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I’m Miss World Cup, Watch Me Break And Watch Me Burn – C.I. World Cup Preview: Team Europe

By 1323

Here’s the thing. I love Anze Kopitar. I love watching him play. I think he’s the equal of Toews or Bergeron as two-way centers who can do anything you ask him. If he didn’t play on the West Coast he’d probably have a Selke to his name already (though Bergeron should honestly win it every year until he retires, and then maybe one or two years after that).

That doesn’t mean I think an international tournament should be mutated so that he can play with a mishmash of other players from countries the NHL just doesn’t fancy instead of Slovenia. While that’s not the reason Team Europe was created, it sure feels like it. The NHL feared Denmark or Switzerland or Norway or whatever else getting embarrassed in three games. I’m not sure this outfit will do much better.

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I’m Miss World Cup, Watch Me Break And Watch Me Burn – C.I.’s World Cup Preview: How Dumb Can Canada Be And Still Win? Let’s Find Out!

By 1236

Moving on to the overwhelming tournament favorites and the hosts, Team Canada. I’ll give Canada this; they’ve gotten away from trying to pick a “team,” like the US is still intent on doing, and got them in trouble in some junior tournaments, and are just picking the most talent they can find. When you have this much to pick from you clearly don’t need checking and 4th lines. They’re not doing the best job of it, of course. But it also doesn’t matter given the talent gap they have over the rest of the world.

It would probably be more fun to try and pick a team that Canada left at home and see how well they’d do. It would start with Subban and Letang. You could have Martin Jones or Roberto Luongo in net. Behind Subban and Letang you’d have Mark Giordano, T.J. Brodie, Ryan Ellis, and a host of others. That’s probably enough right there.

Speaking of which, how is the corpse of Jabe O’Meester ahead of any of those guys? That’s the thing about Canada’s decision makers. They’re still wrong. And still dumb. And it doesn’t matter. Why is Alex OrangeJello here ahead of Subban or Letang? Because he’s right handed? Kiss a sick monkey’s wet ass. Should Weber be ahead of them? Probably not. Still, Vlasic, Burns, and Doughty is more than enough to push those players down the chart and not make too much of a difference.