Asunto: USA U-18 Team

It looks like I'm going to have to drop Nowicki from the starting roster despite including him for all of last season and the beginning of this season.

Jesse Baxter will take his spot on the starting roster.

The starting lineup is fully prepared at this point (though 2 more starters will get one more week). For the next few weeks until the last 2-3 weeks of the exhibitions, next season's probable starters will primarily start (outside of the bench).

Next week, I'm going to bring the starters back to prepare for the tournament.

Next season's team will have a solid bonus for the World Championships too. After that, it will be back to business as usual. Whether I try the strategy again depends on how these next two tournaments go in addition to however the following generation shapes up.

After significantly overperforming last season, the United States had bad luck this season where I had hoped the team would be more competitive after working for 2 years to have a better team this season. Unfortunately, the United States had an extremely challenging group.

In the first game against Latvia, the U.S. kept within 1 goal for the entire game but failed to take away any points, even though I had the advantage in tactics for the entire game. The United States was actually beating the almost unbeatable Hungarian team 3-1 until Hungary scored 3 unanswered goals in the last 13 minutes including the game winner with little more than a minute left. The United States took Finland to overtime (in a game that the United States needed to win in regulation to advance), but lost in the shootout.

In terms of tactics, I did roughly as well as I could hope. The only thing I regret is trying to conserve energy by playing the lines evenly in the first 2 games.

Going forward, next season's team will once again start next season with more chemistry than usually, if not by as much as this season's team. Of course, there are a few more 17 year olds that were good enough to be starters this season who will have even more of a headstart.

In the relegation round, the United States should be fine. Austria and Portugal both look relatively bad. Serbia will be a challenge, but they are close enough to be beatable. In terms of goaltending, Serbia and the U.S. are about even, Austria is much weaker, and Portugal is almost half as good. It's about the same on defense. On offense, the U.S. and Serbia are about the same and a lot better than Portugal and Austria. In terms of shooting, most of Serbia's advantage comes from this area. The other there are about even. I will note that Portugal is playing a lot of prospects. Their numbers from the first three games could very well be a little lower than they will be, but they have too many prospects to improve too substantially, especially if they don't have an 18 year old goaltender waiting on the bench. In any case, it looks good for the U.S., but upsets do happy, and I won't be taking anyone lightly.

The United States plays Austria tomorrow.

As far as the strength of the team this season, I was a bit disappointed to only reach around 160 for the tournament (though I might have approached 170 if I hadn't been trying to rest the team a bit by playing the lines evenly). There were two players who were supposed to be key players but ended up failing to train well enough to stick with the team after I had invested a lot of time developing their chemistry. One of was a center who got sold to a foreign team with bad facilities that has never spent any time training technique. The other was actually in the process of improving, but I overestimated how long it would take for him to be ready to compete when initially choosing him. That player probably still has a chance to be a factor on the U20 team. The loss of the first center hurt because there wasn't any good depth to replace him. The next best player was a 17 year old, leading to me having 2 17 year olds playing a position that usually tends to be the deepest position (consequently, the team will be extremely deep at center next season). I was happy with the defense. Goaltending was good enough if not quite at the elite caliber I've probably enjoyed and taken for granted a bit too much in the past. The most notable weakness was shooting. Half of the forwards only had shooting at about 50%, but there wasn't a reasonable alternative (I'd rather take a good player with weak shooting than a much weaker player that has the ratio right, closer to 75%+). With all that said, given the shrinking nature of the U.S. player base, I really have to make the best of a difficult situation in the end.

Keep at it, man, and let's finish strong!

This season was a catastrophe. Despite having a decent team and usually winning when it came to tactics, the team will demote this season. I managed to stay in the top division for 17 consecutive seasons (half of the current total and for the majority of the existence of the international U18 league). Only the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Russia have longer streaks right now. This was only the third time the U.S. has failed to avoid the relegation round.

The last game in particular was perplexing and outrageous. The U.S. somehow lost 6-1 against a substantially weaker team with horrible goaltending in a game where the U.S. won in terms of tactics for 2/3 of the periods. Portugal also took nearly twice as many penalties.

