The first day’s worth of games at the World Junior Summer Showcase were a bit of a disappointment if you’re a Team USA fan.
In the 1 PM game, Team Sweden defeated Team USA Blue 7-0, with Red Wings prospect Anton Johansson scoring a goal for Sweden.
Axel Sandin Pellikka was kept out of the game, according to Swedish coach Magnus Havelid, so that he could work out in the gym, per the recommendation of Skelleftea AIK’s GM; coach Havelid said that ASP is not injured and will play in the next three games.
In the 4 PM game, Team Finland defeated Team USA White 4-2, with the Finns scoring an empty-net goal to seal the deal. Red Wings prospect goaltender Trey Augustine stopped 16 of 18 shots against in 28:30 of play.
It was very hard to get a read on Augustine’s game by watching him play half of a game that Finland really took to the Americans in a way that Sweden didn’t, with detail work and a lot of gritty play determining the outcome.
Tomorrow, the teams will practice at USA Hockey Arena on Sunday morning, and then they’ll get together again for games scheduled for Monday at 4 PM (USA Blue vs. Finland) and 7 PM (USA White vs. Sweden).
As coach Havelid so wisely said, Saturday’s games were 1 of 4 for each team, and it’s incredibly hard to jump to conclusions about players’ professional potential when you’re seeing them for, in my case, the third day of a 9-day event, before which I laid my eyes on all three of the Wings’ participants for the first time at Detroit’s summer development camp.
I said in yesterday’s WJSS impressions that we’re talking about a progression, in terms of both my observations and in terms of the growth of the players involved. That’s still true: today’s games were really the start of what is an admittedly subjective data set, one which will continue as the WJSS teams progress to games 2, 3 and 4.
All of that lovely stuff being said, here’s what I thought about the players who participated in game action today:
Anton Johansson: When I say that Johansson’s game is spare, I mean that as one of the highest compliments that I can give the 6’4,” 194-pound defenseman. He really wound up and shot a blast through Andrew Oke to open the scoring in Sweden’s win, and, absent ASP, there were some things I noticed.
The Swedes don’t have letters on their jerseys, just a Facebook ad and a Swedish Ice Hockey Federation patch, but it was pretty evident that the second player behind the goaltender in every sprint out of the locker room, and one of the last guys on the ice before warm-ups ended, was Big Anton.
He was also utilized as a second-pair defender and a first-pair penalty-killer, and Johansson told us media types that he grew up as an offensive defenseman, but that he’s worked very hard on the defensive side of his game while playing for Leksands IF’s Under-20 and SHL teams.
That’s evident in the way he holds his stick and the way he can steer opposing players with said stick, and, quite frankly, the way he sticks his butt out as something of a rudder.
To his credit as well, he tends to slide pucks off his stick with both meaning, purpose, and poise, and the pucks that come to him are off his stick in a hurry, which is great to see from a two-way defenseman. His passes are sound, he knows when to dump the puck or chip it off the glass to “get an out,” he’s got a heavy shot in all senses thereof (slap/wrist/snap/one-timer), and he’s head-up mobile in his skating.
There are still some issues in terms of his overall strength in one-on-one battles, his tendency to “tell” with that big butt where he is going, and there are certainly ways in which he can improve his positioning, stick, and checking abilities, but he’s on his way toward becoming a very sound second-pair defenseman who can be relied upon in all situations (even a little power play time here and there!)…And he’s got that massively lanky body that he’s still growing into, the kind of frame that makes you think, “Hmm, if he wants to be more physical…” We’re not talking Vladimir Konstantinov 2.0 or something, but he could lay some guys on their butts.
At 19, the sky is not the limit for Big Anton, but there is definitely some serious professional potential already apparent.
Anton Johansson opens the scoring of the #WJSS sneaking a wrister past Andrew Oke. Sweden up 1-0. pic.twitter.com/OzYEKdd4f4
— Ryan Sikes (@ryan_sikes10) July 29, 2023
Trey Augustine: Augustine was thrust into a difficult situation as Team USA White was tied with Finland 1-1, and he did the best he could with the slightly scatterbrained team in front of him. He would ultimately give up 2 goals on 16 shots in 28:30 played, and the 6’1,” 183-pound goaltender had to do quite a bit of standing on his tippy toes or scrunching into his stance with his toes ready to snap outward because the Finns were doing a fantastic job of blocking his sight lines.
The Finns didn’t exactly come in the same kind of waves that Sweden did over USA Blue, but they were definitely in control where the Americans were not. That made Augustine’s life difficult, because he had to maximize his reflexes as screened and sometimes tipped shots came through, he had to control rebounds, and he had to make some breakaway stops. One puck got through over his pad and under his blocker, but other times, he made fine toe stops, he utilized his catch glove to gobble up pucks, or he would swallow up rebounds. The few times that pucks escaped him, he’d gobble up the rebounds with his glove, or jab the puck away with his short, almost Sergei Bobrovsky-style short stick.
Mostly, Augustine got his first game action in since perhaps the end of the Under-18 Worlds, and he did his best to get into the rhythm of a staccato game in which the team was just…out…of…sorts enough that Finland prevailed despite the hacks, whacks, jabs and latter-half-of-the-game USA power plays.
This was game 1 hopefully 2 or 3 for Augustine, and I hope that he gets at least one full game in before all is said and done, because it’s kind of unfair to judge a goaltender based upon a second-half performance, coming in sans a warm-up.
My initial plan was to attend all nine days of the WJSS, but I’m feeling pretty wobbly this evening, and tomorrow morning’s practices come quickly. I’m not certain whether I’ll attend Sunday’s happenings given that Monday, Wednesday and Friday are the games toward which I need to save my energy. We’ll see how tomorrow morning goes, because Finland’s on the ice at 9 and Augustine’s USA White at 10:15.
As always, while I’m writing stuff, the collection plate remains to cover gas, groceries, and to begin to cover the server bills at Bluehost and Jetpack, as well as the George-and-Aunt-Annie-go-to-Traverse-City trip, so:
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