The three best hockey players in the world — Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar — are all Canadian.
The two best junior-aged hockey players in the world — Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini — are both Canadian.
The past seven coaches to win the Stanley Cup — Paul Maurice, Bruce Cassidy, Jared Bednar, Jon Cooper (twice), Craig Berube, Barry Trotz — all happen to be Canadian.
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All of this is making so little sense as Canada tries to come to grips with a second straight failure at the world junior tournament — this one reaching a level of national embarrassment.
How can a nation so rich in talent be so poor in team building and execution of strategy? How can it be so full of apologies and excuses without answers, so clumsy in tripping over itself on the way to self-induced elimination?
Canadian hockey meet Hockey Canada.
The game we cherish, goaltending aside, has rarely been richer in this country. McDavid and MacKinnon rank with almost anyone who has ever played before. When McDavid scored 42 points in last year’s playoffs, that put him on a short list that included only two other players, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux.
McDavid was right there with the best ever at a time in history in which it’s actually more difficult to score.
There are 340 Canadian players in the National Hockey League on any given night. There are 21 from Czechia.
Yet twice in the past two world junior events — set up essentially for Canada to win, usually played in Canada, highlighted with a Canadian television network’s programming — Team Canada dropped the ball.
And you have to wonder, how is it that Hockey Canada — no longer scandal-driven, run by a woman whose sporting background is curling, trying so hard to be politically correct, operating from the junior end by an executive no one in the NHL wanted — has been able to shrug its collective shoulders and move on like nothing much happened in Ottawa?
The problem is, nothing much happened in Ottawa.
Scott Salmond is the senior vice-president of hockey operations for Hockey Canada. He already has been given the green light to remain in his position now and in the future.
Last year, Team Canada got knocked out before the medal round. A year later, Team Canada imploded.
It came under the management of Salmond. The coaching of Dave Cameron. The apparently tired players — too tired to practice (has anybody heard of this before?) — too sensitive to be disciplined, staying in the best hotel, under the best of circumstances, came up small.
Sometimes a goalie can beat you in hockey. That has happened in almost every international tournament ever played. Team Canada didn’t get goalied in Ottawa. Our big country got beat, for the second straight year, by little Czechia.
David beat Goliath two years in a row and those in charge of Goliath had no real answers to as why.
This wasn’t the most shocking loss in Canadian hockey history. You have to go back to the Olympics of 1998 to find that one.
That was a Team Canada in the first best-on-best Winter Games with the great Gretzky up front, Patrick Roy in goal, a defence that included Chris Pronger, Ray Bourque, Al MacInnis, Scott Stevens and other forwards such as captain Eric Lindros, Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic, Brendan Shanahan — a roster with 14 Hall of Famers in all.
And no Gretzky in the famed shootout, which is still talked about today. And no medal to bring home when Canada tanked the bronze-medal game against Finland.
That was a national gut-busting. The junior loss last week was more a shot to the solar plexus than anything that will feel sustained over time.
But perspective remains important today: Salmond, who was central to picking a Team Canada roster last year, was central again this year, failed both years and will be back next year.
When Hockey Canada hit the skids in scandal a few years back, losing so much in sponsorship, reputation and doing a rather odd overhaul of sorts, Salmond tried to get out. He wanted an NHL job. He applied just about everywhere.
He didn’t get a job.
So you can hardly blame him for remaining with Hockey Canada. He had nowhere else to go. He wound up in the same prominent position under new president Katherine Henderson, the former curling executive, who probably knows her brooms better than she knows her umbrella power play.
To fix what needs to be fixed at the junior level of building national teams is challenging for a president with little hockey background.
There remains an enormous problem in Canadian hockey today. There’s a shortage of quality goaltenders. What has Hockey Canada done to address the development of goalies on a national basis?
The answer: Next to nothing.
Russia is producing goalies at an elite level like never before. Finland and Sweden have historically been fine in this area. The United States, which has a far more advanced method of developing depth of talent than in Canada, has goaltenders the quality of Connor Hellebuyck, Jake Oettinger, Jeremy Swayman, Thatcher Demko, Joseph Woll, Anthony Stolarz, Dustin Wolf and John Gibson — all of whom would be part of Team Canada next month if their passport was from north of the border.
What are they doing that we’re not doing?
What are they doing in Russia? Why isn’t Hockey Canada examining this?
How is it that there is this much talent across the country — it’s very possible the top three draft picks in the NHL this June will be Ontario kids — yet Hockey Canada can’t figure out how to pick a team?
It’s a paradox that needs to be solved. Canadian hockey, goaltending aside, has never been stronger. McDavid compares to anyone ever. Makar is the Bobby Orr of this generation. Our elite level is beyond elite.
Canadian hockey is wonderful. Hockey Canada not so much.
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