The World Cup of Hockey features the best players in the world at every single position. There are stars all over the place.
But with all due respect to Carey Price or Erik Karlsson, the true star power of this World Cup is at forward. It's a best-on-best tournament like we haven't seen before because of Team North America (the best players from the continent under age 24), and the event is going to feature forwards like Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, Alex Ovechkin, Connor McDavid and even a guy like Patrik Laine, at whom NHL fans will get their first real good look. It's going to be great.
Defense and goaltending have traditionally won championships, but the Pittsburgh Penguins just raised a Stanley Cup because they had a forward group for which no opposing team had an answer. A deeper group of forwards than everyone else can be a game-changer. With that in mind, here's a ranking of the eight World Cup forward groups:
1. Team Canada
Canada remains the gold standard mostly because it has the best centers in the world. The Canadians flexed that muscle in the second exhibition game against Team USA, when Crosby sat and coach Mike Babcock ran out of center group of Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf, Jonathan Toews and Claude Giroux. It's an embarrassment of riches, and makes Canada the favorite in this tournament.
Again.
"You could probably have two groups of Canadians," said one NHL head coach and World Cup assistant. "They're strong all the way through, and what they have is a selfless attitude coming in. You do whatever it takes to help the team because in Canada you do whatever it takes to make the team. So, you do whatever it takes to stay on the team."
We've even lost the narrative that Crosby can't find linemates, because it looks like the Penguins captain has settled in nicely with Bergeron and Brad Marchand.
"Canada has the big names. They won the Olympics. They're just stacked with stars," Team Europe's Tomas Tatar said. "It's just that it's a short tournament, some things can go wrong for you, so you never know."
2. Team Sweden
The beauty of the Swedish forward group is that there's more versatility than the Swedes get credit for. You have the otherworldly skill of the Sedins, Daniel and Henrik, complemented nicely by Loui Eriksson on a top line.
Patric Hornqvist plays with the edge to his game, and Gabriel Landeskog is a big, strong, physical forward.
Marcus Kruger is the ideal fourth-line forward, a role in which he has thrived in Chicago. He can anchor the penalty kill and is strong on both sides of the ice. Carl Hagelin is off-the-charts speedy. This group has a bit of everything.
"They'll be a puck possession team," one World Cup team executive said. "Certainly when you have the likes of the Sedins, Nick Backstrom -- who holds on to the puck forever and can make plays -- and you've got your grizzled parts with Hornqvist going to the net and Eriksson around the net. They've done a nice job building that team. They can play any style they need to."
3. Team North America
At some point, when this team was lighting Team Europe up with five goals before the game even got going in exhibition No. 2, you got the sense of just how dangerous the kids can be.
Todd McLellan has been shuffling the lines, looking for the right combination and chemistry for a group playing together for the first time. That's the challenge for the forwards. But there isn't a faster group in the World Cup than Team North America's forwards. McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Jack Eichel, Johnny Gaudreau and Dylan Larkin are all world-class skaters.
Through two exhibition games, the forwards seemed to effortlessly enter the offensive zone with control of the puck, and had a transition game as dangerous as anyone. The team scored a World Cup-high 11 goals in two exhibition games, and might just be scratching the surface.
"The young guys, they're all great players," said Team Europe's Anze Kopitar, who got a taste of what the rest of the tournament could be in for, following two convincing Team North America wins.
There isn't a ton of size and physicality in this forward group, something that could be an issue if an opposing team tries to get overly physical. Then again, Gaudreau summed up that concern pretty well.
"It's tough to hit something you can't catch," he said.
4. Team Russia
In terms of pure firepower and explosiveness, there might not be a better potential line in this tournament than one made up of Evgeni Malkin, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ovechkin.
There should also be instant chemistry between Artemi Panarin and Artem Anisimov, who were great together with the Blackhawks during Panarin's rookie season. Kane might not be the third player on that line like he is in Chicago, but you can do a whole lot worse than a guy like Tampa Bay's Nikita Kucherov, who has emerged as one of the league's best big-game goal scorers.
"On paper, for sure, they're one of the three best [forward groups]," the executive said. "They attack; they attack with speed, skill and power. They have execution; they have production at the NHL level. It's going to be a hard team to defend."
