Teema: U19 Handball NT

We should've won against turkey, but I tried to go easy on the boys and that was a mistake. Might end up costing us the qualification :/

Team has glaring holes all over though. I don't know how much further I can stretch this talent pool :/

Some of you may have noticed I'm starting to make some more call-ups to the U19 team. We're trying REAL HARD to qualify here. But we stand no chance of making it past the next round, so I'm loading up guys that will be useful next season.

For today, I'd like to welcome:
Adam Spink (16yo DP (hopefully))
Sam Bedard (16yo DB)
Jordon Knisley (16yo OW)

More to come as I continue determining who would be best to fill the holes in the line-up. Some of the players of interest:

Andre Hillier (16, O... something.)
Avery McInnes (17, OB)
George Mott (16, DB)
Taylor Gillet (17, OB (who will need to train his shooting)
Hernan Weir (16, OB)
Allain Bartly (16, DW)
Cruz Brochu (18, DB)

I will be frank, the selection of 17yo we have is... not good. We have a number of good 15 and 16yos though, so we may be able to fill the gap. It,s like that season was the dark year of the good prospects. Ah well.

... And with the win over lithuania, we advance to the next round of the WC! Oof! I was worried there for a minute :3

So... you guys still want me managing the NTs, right?

I dunno, sounds like fake news to me.

yes please

Halfway through the tournament and somehow our U19 is sitting in 2nd place thanks to 2 unexpected draws. We are the weakest team in the group, so this is quite surprising. I guess they underestimated us in the first round and it paid off, remains to see if we can hang on to a qualifying spot and move on to stage 2. It'd be good exp for the guys, and a lot of them will still be on the team next season, so that is a silver lining.

Another win, an away one s a stronger team on paper, puts us at the top of the rankings, with 1 game left vs bosnia and herzegovina (?) who only have 1 win so far. We are qualified for sure, which surprises me a bit! Our team has come together nicely this season, despite the lack of depth

It seems like, despite the wading talent pool, our U19 is thriving so far this season. We're sitting atop our group with only 1 loss so far.

I just hope our lack of defensive backs doesn't come back to bite us too hard.

A few call-ups were made this morning, and we will be playing tomorrow's game with a full line-up of decent prospects. I am looking into possibly playing a guy out of position (Spink on the wing and Bissell down the middle defensively) because our defensive wing prospects are, erm, bad (Carlo Babcock is subpar and low CL, and i would rather give the trainnig and exp bonus to guys that have a chance to continue on to the U21).

Now let's just hope our opponent is fielding a line-up and we don't win by forfeit.

If your kid hasn't gotten the call yet, it may still happen, so don't give up hope! I just need to decide who to dismiss from the Senior team within the next week so I'll focus on that.

(And if you think I missed a gem of yours, do let me know!)

Future prospect as a back?

Gaston Stone

FIP 95, SHO 86 BLK 94 PAS 89 TEC 89. Speed and Agr are kind of bad though, 57 and 65

He's been added to my scouting list! He has potential if you don't sell him to a team with crap facilities

My facilities are kind of crap, I'd be happy to arrange sale to someone with better.

the problem is there are more people with worse facilities out there than people with good ones, and they tend to have more money for these type of players. Hang on to him for now, we'll see how he trains and if his CL is going to hold up a few seasons.

Whoops, I had forgotten what day it was and hadn't redone the roster for the U19 game on time xD

Well hey, we beat Lithuania with a few 17yos! Including the goalie!

Bodes well for next season, except that we'll be quite weak on the defensive wings side. If anyone has a player other than Babcock and Humphreys that I may have missed (there's Mitchell Willson, but he's been traded to a team with only 1 coach, so IDK how well he'll be training, and he's 15, yknow? And Mullholand on my team, who is on the very low end for OR at his age considering.)

This has got to be some kind of new record... 3 draws so far in this final qualification round for team canada!

2 of those were to teams that are better than us, so that is kind of a relief. But Finland is significantly weaker and it was a home game, but I did try to conserve even an itsy bit of energy in that first half and I guess that cost us the W.

So I guess we gotta win (or draw again? Ugh!) against Iran now. They have a freak goalie, but the team itself is about a match, so we may have a chance to make it to the playoffs. For what that's worth.