Hi, this is Fred Wallace with ” Off the Wire “.
When a team loses, especially when an expected victory doesn’t materialize, the natural flow of finger pointing is as follows.
1) Blame the Coach.
2) Blame the star.
3) Blame the General Manager.
and 4) Blame everything else until the very earth around the team has been scorched.
In the case of the Canadian Junior Hockey team and their quick exit from the World Junior Tournament in Finland, it’s # 4, blame everything including discipline and goaltending that’s been common.
And that’s fair enough, I guess.
But in reality, expectations for Canadian glory at the tournament this year should not have been high.
Losing the opening game to the Americans was a harbinger of things to come, yet it was written off as an unfortunate start.
The shootout win over Switzerland should have muted expectations, but that was seen as a one-off by the Swiss.
And the loss to Sweden should have quelled the optimism, yet the prevailing sentiment was that Canada would roll once the playoff round commenced.
And Canada did roll out to a 2-0 lead Saturday against Finland, but that lead quickly vanished, and the Canadian entry vanished a few hours later.
Also departing are the once-a-year Junior Hockey ” fanatics “, but before they left they blamed the coach, the star, the managers and everything else for Canada’s showing at the 2016 World Junior
I’m Fred Wallace