Coach Jim Paek and South Korea looking to surprise in Olympic men’s hockey behind talented goalie

SEOUL, Jan. 18 (Yonhap) — For decades in the National Hockey League (NHL), star goalies have put their teams on their back and carried them to great heights. Think of Ken Dryden, who lifted the Montreal Canadiens to the Stanley Cup in 1971 as a raw rookie with just six regular season games to his credit. Or another great Habs netminder, Patrick Roy, in 1986. Both Canadian icons won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the Stanley Cup playoffs in those years, with Roy adding two more in 1993 and 2001.

At the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, the South Korean men’s hockey team will need similarly spectacular performance by its No. 1 goalie — who also happens to be from Canada, but more on that later — if it were to accomplish its stated objective of winning a gold medal.

Head coach Jim Paek, former NHL defenseman with two Stanley Cup rings, unveiled his 25-man roster on Thursday for the Feb. 9-25 Olympics. He has three goalies, eight defensemen and 14 forwards, and the games rosters will be limited to 22 players — 20 skaters and two goalies.

And none will likely play a bigger role than Matt Dalton in the net, an Ontario native who has since been naturalized as South Korean.

Paek has been publicly saying the goal is always to win the Olympic gold, since there’s no point of going into any games to lose. It may be Paek’s motivational ploy, something that realists may scoff at, but if Dalton can stand on his head for long stretches, South Korea could maybe surprise a few people.

South Korea is at No. 21 in the world rankings and only made it to the Olympics as the host. It will be a heavy underdog against its three group opponents: No. 1 Canada, No. 6 Czech Republic and No. 7 Switzerland.

The talent gap may have narrowed somewhat since the NHL will not send its stars to the Olympics, forcing teams like traditional powers Canada to scramble to find players from the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) and other European circuits.

And the KHL, regarded as the second-best league behind the NHL, is where Dalton previously starred, having failed to make it to the big show. The 31-year-old moved to South Korean club Anyang Halla in the Asia League Ice Hockey for the 2014-2015 season and backstopped the team to back-to-back titles in 2016 and 2017.

Dalton’s importance to the team was never more clearly illustrated than during the Channel One Cup tournament in Moscow last month.

He faced 155 shots in total and stopped 143 of them in South Korea’s three losses — 4-2 to Canada, 4-1 to Finland and 5-1 to Sweden. South Korea actually led Canada 2-1 after one period, and Dalton did his best to keep the team in every game before the defense in front of him failed him.

With or without the NHL players, South Korea will be hard pressed to match its Olympic opponents on offense. It means Dalton will once again be asked to hold his fort and give South Korea at least a fighting chance.

In a recent interview, Dalton said he can’t win games by himself no matter how well he plays.

In this file photo taken on Jan. 10, 2018, South Korean men’s hockey goalie Matt Dalton speaks to reporters at the Jincheon National Training Center in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province. (Yonhap)

“(Goaltender) is an important position but hockey is a team sport,” Dalton said at Jincheon National Training Center in Jincheon, 90 kilometers south of Seoul, on Jan. 10, during the national team’s open house event. “There are guys out there helping me do my job and I help them do their job. The most important thing is how you handle that stress and pressure.”

Dalton will have three fellow Canadian-born defensemen playing in front of him: Alex Plante, Eric Regan and Bryan Young. Plante, a former first-round pick by the Edmonton Oilers, is a towering, 196-centimeter blueliner who also plays with Dalton on Anyang Halla. Regan, also an Anyang teammate, is another big body at 188cm, and can play effectively in all situations — even strength, power play and penalty kill.

Among homegrown rearguards, Lee Don-ku is Regan’s partner on the top pairing and also plays a solid all-around game.

On offense, the top line of Mike Testwuide, Kim Ki-sung and Kim Sang-wook brings speed, skills and toughness. The two Kims are brothers and the two smallish players have clicked well with Testwuide, a solid scorer at 196cm.

South Korea’s first game is against the Czechs on Feb. 15, followed by the Swiss on Feb. 17 and the Canadians on Feb. 18.

Source: S. Korea looking to surprise in Olympic men’s hockey behind talented goalie