Team USA on World Cup performance: 'We failed'

TORONTO – The morning before Team USA’s final game of the World Cup of Hockey, the group’s coach and general manager said they were upset with how the tournament played out for the Americans but doubled down on the construction of the team’s controversial roster.

Coach John Tortorella and general manager Dean Lombardi said they believed the team they picked, which included two-way grinders like David Backes, Justin Abdelkader and Brandon Dubinsky was created to push culture over skill. They said knew their most skilled team couldn’t beat Canada so they had to build their group a different way. Team USA lost to Canada 4-2 — their third straight ‘best-on-best’ loss to the Canadians. The loss prevented them from making the semifinal round. Team USA takes on the Czech Republic on Thursday night.

“I’ll be honest, we’re not as deep as Canada skill-wise,” coach John Tortorella said. “Not sure USA hockey will like me saying that, but it’s the truth. It’s a situation where I still think, in our mind, we could not just skill our way through Canada. That’s our first thought. I’ve been in situations against Canada, this one’s different because it happened so quickly. I’ve watched them turn in games, turn up momentum and change games. That’s why we went to this with our team, to build identity and handle momentum swings. We failed.”

Tortorella said there was enough scoring skill on the team to succeed, but as a coach, he couldn’t coax enough offense out of the team.

“In the four days we played we didn’t bring enough offense and that’s the tricky part. It has to happen right away. Right out of summer, try to get guys together and it didn’t happen,” Tortorella said. “We do have to answer this question, but I’m not going to say that we should’ve blown up this whole situation on how we built tis team, because I think we have really good people there. I need to take other responsibility there. I don’t think if found the right mix quick enough for our club. And I’ll say one thing about Dean Lombardi: there is no one… this is where I can’t sleep because I felt I let him down – that guy put so much time into this the past 14-15 months. I feel for the players. But from the management side, because I was with him, I watched how meticulous he was trying to do this the right way, I feel for him. So I am not going to second-guess on how we did that because we do have good people offensively.”

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Lombardi also noted the importance of having players who he believed had the right type of emotional involvement in the tournament and for the country.

“The one thing I will say, it was the No. 1 thing I want, give me 22 guys who care,” Lombardi said. “That is where it starts. From there you build competitiveness, culture and everything else. If you don’t have 22 guys who care, you’re not going get this where to. I know we have the first part. There were guys with tears in their eyes the other night and they were real. I will always remember that. Some of the texts I got from players yesterday, I will treasure them the rest of my life. That is good stuff. Those are things you don’ t forget, even in failure. That part we got down. I told them I wish I had this group for a longer period of time, because I know we could have built that culture. But it didn’t happen.”

Lombardi was also asked about leaving more offensively gifted players off the roster, specifically Pittsburgh Penguins sniper Phil Kessel – who is one of the best U.S. born goal scorers in the NHL. Lombardi listed off several players he took ahead of Kessel and explained why he believed they were the right type of players for this situation

“Part of that will be in my book down the road (on not taking Kessel), but let me say this. If you’re talking about Justin Abdelkader, Blake Wheeler, Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Kesler, David Backes, I’ll take those guys any day, any day. Is that who you’re talking about? You’re going to have to play against those guys in a little while, but that’s basically the tradeoff. Those guys have big time heart and when I talk about caring, they’d be the nucleus of the caring and they compete and they can play for me any day,” Lombardi said.

Tortorella said he didn’t find the right line combinations, and that’s what he has struggled with since Team USA’s loss to Canada. The Americans have scored two goals this tournament in two games. In the first game, Tortorella kept Kyle Palmieri – who scored 30 goals last season – and Dustin Byfuglien – who scored 19 goals last season – on the bench as healthy scratches.

“The thing that you look at when you don’t’ develop offense, as a coach, did I get people playing with the right people? It’s hard to do in three days. I tried to match up people, so I need to take responsibility with that. We didn’t gel offensively,” Tortorella said. “We improved as far as away from the puck and coming out of our end zone. But to finish plays and get people to match, that’s something I think about. In my mind, that’s where I have to take responsibility, because we have good people. We just didn’t bring enough offense to this tournament. You have to do it quickly, and that falls on me.”

To Lombardi, he believed his team’s problems started against Team Europe. The Americans were downed 3-0 against the Europeans in their first game of the tournament, which set up their failures in the World Cup. This surprised Lombardi, since Team USA went 2-1-0 in the exhibition slate, which included a win over Canada.

“I’ve been down, have been on a team that was down 3-0 in a Stanley Cup series and that is the proverbial 8-ball. Well, this felt like a boulder. It was just really strange,” Lombardi said. “It’s like how this can happen so quickly to where your back is against the wall after one poor game? That is something you kind of, because then from there, you obviously then start looking, okay, that was the game we should have won. So not only we didn’t win, it’s very clear from all of us we did not play up to the level we are capable of. So you turn that over in your head.”

The future of USA Hockey wasn’t specifically addressed during the news conference. Team USA has meticulously put together two teams for their last two international tournaments and failed to come in the top three in both. The Americans were shut out by Canada in Sochi in 2014 in the semifinal and then were beaten badly by Finland in the bronze medal game. That didn’t lead to any sort of reckoning for the organization with how it puts together its ‘best-on-best’ teams. This group was picked by much of the same brain trust as previous teams. But Tortorella noted that based off how Team North America played this tournament with American centers Auston Matthews, Jack EIchel and others – the future of the organization should be OK.

“We have the people who can change the momentum, we did not and that falls on us,” Tortorella said. “But we don’t have enough skill. There’s some coming as you can see, especially up the middle for USA Hockey. Would’ve been nice to have them with us now, but that’s not how the tournament was run.”

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

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