{"id":23125,"date":"2016-09-23T08:03:37","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T15:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/lombardi-tortorella-defend-roster-decisions\/"},"modified":"2016-09-23T08:03:37","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T15:03:37","slug":"lombardi-tortorella-defend-roster-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/lombardi-tortorella-defend-roster-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Lombardi, Tortorella defend roster decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO<\/strong> \u2014 Dean Lombardi pounded the table and tried to explain it all.<\/p>\n

His eyes darting back and forth, the Team USA general manager tried to explain the Americans\u2019 unexpected and disappointing early exit from the World Cup of Hockey.<\/p>\n

Along the way, Lombardi blamed himself for plenty.<\/p>\n

The hockey veteran with two Stanley Cup rings said he would have done four or five things differently, most notably preparing his team to face Team Europe and not focus on Canada. But Lombardi defended the decision not to take more skilled players like Phil Kessel because he believes the U.S. couldn\u2019t match Canada\u2019s depth of talent so it tried to win the tournament another way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got some darn good players, but the reality is, that matchup on a skill basis, if you want to go head-to-head and play a skill game, your odds of winning that game when you look at those matchups is not very good,\u201d Lombardi said during an extensive state of the team news conference Thursday, not long before the Americans played their final game of the tourney. \u201cI think that our game allows emotion, competitiveness, caring about each other (to) close that gap more than any other sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lombardi criticized himself, his management group, coach John Tortorella and his staff for not getting players more prepared to face Europe in the opener, a 3-0 loss that made the second game against Canada a must win. Tortorella criticized himself for not finding the right mixes of players to generate offense.<\/p>\n

But the old-school GM and old-school coach weren\u2019t backing down from the team they selected and the style they chose to play. Lombardi said he wanted \u201c22 guys who care\u201d and insisted he doesn\u2019t believe Kessel belonged more than some of the other forwards on the roster.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re talking about Justin Abdelkader, Blake Wheeler, Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Kesler, David Backes, I\u2019ll take those guys any day on my team,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cThose guys have big-time heart and when I talk about caring, they\u2019d be the nucleus of the caring and they compete and they can play for me any day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kessel, Tyler Johnson, Kyle Okposo, Justin Faulk, Kevin Shattenkirk and Cam Fowler didn\u2019t play in the World Cup for the U.S., which scored two goals in two games before being eliminated from contention. Patrick Kane, Joe Pavelski, Max Pacioretty and Zach Parise were on the team and combined for zero goals and two assists.<\/p>\n

Tortorella said USA Hockey has to take its \u201cmedicine\u201d and accepted blame. But he\u2019s tired of the second-guessing about roster decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to sit here and let people tell me this team was a bunch of grinders, because it\u2019s not true,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to say that we should\u2019ve blown up this whole situation on how we built this team because I think we have really good people there.\u201d<\/p>\n

After losing to Canada at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics, the U.S. made no secret of its focus on Canada. The 2010 team that was one goal away from beating Canada for gold in Vancouver on NHL-sized ice provided the blueprint in 2016, though several of those players were of course six years older.<\/p>\n

Players on every team called Canada the favorite, but the U.S. was alone in constructing a team with the two-time Olympic and world championship winners in mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe clearly put an emphasis on that from day one,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cWhat could we have done better here to raise our emotional levels. I think for sure, if you were coming here to win this thing, it clearly goes through Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada beat the U.S. 4-2 Tuesday in a game that wasn\u2019t as close as the score. It wasn\u2019t nearly as competitive as two exhibition games against Canada, which Lombardi said might\u2019ve had too much of an impact as Tortorella constantly tinkered with his lineup.<\/p>\n

Line juggling prevented the Americans from developing any real chemistry. But Lombardi was more concerned about players not being mentally ready for or respecting Team Europe in the first game and looking ahead to Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think even the connotation was \u2018Europe,\u2019 so it wasn\u2019t a real team,\u201d Lombardi said. \u201cIt was kind of like, it\u2019s not the same as when you\u2019re going up against this is what these tournaments are all about, and that\u2019s the nationalism factor. I think just even the name, you kind of just said, \u2018Ah, let\u2019s get through this and get to these guys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Those guys were the Canadians, who went 3-0 and outscored opponents 14-3 in round-robin play and are clear favorites going into the semifinals this weekend. Tortorella doesn\u2019t regret making Canada the focus even as the U.S. goes home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe failed,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cOur thoughts were right at Canada. That\u2019s who teams have to go through to win. We could not out-skill them, and I have to be honest about that. You have to make adjustments. I thought we did it the right way, I thought Dean did it the right way, but the offensive part falls on me to not getting the combination that worked.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2014 Dean Lombardi pounded the table and tried to explain it all. His eyes darting back and forth, the Team USA general manager tried to explain the Americans\u2019 unexpected and disappointing early exit from the World Cup of Hockey. Along the way, Lombardi blamed himself for plenty. The hockey veteran with two Stanley Cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":23126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23125"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}