The main things I could have done better would have been to go all out like I usually do in terms of energy from the first game, improve shooting, and improve faceoff performance. The team had 2 17 year old centers (they are elite in their age group, but it isn't ideal to have to be playing players that are a year back). The biggest problem is shooting. I think I'm going to have to be more aggressive about pushing people to train shooting to 75%+ and be less forgiving, especially for players who aren't too elite (relative to the average U18 WC roster) to exclude.

Next season, the U.S. should be one of the favorite to promote again in addition to having a slight chemistry bonus left. Luckily, Austria demoted with us instead of Serbia who would be a more difficult opponent. Two of the most dangerous opponents, Poland and the U.K., promoted this season. Croatia and Belgium have been decent in the past, but they demoted to division II. The main remaining team that worries me is Slovenia. The rest tend to be top division/division I or even division I/division II tweeners. Of course, any country could have a particularly strong or weak class in a particular season. The U.S. has a very strong group of defense and centers for next season. Goaltending and wing depth is a little average, but should be good enough for division I.

I'm not going to bother trying this tactic again. It's really risky, doesn't help enough, can easily be compromised by bad luck, and doesn't really help beyond the first few games since teams generally reach 100 chemistry anyway later in the tournament.

Sorry for the delay in filling out the roster. Only one starter was added that wasn't already on the team though.

The team looks stronger than usual this season. At the start of the season, there are already 9 players with 1,000+ OR and 3 more that will be there in about a week. In a bad season, there might be closer to only 3 players. There aren't as many elite wingers as I would like. On the other hand, the 4th line center is a 1st line caliber center, and the 5th line center could have been a 2nd line center some seasons. Defense has good depth. Unfortunately, goaltending is an area of relative weakness.

It's upsetting to be back in division I after ages in the top division, but the roster looks strong, there's some left over chemistry bonus from the strategy from the last 2 seasons, and the other teams in the division look relatively weak (other than maybe Ukraine). The only team that could be a bit of a challenge is Slovenia from the other division (which has better teams in general) in the playoffs.

The World Championships began today. The first game was a bit disappointing even though the U.S. won 4-3 in regulation and holds sole possession of first place after one game. I was expecting Bosnia to be one of the easier opponents that I could conserve energy against, but I ended up playing every period on high (though only one on very high). This happened despite winning on tactics for the first two periods. Luckily, with the result in the first game, apparently against one of the better teams in the group, the United States is on its way to clinching the playoffs early. 4 wins would guarantee the playoffs, and 3 should be good enough (if 5 teams got 9 points and 1 team got 0, the U.S. would have to have the 5th best GD to miss the playoffs). In terms of seeding, I basically would want to avoid Slovenia (who is about the same level as the U.S.) and try to face Turkey or Ireland.

Overall, it looks like the U.S., Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Brazil are the top teams with Belarus and Ukraine close behind. Bulgaria's lagging far behind. On defense, the U.S. if solidly ahead of all 5 teams. On offense, the U.S. is by far the strongest, though Bosnia and Ukraine are close after adding in shooting (there are a handful of good players that neglected shooting on the roster this season). In net, the U.S. is behind everyone except for Bulgaria. Apart from this weakness with 1/20 of the starter, the U.S. is actually far ahead of the competition (~10+ total team strength on average excluding goaltending). The original starter I had selected fell behind the the current starter this season who doesn't have access to good facilities. The current backup started the season as the 4th string goaltender (he's about the same as the 3rd string goaltender, who is also 17, but went to his training camp already). Next year's duo will be good, and the rest of the team should be good enough to compensate for the goaltending against the level of competition the U.S. will face.

Overall, the U.S. should be competitive, but it looks a bit closer than I would like, and luck always plays a greater role than I would like. The U.S. will face its next most difficult opponent in the group, Brazil, tomorrow. If the U.S. can manage to pull off another win, then barring an upset against Bulgaria, the U.S. could be in a solid position.

I'll also note that every other team in the group used at least as much or the maximum energy. 3 teams are starting out using only 3 lines, while Brazil and Ukraine are using 4 lines but putting more emphasis on the top 2 lines. I played all 4 lines since the depth this season is decent, so the better players should be better rested for future games. I'm usually more aggressive in the top division since I mostly care about scrounging up ~4 points to avoid the possibility of relegation, but in division I (or in the top division if you have sufficient depth to avoid relegation and then still be competitive), conserving energy matters a lot more.

