strong enough as Team Western Europe were able to beat Team Canada to the first round bye by virtue of having more points (Western Europe also had seven wins but two of their losses went to overtime, all of Team Canada’s losses were lost by two goals). This came as a surprise to Team Canada who had not been aware of the structural change to the playoffs and instead of facing Team Western Europe for the chance to make the World Cup final, they wound up against a sixth placed Team World side in a match to decide who would move on to the semi-finals. In probably the biggest shock of the playoffs, Team World upset Team Canada by beating them 3-2 courtesy of an overtime winner from Milos Denis. This was an especially sweet victory for Team World goalie Fedir Okranitz as a pre-tournament podcast had Brick Wahl state that he didn’t even know who Okranitz was. With no shot at a medal and being given fifth place by virtue of their opening phase performance, Team Canada was sent home in disgrace.

 

Who They’ve Lost

Naomi Young pictured drinking alcohol and winning the Season 37 World Cup. She'll only be doing one of these things during the Season 43 World Cup

 

While you highly doubt that those who played on Team Canada in Season 40 would have liked to have ended their international career without a medal in their final tournament, and that wound up being exactly the case for at least four of the Season 40 Team Canada Roster. Naomi Young entered the Season 40 World Cup as the most technically gifted player on the front line for Team Canada, but she will not be making an appearance in the Season 43 World Cup having retired at the end of Season 42. To lose a player of Young’s calibre would be a much bigger loss to the other teams in the tournament, however Team Canada has an exceptionally strong set of younger players ready to step in on the front line. Another member of the Season 40 Team Canada roster not taking part in the Season 43 World Cup will be defenseman Willie Weber, who actually played his last game of hockey in that tournament having retired immediately following it. As a player who hadn’t shown any real ambition to improve his game in the season’s prior to the World Cup, this will not be considered a big loss for Team Canada either. What could potentially be the biggest loss for Team Canada though will be their starting goalie from the last World Cup Brick Wahl. Wahl, who has recently been traded to the Stockholm Vikings after seven seasons with the New York Americans, will be retiring immediately after the final game of the Season 43 Continental Cup after his agent Chris Miller decided to change his focus onto promising French Center Benjamin Dupont. Some would perhaps argue that the retirement of Wahl is not that much of a loss as he was never really able to transfer his form from the VHL season over to the World Cup (perhaps due to the fatigue that comes from an extended schedule courtesy of numerous playoff appearances). However if you look at who could potentially become the starting goalie as a result of Wahl’s retirement, then you have to consider this the biggest confirmed loss for the team.

 

Oh, and to the relief of all of Team Canada, Logan Laich also just signalled his intentions to retire before the start of the tournament. Despite tallying the fourth most minutes on the team in the last tournament, Laich was only able to put up a team-worst three points in eleven games, matching the point totals he picked up for Team Mercenaries in the Season 37 World Cup. In truth, with his recent move to defenseman, he could have played a much more important part for the team this tournament had he not retired, but I think Canadian fans are just glad to see the back of him.

 

There are a few other players that played on Team Canada in Season 40 that have yet to declare their retirement, but may do so between now and the Season 43 World Cup. One of those is the youngest player to have played for Team Canada in both the Season 37 and Season 40 tournaments, Indian-Canadian defenseman Godavari Yumalatopinto. While a retirement would completely rule him out of competing in his third World Cup for Team Canada, there’s a chance that Yumalatopinto won’t even make the team should he hold off on his retirement due to a severe lack of effort in training stemming as far back as Season 39 combined with overwhelming regression. The player that is still eligible to compete in the Season 43 World Cup that is most likely to retire prior to the tournament is Helsinki Titans goalie Mike Szatkowski Jr. His agent, father Mike Szatkowski, has not been as attentive to the VHL and his son’s career since stepping down as general manager of the Riga Reign. However, he will have a decision to make prior to the tournament as to whether he’d like to see his son finally get a shot at starting for Team Canada (having been their backup for the last two World Cups) or to help kick-start the progress of a future client.

 

Forwards

Cote, Miller and Zoidberg celebrating together. All three will be Toronto Legion teammates next season.

