VANCOUVER – If you were looking for a game in a quote, Team Canada goalie Michael DiPietro had one: “I’ve never been a part of a game where I’ve made as many saves as we had goals. I told the guys I kind of lost count.”
DiPietro made 14 saves. And thank goodness he had the Rogers Arena jumbotron to help him with the score as Team Canada overwhelmed Denmark 14-0 to open the defence of its world junior hockey championship.
We’re accustomed to songs about Frosty at Christmastime, but winger Morgan Frost heard chants of “Frosty! Frosty! Frosty!” after scoring a hat trick in the first 22 minutes, his goal sum later eclipsed by the quad that Canadian captain Maxime Comtois landed in the third period, when fans were nearly out of hats.
Owen Tippett and Brett Leason each scored a pair of goals for Canada and even DiPietro got on the scoresheet with an assist, which put him one point ahead of the entire Danish roster in tournament scoring.
It wasn’t Santa who visited the Canadian teenagers over Christmas, but Team Canada’s coaching staff. Tim Hunter’s team looked entirely different than the one that scuffled through three pre-tournament games last week, capped by a ragged 5-2 loss to Finland on Sunday.
Canada plays Switzerland at Rogers Arena on Thursday.
“I think the fancy coaching would be them starting to relax a little bit,” Hunter said when asked to explain the speed and sharpness with which Canada played on Wednesday.
It was much more than calmer nerves.
Bad coaching is like bad reporting in that it is easy to fixate on what goes wrong without identifying what is working.
Hunter broke down video from the Finland game and showed his players six minutes of the second period when Canada looked like, well, gold-medal winners. Only fleetingly did the Canadians look like a hockey superpower last week when they scored a total of 13 goals in three warmup games.
“I’m really big on being positive with the players,” Hunter said. “I could have showed them all the bad moments in the Finnish game and how we weren’t ready to start. I could have showed them the goal against with the (poor) effort on the backcheck by two guys. But I didn‘t.
“I showed them the six minutes of the second period when we played really well. Every line played, all forwards played, all D were out. We had five scoring chances and it was just great hockey. Those are the things we’ll build on from this game. You’ve got to build your game every day and this is a good building block.”
Nearly half the Canadian forwards are averaging something in the vicinity of two points per game for their junior teams. The Finns reinforced the belief that Canada could struggle in its own end, and goaltending has frequently been a trap door for this team at the world juniors.
But when the Canadians are on their game, moving the puck quickly and accurately out of their zone and into the hands of their talented forwards, the offensive possibilities are immense. It was only against Denmark, which is not as easy an out as it used to be but remains a developing nation in hockey, but Canada’s tournament-opening win was an unmistakable statement about its ability to score goals.
“It was an unbelievable game, something I’ll never forget,” Frost said. “I think we have a lot of speed and skill and we’re at our best when we’re showcasing that. They want us to play fast: skating fast and making decisions fast. I think we did a good job of that.”
He said the hearing the crowd of 16,417 chant his name was “the coolest moment I’ve ever been a part of. I had chills running through my body.”
Comtois, the only returning player from the Canadian team that won gold medals last year in Buffalo, said of the atmosphere: “It was really awesome. After the first period, a lot of guys were talking about that national anthem. I think everybody got chills on the blue-line. It was pretty fun, it got us going. The fans gave us energy and we thrive off that.”
The goals overshadowed everything else, but it was an important game for DiPietro, who like the team in front of him, was a little ragged last week in net. He was especially sharp making a series of saves on a first-period Danish power play when Canada led 2-0, and also stopped a third-period penalty shot.
Hunter made it clear the starting goaltender job is DiPietro’s to lose, although Ian Scott starts for Canada Thursday against the Swiss.
“Mikey started in the first game because we believe in Mikey,” Hunter said. “You start the regular season with your No. 1 goalie and you start the tournament with Mikey. It’s not really an evaluation process. Mikey’s our guy. He’s going to carry the load.”
This time a year ago, DiPietro was crushed after being one of Canada’s final cuts. The Vancouver Canucks draft pick set his smartphone to send him periodic reminders about not making Team Canada. He said it drove him to be better.
“The adversity really helped me build my game throughout the year and leading up to the tournament,” he said. “I was very honoured to have the opportunity to start today and the guys played really well in front of me. The big thing is we played the right way. The biggest thing was winning, but winning the right way.”
By two touchdowns.
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