Trevor Zegras doesn’t have to apologize for standing in Canada’s way. The recent, but increasingly significant history of this tournament says this is tournament belongs to the US as much as anyone else. Zegras had every reason to believe what he said. The Canadians maybe had a few more first rounders, but the gap wasn’t nearly what it has been in years past. He saw two American teammates get picked ahead of him, and six fellow Americans get picked after him in the first round of the 2019 Draft. Zegras was the sixth overall pick in the NHL Draft. Walking into the arena, the US had already clinched their eighth medal in the past 12 tournaments, and was tied with Canada and Finland for most gold medals over that span. He grew up watching Gaudreau and Gibson, Terry and Parsons. He was a few months shy of nine years old when John Carlson scored the overtime winner in 2010.
The World Juniors has been televised in the US and been a Big Deal, at least in hockey circles, for the majority of his life. For Zegras and his generation, those are just the expectations. Old guys like me that have done this for a long time like to talk about the changing expectations for USA Hockey internationally over the past however many years. “They’ve had some success, but they haven’t seen us yet” is how Canada is supposed to talk at their tournament, right before John Tavares snaps his fingers and erases an early three-goal lead or Jonathan Toews coolly deposits a dozen consecutive shootout attempts into your net.īut you know what? He isn’t wrong. But because this is the World Juniors, and there is a certain amount of deference to be shown any time it comes to the Canadians. Not just because in the ultra-vanilla world of hockey this was the equivalent of cutting a WWE promo. I had the TV on in the background and literally stopped what I was dong and came in from another room to confirm that had actually just happened.
| #WorldJuniors | /TdeSbTqHyP- NHL Network January 6, 2021 "We're kinda going on all cylinders right now and I think we're going to catch them by surprise." - is READY for tonight's Gold Medal Game.
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