In the other group, it looks like Slovenia and Argentina are conserving energy, but it cost them in the first game. Austria conserved energy to a lesser extent but came away with a win. Ireland and Turkey are playing with somewhat weighted lines. Austria is further conserving energy by playing its 4th line as much as possible.

Looking further at today's results, it helps that:
1) No other team earned 3 points in group 2.
2) Bulgaria stole a point from a more competitive team.
3) The two most worrisome rivals (Brazil and Bosnia) lost (though I was honestly more worried about Belarus and Ukraine going into today).
4) Turkey stole a win from Slovenia. Slovenia will be forced to expend more energy in future games and might even be avoided in the playoffs if they don't make up for today.

By the way, the U.S. outshot Bosnia today 30-18 and won 57.1% of the faceoffs. No U.S. player came out of today with a negative +/-, and the 4th line contributed 2/4 of the goals. Special teams were a bit disappointing (25% PP and 60% PK). The 2 stars of the game for the U.S. were Solinski and Dittmar from Dinamo 1983.

The United States lost 4-5 to Brazil today.

Tomorrow the U.S. will face Bulgaria in a game it should win, though an upset is not impossible. The U.S. has slightly better goaltending and defense, similar shooting, and substantially better offense.

In other games, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Belarus won.

The United States plays Ukraine after Belarus. Based on the current results, 2 regulation wins in the next 2 games would be enough to clinch the playoffs before game 5. If Ukraine loses in regulation tomorrow and the U.S. wins in regulation against Bulgaria, then an overtime win or an overtime loss against Ukraine in 2 days with a better GD would be enough to clinch the playoffs before game 5.

The United States won 5-1 against Bulgaria yesterday. An overtime win against Ukraine today would be enough to clinch the playoffs.

Very nice; keep it up!

Thanks!

The United States won 5-3 against Ukraine today, clinching the playoffs.

Tomorrow the United States (currently seeded #2) will face Belarus (currently seeded #1) in the final game of the preliminary round. Both teams have qualified, so the game will only affect seeding. The United States can take the #1 seed with a regulation win, or it can fall to the #3 seed with a regulation loss/a reulgation win by Bosnia and Herzegovina over Ukraine/falling by a combined 5 GD.

In the playoffs, the only teams that are especially worrisome are Slovenia from group 1, Brazil from group 2, and Bosnia and Herzegovina from group 2. Slovenia will play a similar seeding matchup against Romania in group 2 tomorrow. Since both teams have clinched, both should conserve energy, and Slovenia should win. In any case, to avoid Slovenia for the purposes of qualification, the United States would need the same result of whatever Slovenia does (since both the U.S. and Slovenia are unlikely to fall to #3). As the #1 seed, the United States would face the #4 seed from the other group in the first round and possibly the #2 seed from the other group in the second round (or the #3 seed from the same group). The U.S. could avoid Brazil and Bosnia and Herzegovina if Ukraine wins against Bosnia and Herzegovina in regulation tomorrow. It would be ideal if the United States could face Turkey or Ireland from the other group in round 1 (they face each other tomorrow, and at least one of them is guaranteed to make the playoffs, likely as the #3 or #4 seed).

The United States won 3-2 today against Belarus. Both teams were conserving energy for the playoffs.

The United States will play Austria in the first round of the playoffs tomorrow. With a win, the United States would play the winner of Romania and Bosnia and Herzegovina for promotion. The United States will avoid Slovenia and Brazil in the matches that determine promotion. Bosnia and Herzegovina will be the biggest obstacle, courtesy of their goaltender (the U.S. has much better offense and defense though). The U.S. will be favored against Austria and Romania, though not by enough that an upset is impossible. It would have been nice if Ukraine replaced Bosnia and Herzegovina and Turkey fell to 4th, but this is still a very good scenario for the United States. Now the United States just needs to follow through on its potential and avoid upsets for two more games. So far, the United States has only lost one game in the tournament, in a close game against one of the ~4 top teams.

At the moment, defenseman Wade Duvall is tied for the tournament lead in points with 7 points.