Yesterday Team Canada Men shut out Czechia 5-0 and set themselves up nicely for a cruise through the rest of their group. Just don't tell Switzerland that, though.

I post the above for two reasons. First: Davo? Second: the interesting thing about McDavid in this game was in part that big hit – Wilson was the fake tank put in a field to fool the bad guys, McDavid was the real one (and Nate MacKinnon) – but also how much McDavid was just driving the net and shooting.

If this is a trend in his usage with Jon Cooper, well maybe that's an interesting idea to consider. McDavid is 91st in the NHL this year in Individual Corsi For per 60 minutes. That's out of all regular rostered forwards (at least 300 minutes played at five-on-five). Obviously his value as a playmaker is unmatched, but this is the same old story we heard for years with Mitch Marner. If he shot more, was more of a threat, then the goalie would be easier for someone to score on. Every time Marner and the media said he was shooting more it turned out to be untrue or barely true in 23-24. He's shooting at an unusually low rate in Vegas now.

And this is an interesting question: Can a player really change? Because McDavid's shot rate is very static over his career. That's broadly true of all forwards. He's never going to be a high-volume guy like Auston Matthews, but what if he played that aggressive game he showed yesterday? As long as the Oilers aren't playing the Leafs, that is.

Team USA Men faced the Latvian video review team and had two goals disallowed resulting in a tie game going into the first intermission, but by the end of the day it was 5-1. Auston Matthews had the final USA goal on four SOG in just under 15 minutes of play.

In today's men's action, Canada has to get right back at it against Switzerland at 3 pm ET, Sweden faces Finland starting at 6 am.

Now, a note about goal videos, highlights, etc. This is the Olympics and broadcasters pay a lot of money to silo you into their ecosystem to advertise to you. If a rights holder puts something on social media, it's probably geoblocked, so I can't find American-viewable content and American residents likely can't view the Canadian content (not that I can tell), and a lot of it can't be embeddable. The CBC YouTube clips seem to play in the post however. They also have partial game replays on their channel if you're interested.

And a note about goal differential. They've taken to talking about this on-air, so this is how this works: after the preliminary round, all teams are ranked into one list, and the top four get a bye to the quarterfinals. Now obviously, they can't just use position in group play because there are four ties to break, but that is the first criteria.

To break those ties, the first consideration is total points, so if a team wins group A by going undefeated, and the other two group leaders each lost a game, then the group A leader is ranked first.

The next tie-breaker is goal differential, then it's goals for. and finally the world ranking from 2020. I have no idea why that far back, perhaps that's when qualification games started? Don't know.

So, the most important thing is to win, and the worry over goal differential is a little overstated because the winners of each group will be three of the four teams getting the bye. This all really only matters for the bottom echelon of teams.

In the morning our time yesterday, Team Canada Women got the job done efficiently beating Finland 5-0 to take second spot in the top group. The quarterfinals start today, but both Canada and Finland play tomorrow in consideration of their rescheduled game yesterday.

Czechia plays Sweden and the USA plays Italy today. Tomorrow Canada plays Germany at 10:30 am ET and Finland plays Switzerland in the afternoon.

Other newsish things.

London minor hockey team disbanded, coaches suspended amid probe
A London minor hockey team has been disbanded and three coaches are suspended pending a league investigation
London Free PressBeatriz Baleeiro

This story refers to a Rick Westhead piece that did not name the team in question:

A boy’s U-15 hockey team in the London, Ont., area has been disbanded for the season after a number of players allegedly used their phones to record videos of their teammates naked in the shower area and dressing room and posted the videos on SnapChat.
Hockey Canada’s independent third party is investigating the allegations after a complaint was filed in January about the alleged videos and about a player who allegedly repeatedly put his penis in the face of his teammates in the locker room.
A source familiar with the complaint said Hockey Canada ITP investigators are determining whether the team’s coaches were regularly absent from the locker room, which would be contrary to Hockey Canada’s policies, and whether that contributed to the alleged behaviour.
A complaint has also been made to the London Police Service about the incidents, the source said.

So that explains why the coaching staff and the team itself were heavily penalized.

Bettman says the NHL has more Olympic content access in Milan and hopes for further progress
Not getting to show iconic moments such as Sidney Crosby’s golden goal for Canada in Vancouver in 2010 or T.J. Oshie’s shootout heroics for the U.S. against Russia in Sochi in 2014 has been one of the biggest sticking points when it comes to the NHL participating in the Olympics.
TSNThe Canadian Press

Okay, that's all for today, it's Friday, have a great day, watch some hockey if you can.

From The Branches