Jon Cooper is finally trusting all four of Canada’s lines

For as stacked as Canada’s men’s Olympic hockey team looks on paper, watching them had begun to feel a bit like watching the Edmonton Oilers; killing time until Connor McDavid’s line can jump over the boards to make something happen. It had, at least, until about midway through Canada’s thrilling 3-2 semifinal win over Finland on Friday.

Trailing 2-0 in the back half of the second period, Sam Reinhart tipped home a puck on the power play for his first goal of the tournament. In the third period, Canada’s newly formed fourth line of Sam Bennett, Brad Marchand, and Tom Wilson created prolonged pressure in the offensive zone, resulting in defenseman Shea Theodore’s game-tying blast. The superstars capped off the Canadian comeback, with Nathan MacKinnon wiring a one-timer off a McDavid cross-ice pass on the powerplay, but Canada’s depth lines finally gave head coach Jon Cooper reason to believe in them heading into Sunday’s gold-medal game.

On Friday’s episode of The Sheet, host Jeff Marek was joined by Greg Wyshynski and Tyler Yaremchuk to discuss Cooper’s newfound faith in all of his forward lines.

Tyler Yaremchuk: My big takeaway is there were some other parts of this lineup that Jon Cooper really started to trust. Not that the best coach in the NHL needs me to heap praise on him or anything like that, or that it’s unexpected that he’s making the right calls, but I tweeted when Sam Bennett took that penalty, and this is me being emotional, that he shouldn’t see the ice the rest of the game. Well, he saw the ice a ton in that hockey game, and he goes out there and that line was awesome.

Jeff Marek: That line with Bennett, Marchand, and Tom Wilson got tons of love. I mean, every chance he got, and you can understand why, he was firing out MacKinnon, McDavid, and Macklin Celebrini.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Friday’s episode here…