 

With question marks surrounding the other areas of the team, it’s reassuring for Team Canada that their group of forwards will undoubtedly be among the tournament’s best. This is mainly down to a terrific influx of offensive talent coming from the Season 40 and Season 41 VHL Drafts, where most of their likely to be selected forwards were selected. The four players that are likely to retain their forward slots are Jackson Miller, Sachimo Zoidberg, Tyler Cote and Gifford Shock. Miller, who has recently been traded to Toronto for two first round selections and Turkish goalie Fedir Okranitz, will likely be one of the oldest players on the team despite only being drafted back in Season 39. Miller is certainly a player on the rise having nearly won the award for Most Improved Player in Season 42 and will hope to improve on his solid performance from the last World Cup, where he recorded nine points in the opening phase. When the World Cup comes around, there’s every chance that he’ll be sharing a line with his new Toronto teammates Zoidberg and Cote. Zoidberg will enter the World Cup as Team Canada’s most technically gifted player and there’s every chance that he will once again lead the team’s forwards in scoring, only this time it definitely won’t be a surprise. While Zoidberg and Miller are both good with the puck, they are not the most physical players (especially Zoidberg, who only recorded eleven hits last season) but luckily enough Tyler Cote fills that role well. Being only one of eight players to have recorded over four hundred hits in one season, Cote has a very realistic chance of making a strong push for the all-time hits record. Although his hit totals notably decreased last season , he’s still one of the best two-way forwards in the league. Nothing shows how important both Zoidberg and Cote were to the Legion last season than their plus/minus totals, as they both were in the top ten in the league in that statistical category despite the Legion only finishing with the fourth best record in the league.

 

There are a couple of players set to make their first appearances at forward for Team Canada, however this won’t be one of these players first experience of the World Cup. After determining that players like Simon Tremblay and Lloyd Light had not put in enough work to warrant a spot on the Season 40 roster, Team Canada General Manager Ryan Power elected to instead pick Season 41 Cologne Express franchise player Nicholas Caprivi, who was a defenseman at the time. Caprivi repaid Power by recording six assists in the opening phase, which was the second most on the team. While Caprivi struggled greatly at first in the VHL, he came into his own in the Season 42 VHL Playoffs as he recorded a point per game on his way to a Continental Cup Victory. Having now been traded to a rebuilding New York Americans team, it will be interesting to see whether Caprivi excels with the more prominent role he will take or continue his regular season struggles due to a lack of assets around him. The lone player on the front line likely to be making his debut is Seattle Bears Franchise Player Brady Stropko. Stropko was perhaps a surprise absentee from the Season 40 roster as a result of the team deciding to go with three centers, as opposed to the more traditional four winger squad setup. Stropko has had a very promising start to his career, averaging over a point per game over the course of his first two seasons. The slight downside for Stropko is that while he starts off seasons in tremendous form, he seems to slump during the latter stages of the season. The best example of this would be in his Season 41 rookie season where, after only a few games played, people were considering him a lock for Rookie of the Year as he was leading the league in goals scored. However by the end of the season, he was 17 goals away from the top goal scorer that season (Bruno Wolf) and also finished sixth in points scored by rookies. As this Bears side have not been to the playoffs yet with Stropko on the team due to their rebuilding efforts, it will be interesting to see whether these slumps will continue when the Bears likely make the playoffs this season, in addition to whether we’d see early or late season Stropko in the World Cup.

 

The fourth player set to return to the forward line from Season 40 is also the most likely to not make it back onto the team for the Season 43 competition. Gifford Shock had not even been drafted by a professional team by the time he’d been called up for Team Canada in Season 40, however that didn’t stop him from making a good account of himself as he scored 5 points in limited minutes over the course of ten games. While it is unlikely that he misses out on making the team, he is eighth out of all Canadian forwards in total practice hours, so it really depends on the general manager as to whether he’d prefer the presence of a more focused younger player who’s had less time to train or an older player like Bennett Wahl who maybe doesn’t have the same work ethic, but has more practice hours to his name by virtue of being older. Considering that Shock would also be the team’s third best center, there’s a possibility that they instead elect to pick a fourth winger. Two options available for Team Canada in that regard are Godavari Yumalatopinto and Shadhu Rathod Jr. Yumalatopinto currently has more training hours than both Caprivi and Shock, however regression has taken its toll on the 6’8 winger and he is not likely to feature again. Shadhu Rathod Jr. was an early second round pick in the insanely deep Season 40 VHL Draft and there’s a chance he will have been disappointed to have only appeared in the Season 40 World Cup for Team Mercenaries considering he had racked up more training hours to that point than Gifford Shock. While Rathod Jr. has continued a good pace with his training, he has now since been overtaken by Shock in that regard and will probably yet again have to rely on Team Mercenaries to make an appearance in the Season 43 World Cup. There was also a point where it looked like Season 42 first rounder Joseph Roy III would make a serious push for the final forward spot, as he had over 300 practice hours to his name by the end of his rookie year. However, he has not been seen at the Stockholm practice facility this month, which leads us to believe that he’s already reached his peak, a peak that is not going to see him reach the World Cup with Team Canada.

