Team USA Goaltending Betrays Them in World Junior Loss to Slovakia

FanHouse is keeping hockey fans updated on the happenings at the 2009 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships in Ottawa.

No matter the angle I want to take with this update, it keeps coming back to one thing.

When you have a win-or-go-home situation in hockey, the result so often comes down to goaltending that you have to curse a team that doesn't have an adequate presence between the pipes.

So, in light of that thought, I offer curses to Team USA.

This isn't about ripping Thomas McCollum (NHL rights: Detroit). He's a freaking teenager, and I am pretty sure he'd be the first one to tell you that he didn't play very well.

(This is more true if you're referring to Friday's loss to the Slovaks than Wednesday's loss to Canada. That game was more about some horrific defensive failures leaving McCollum hung out to dry.)

So if you're looking for someone to rail on McCollum, you're looking in the wrong place.

I'm not exactly sure how the Americans fell behind. But their recent World Junior failures have highlighted a severe deficiency in our developmental system. We're just not getting good enough goaltending as a whole. At no point in this tournament was McCollum dominant. He never made the big save, like Canadian Dustin Tokarski did multiple times while the game against the United States was 5-4.

The Slovakian team deserves many congratulations for moving on in the medal round Friday. Their 5-3 win shows nothing can be taken for granted, no matter how much random idiots on the internet may think so. Jaroslav Janus was on his game Friday, and he wasn't going to give in, no matter how many first-round picks Team USA threw at him.

Team USA, meanwhile, continued its incredible defensive/goaltending meltdown that started the second they made it 3-0 against the Canadians Wednesday. McCollum wasn't very good, and neither was the "help." It was the kind of game that made me want to scream, because I firmly believe that you have a backup goaltender just for situations like this. I've seen teams turn their fortunes around by making even a temporary switch to a backup goalie. Sometimes, it gets the five guys without huge pads to play better in front of the goalie, instead of relying on the goalie to make every save.

There's no guarantee it would have helped, but there's no way it would have hurt. The Americans were a mess on that end of the rink, and there was no way a goalie change would make things worse.

Instead, the decision was made to stick with the status quo. Obviously, that didn't work too well. Team USA plays the Czech Republic for fifth place Sunday night.

Canada and Russia meet in a semifinal Saturday night, with the winner playing either Slovakia or Sweden for gold.

This isn't the result any of us anticipated, but to talk like a coach for a second, let's hope USA Hockey uses the disappointment as a positive motivator to find means of improvement in both the developmental system and the national team selection process.