Aihe: Senior Handball NT

S15 National Team Results:
5-3 Qualifiers = Advance
4-1 Finals = Advance
1-0 R1 Playoffs vs Germany = Advance

One of the biggest wins in Canada's National Team History occurred today vs Germany in the Playoffs. We accomplished the same result vs Serbia in S9, and vs Hungary in S7 & S4.

IF we win tomorrow in the Round 2 (top 8) we will have advanced further than any other Canadian NT

That was a good win. I hope you make it to the next round. USA had its best year in international and I am looking forward to seeing us progress even further. See you in the friendly.

Well, we have our hands on the senior NT again, and the trend seems to be that our24-26 yo are actually getting better on paper than our 30+ yo veterans.

If ya'll are with me, how about a full restructuration season here while we just swap everyone in and rebuild exp an chemistry?

A few notable call-ups to happen shortly:

O-Wings:
Ayden Lundy
Bennett DelaRossa

O-Backs:
Brian Wicks

Pivots:
Curt Greene
Shawn Linton

D-Wings:
Gord Archambault

D-Backs:
Lazaro McLeod
Wesley McNeill
(Possibly) Jay Gregoire

D-Pivots:
With J.P. Humphreys, I'm thinking of already calling up 22yo Jonathan Cairns... (we had a huge gap on the defensive pivot side)

Goalies:
Jayson Hughes

If you guys feel like i missed an important player do let me know!

That experience vs OR issue... I ended up swapping out a few positions and took a huge hit in the win column. Will see in 2 more seasons if it was the right move.

Do not underestimate the importance AND influence of experience and chemistry!!
In all sports, most good senior players can play at least three seasons after they go 0/6, and still be better, and make a bigger contribution to wins than their younger counterparts.

Yeah, we would lose a lot this season, but our team has been on the decline and I think I can fill a full roster of guys within about 3 years (well, seasons) of each other, which will serve us a lot better in the long run, I think.

The current batch of Veterans comes from before the time when there were a few teams with maxed facilities. We got crushed in the preliminary round the past 2 seasons, but did not use that chance to really groom new players into the fold.

I think my plan would be to at least qualify - I will use the veterans to do that, use the friendly games to play around a bit and start building chemistry for the new guys. Then just use the preliminary round as a big exp/chemistry booster for the young guns.

This is essentially a 2-3 season plan, but maybe we'll finally be somewhat relevant again at that point. (Then the talent pool dwindles drastically, anyway, so this may be our last chance to really perform as a country).

It's a tough choice. We had a good run of 4 years and I felt it was time to take a few hits and bring in a younger team. 3-4 years to rebuild with the new core so we can start moving up again when they hit 26-30. Next season we will have 12 players in the 25-27 range. This is when I expect us to climb back into the next round and make it to the final 32/16 again the season after.

Well, we came really close to beating Greece with lackluster tactics. They were not even trying though, so that does not bode well xD

With China being a handout, and Spain being impossible to win, it really just leaves Hungary as a toss up. We'll try to win

The rebuild is taking shape!

This was a good day for our senior NT: We tied with Latvia, whom is a landslide away from us in team rating.

We're 4th in our group so far, but very close to the UK with a 14 points deficit, which could be overcome if we win a few games.

This is still a transition season, lots of old guys have stopped getting better, and building chemistry for the younger ones is taking a while.

Abysmal game for Curt Greene on the TO level (7! WTF?!) even though he was one of the highest scorers. Guess he should shoot rather than pass the ball, eh? Good performance by Lundy, though! He's cemented his spot in the line-up at this point

Important win against lithuania today. They are #2 in our group and we are #4.

We play the czechs next, who are #5 with the same amount of wins, and we end against Latvia, who are #1, whom we tied against last game.

No direct game vs #2 and 3, so we gotta hope the UK loses to latvia in their next game (they tied the last one too!).

We have 2 games left vs their 1, so anything is possible!

Heads out that we don’t have a captain selected for our team. Not sure if a captain provides a boost like in hockey, but we should still have one.

Also, I have several players that could potentially be on the senior team next season: Gordie Huntley, Jonathan Cairns and Bronson Balsillie.

Captain was not selected because we had no chance of qualifying, so he took the last game off from playing in favor of building chemistry for other players in prediction of next season.

Cairns is already on the list of call-ups for next season (but Humphreys has a fair lead OR-wise for a few seasons still).

Huntley and Balsillie are currently on the fence if I recall correctly, but I can tell you pretty much any canadian player that stays on your team is almost automatically certain of making at least 2 out of 3 NTs. We don't have a lot of teams with top facilities.

Ok sounds good!

first win of the tournament for our senior team, thanks in good part to an impressive defensive performance by our back line (10 steals and 5 Blocked shots! + 7/9 on FB attempts).

The bright side is that there are 3 other teams in our group with only 1 win. actually, exactly 1 win, 1 draw, 3 losses. Our point differential is awful right now, but 2 more wins should put us in a position to move on to the next round.

This should be the last heavy transition season (I said that last season didn't I?). We didn't have much of a choice if we wanted to bring in the newer talent with more optimal OR into the fold. The previous manager (sanipyu) hadn only cared about the current team and not planned ahead and it hurt us.

Just noting here that Pascal Ashcroft (NT goalie) is currently on the market (~32 hours left, so deadline around 1PM tomorrow).

I *just* bought myself an HR upgrade so uh, limited money to spend here (but I could replace Sinnott, I guess?). The highest bid (25M) was by a team with lvl 1 facilities, which would kill his progress (whatever's left of it. I'm pretty sure he has at least 2 seasons left at 1 CL, but I could be wrong)

Halliday could arguably step in, but the next up is 23yo Hughes, and he's 300 OR behind as a back-up, and our team is already struggling through this transition phase so... Just putting that out there.