 

Likely Selections:

C – Tyler Cote

C – Nicholas Caprivi

C – Gifford Shock

RW – Sachimo Zoidberg

RW – Jackson Miller

RW – Brady Stropko

 

Defensemen

Don Draper surprised everyone in the last World Cup by getting ejected after a notably penalty-free regular season.

 

While there a few good young talents on Team Canada’s blue line, you have to imagine that the team will be relying on a strong performance from Don Draper to anchor the team. Arguably the best defenseman in hockey right now, Draper is set to line up alongside a defenseman not called Jake Wylde for the first time in his professional VHL career, which could in turn provide him the spark he needs to make a run for his first Labatte trophy. Draper was the best performer for Team Canada in the Season 40 World Cup, leading the tournament in assists in the opening phase. With this being Draper’s last opportunity to win a World Cup, you have to imagine he will stop at nothing to make sure he brings the trophy back to Canada. With Yumalatopinto and Caprivi both moving to forward positions and Willie Weber retiring, the remaining three players on the defensive line will be making their first World Cup appearances for Team Canada.  The player most likely to partner Draper on the first line will be Stockholm Vikings defenseman Lloyd Light. The seventh overall pick for the Seattle Bears in the Season 40 draft, Light never played a professional game for the team as he was traded at the start of Season 41 after spending a season in the VHLM. Spending his first two seasons in Stockholm as a second line defenseman, Light now has a chance to shine with Lord Karnage’s move to winger, and considering the improved talent now ahead of him on the forward line, we will likely see career highs for the Megaman fanatic.

 

The big question in regards to defenseman is which two players will fill the remaining slots for Team Canada? If we were to go purely on training hours put in to this point, then the last two selections would be Season 40 draftees (and also Season 40 Team Mercenaries players) Joshua Rubin and Jaime Hill. After a disappointing rookie season that saw him stack up less than 40 points for the Dynamo, Rubin had a much improved sophomore season as he finished eighth in defenseman points. However, some are a little disappointed with Rubin’s recent training ethic as the defenseman has not trained with the Dynamo for nearly a month. It’s been that lack of commitment that has seen the first five players taken after him in the strong Season 40 Draft overtake him in total practice hours.  The inclusion of Jaime Hill would allow Team Canada to retain the female quota from the Season 40 World Cup after the team lost Naomi Young to retirement. Having seen her name come up in numerous conversations for trades over the last week, she will be relieved to have put all that behind her and be able to focus solely on performing well for her new team, the rebuilding Calgary Wranglers. Considering that Rubin had roughly ninety more training hours than Hill prior to the Season 40 Draft, you can see that Hill has been the more determined player since the draft having since narrowed that deficit to just 20 training hours. The problem for Hill though could be that even though she turns up to practice every week, she hasn’t put in as many training hours per week as two of the players looking to steal her spot on Team Canada.

 

Ottawa Lynx teammates Francis York Morgan (who I don’t remember being Canadian in Deadly Premonition) and Pablo Escabar have been tearing it up in training since declaring for the Season 43 VHL Draft, both racking up over 200 practice hours prior to the draft.  While both players displayed exceptional work ethic in the lead up to the draft, the Seattle Bears decided to select Escabar ahead of Morgan with the fourth overall pick, although this could be seen more as a personal preference towards the former that was detailed in my “But Seriously, This Draft Yo” article. If both players keep up the training ethic they displayed in the lead up to the draft, they should each have over 300 training hours to their name in time for the Season 43 World Cup. This may not be enough to overtake Rubin and Hill in total practice hours, but will show that these players possess the enthusiasm to succeed that may see them selected over the older pair. Regardless of which of these four is selected for Team Canada, Team Mercenaries will likely consider selecting both leftovers for their roster.

 

Likely Selections:

D – Don Draper

D – Lloyd Light

D – Pablo Escabar

D – Jaime Hill/Francis York Morgan

 

Goalies

Jax Barnstormer may end up with a lot more responsibility on his shoulders this year.