One wild card is Vadim Shipachyov, who North American fans might not know well, but showed he can play with anyone with an impressive performance in the IIHF World Championships last spring.
5. Team USA
It's the World Cup's great chemistry experiment. GM Dean Lombardi and coach John Tortorella passed on some great players up front, most notably Phil Kessel, in assembling this group.
"They're an interesting group because they're put together with a distinct identity of how they feel they have to play to win," one coach said. "Give them credit for stepping away from choosing the best 20 players to choosing the players they think they can win with. That's a formidable team; they're doing what it takes to win the tournament, not just be in the tournament."
Lombardi's fingerprints are all over it, with a team built in the same physical manner in which he built his two-time Stanley Cup winning Kings. A guy like Justin Abdelkader, criticized by outsiders for making Team USA, would always have a spot on Lombardi's Kings. It's also worth noting that Tortorella is giving burly defenseman Dustin Byfuglien some time at forward in practice.
"It's either going to be a great success or it's going to have been the wrong way to build," the executive said. "Dean likes a big, physical style. He's had great success with that in L.A. He sees it as a winning formula. That's how he built his team. There's a distinct reason for doing what he did."
And it's not like this team doesn't have skill. Kane is one of the most skilled players in the world. He'll have his World Cup moment.
A guy like Blake Wheeler probably doesn't get appreciated enough for what he brings to the table. either.
"He has blinding speed," Jets coach Paul Maurice said. "Blake has the ability to go as hard as he possible can shift in and shift out the entire night. He doesn't go in and out of games, he goes out and plays as absolutely hard as he can."
That's the identity of this group.
6. Team Finland
This is the classic "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" group. In terms of sheer talent, Finland doesn't stack up to the world's powers, but the moment you underestimate this group, it beats you.
"I love the Finns," the executive said, echoing just about everybody in hockey. "They play with so much determination and commitment to whatever role they are given. They just constantly compete and I wouldn't say they do it in a quiet way. They compete where they'll just respectfully go over you, back up and go over you again. They're warriors."
Aleksander Barkov is maturing into one of the NHL's next great two-way centers, and his success will go a long way in determining Finland's fate here. Leo Komarov is a pain to play against, and a guy like Erik Haula has the skill level to make an impact from the bottom six.
Laine brings the star power, and it's going to be fun to watch the Jets' top pick playing on the big stage.
"I expect him to look like he did at the World Championships," said Maurice, who is on the Team Europe coaching staff. "His release, how he gets it off the stick, [is impressive]. Most, if not all, Finnish players are well-schooled and compete hard on the puck. He knows where he's supposed to go when he doesn't have the puck. He competes, he battles, he looks like a player with an unbelievable shot. You like those kind of players."
7. Team Czech Republic
This forward group doesn't have much star power, but it has players perfectly comfortable playing a complete game against NHL players. Martin Hanzal has spent his career going toe-to-toe against the Western Conference's best centers like Kopitar, Toews and Joe Thornton. There isn't a team in the West that wouldn't love to have Hanzal at center.
Radek Faksa has a mature game for his age, and it translated well as his playing time increased for the Stars in the playoffs last spring while Tyler Seguin was injured. Ondrej Palat is one of the game's best two-way wingers, with a bit of Marian Hossa in him.
The Czech's are a bit like Finland in that you'd better respect this group when you play it.
"They play an incredibly patient style," Maurice said. "They're not chasing the puck. They're not running out of position. You can't allow frustration to build in that game. You're not going to get a flow against that team as much as you'd like."
8. Team Europe
This group is still working it out. It doesn't have the advantage of the other European countries in having a built-in identity. And it doesn't have the high-end skill that the other hybrid team in this tournament (North America) has.
It has veterans that know how to play in Kopitar, Hossa and Marian Gaborik, and a coach in Ralph Krueger who has proven he can get a team playing a system in a short period of time. That's going to be key for this group. Finding that identity and system in short order.
They showed they have pride in the way they pushed back against North America in the second and third periods of their second exhibition game, but there's no doubt this group is a long shot.
"We've always been underdogs, no matter of where we went," Kopitar said of the different nationalities and nontraditional hockey countries that make up this roster. "That usually makes you stronger, tougher and [it's something] we can build on."