 

We mentioned at the top of the article about how the retirements of the Season 40 World Cup goalies would have the biggest impact on Team Canada. Should Mike Szatkowski Jr. indeed retire prior to the World Cup, then Team Canada will have to rely on Season 41 draftee Jax Barnstormer to protect the net. Recently traded to a rebuilding New York Americans side, Barnstormer had not been all that attentive with his training following his selection by the Stockholm Vikings, having not recorded any of the training hours he’d put in after he attended the Vikings preseason training camp. A media article suggested that Barnstormer was not happy with the Vikings due to a reduced amount of playing time than what was agreed on, however you would be hard pushed to criticize Benoit Prevost for not wanting to start a rookie who didn’t turn up for training for half of the season. With Barnstormer’s agent having strong links to Americans General Manager Chris Miller, you would hope that Barnstormer would begin to display the work ethic that he showed prior to the draft, otherwise Team Canada may be in trouble come World Cup time.

 

If Szatkowski Jr. doesn’t end up retiring, then Barnstormer will work as a very serviceable backup for the team, however if he does then the backup to Barnstormer would be…hang on let me check. OK, yep got it, it would be Mark Sanders…

 

WHO?!

 

Well, he’s an undrafted rookie from the Season 39 VHL Draft, who played in the VHLM with the Bratislava Watchmen for two seasons. His VHLM career can be summed up perfectly by the one statistic he led the league in for both seasons, total losses. Oh yeah, and he hasn’t turned up to practice, ever. Expect #SaveUsMike to be trending on twitter in the lead-up to the tournament.

 

Likely Selections:

G – Mike Szatkowski Jr. (If he doesn’t retire)

G – Jax Barnstormer

G – Mike Sanders (If Szatkowski Jr. retires)

 

Final Verdict

 

When you look at the players that will likely be appearing on the first line for Team Canada, this is a team that is not quite at the level of Team USA but would be able to give them a challenge at least. Whereas Canada has a slight advantage over Team USA in terms of their depth at the forward position, they are a ways behind in depth on defense. Whether Canada can put forward a serious challenge for the World Cup trophy as a team depends on the goalie situation. If Szatkowski Jr. decides he wants to start for his country before retiring, they could end up upsetting Team USA. If they have to rely on Barnstormer though, I can’t see them beating Team USA, but I could still see them just about reaching the finals.

 

Prediction:

RUNNERS-UP

 

[Mike 708]

This and the few other really good articles you've written lately is a big reason why I drafted you oh way back when. I haven't been posting much lately but like the articles lately. Also I'm not going to officially retire this season so plan on doing the World Cup.

[Tagger 2,722]

This and the few other really good articles you've written lately is a big reason why I drafted you oh way back when. I haven't been posting much lately but like the articles lately. Also I'm not going to officially retire this season so plan on doing the World Cup.

Thanks! It's a shame real-life stuff got in the way not long after I joined you, at least you ended up with an awesome player though in McQueen.

 

Good to hear you're sticking around for the WC, will make the tournament even more interesting and I'm sure your Canadian teammates are happy to hear that as well!

Edited April 27, 2015 by YEAH!

[Mr. Grumpy Bear 347]

There is no way I don't make this team again, well over 700 TPE by the start of it

[Kesler 1,514]

Scrubs.

[boubabi 4,725]

team somalia is where it's at

[STZ 5,339]

USA still gonna kill

[boubabi 4,725]

It won't be the first time that the USA would kill a young black man

 

too soon ? 

[Phil 5,111]

Bringing the Cup home to England - LOOL

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

Team Scandinavia S46 Gold Medalists.

[Kesler 1,514]

It won't be the first time that the USA would kill a young black man

 

too soon ? 

ya

[Higgins 3,618]

repeat

[Laflamme 376]

Content: 3/3- Holy crap man kill me with that 3,766 word article haha, Canada is gonna kill shit! With a monstrous team like this I smell a gold medal. I am definitely a proud Canadian and us Canadians really know how to play our game!

 

Grammar: 2/2- Surprisingly for an article of this size there was not a single spelling mistake or and crazy out of the ordinary sentences. Normally a article of this rise is rushed and very sloppy. Good Job!

 

Appearance: 1/1- One word: Superb. 

 

Final 6/6

[Kendrick 4,741]

Claimed