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Levi brilliant again, Team Canada going for gold

The pandemic-delayed start to hockey season gave goaltending coach Jason LaBarbera and the rest of Canada’s world junior team coaching staff time to pour over video clips of players in action from last season - just in case there were any players who

The pandemic-delayed start to hockey season gave goaltending coach Jason LaBarbera and the rest of Canada’s world junior team coaching staff time to pour over video clips of players in action from last season -  just in case there were any players who might have slipped under the radar and weren’t invited to the summer virtual training camp.

Good thing they did that, otherwise they might have missed a chance to put a Team Canada jersey on goalie Devon Levi. He's been nothing short of spectacular..

The 19-year-old from Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Que., was superb again in Monday's 5-0 semifinal win over Russia, making 27 saves for his third shutout of the tournament to help send Canada into the gold-medal final Tuesday night against either the United States or Finland, who meet in the other semifinal tonight.

Through six games and 340 minutes of hockey, Levi has allowed just three goals (all on opponents’ power plays) including his 29-save shutout Saturday in a 3-0 quarterfinal win over the Czech Republic. Levi, a seventh-round Florida pick in 2020, joined the team from Northeastern University and his 0.53 goals-against average and .975 save percentage ranks among the all-time-best goaltending performances for Canada in the tournament’s 45-year history. His three shutouts ties the tournament record for Canadian goalies held by former Prince George Cougar Justin Pogge.

“I obviously liked what I saw in the video and a lot of people I talked to had a lot of good things to say about him but you never know how it translates coming into a camp of this magnitude and facing the shooters that you’re going to face and facing the elite of the elite of your country,” said LaBarbera, prior to Monday's game.

“I thought he was skilled enough and talented enough to handle it and the kid’s been a rock so far. Honestly, since the day he got out west from school and I soon as I saw him on the ice, I was pretty intrigued by him. He’s done nothing but trend in the right direction. He’s a mature kid with his approach; he’s really intuitive and smart and add that on to the fact he’s a helluva goalie. He’s done everything you could ask for a kid who’s never gone through this before.”

Canada breezed through the preliminary round, dominating their opponents in all four games, but there were times in all of those games where Levi got tested severely and he held his ground.  He was at his best against the Czechs, who outshot Canada 29-25.

“He just settles things down, and Joel Hofer did that for us last year in key moments,” said LaBarbera. “It was a tight game and we weren’t having our best night and there were moments where you could start to feel a little tension and Devon made a save and smothered the puck and got a whistle and he calmed the waters. When goalies are able to do that in tense moments it lets everybody breathe.”

With Levi playing so well, goalies Taylor Gauthier of the Prince George Cougars and Dylan Garand of the Kamloops Blazers haven’t played at all in the tournament and likely won’t, with just one game left for Canada to win.

“It’s never easy watching, but at the same time this is the world juniors and you’re part of an event you might never get to part of again,” said LaBarbera. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and both guys have handled it well, they’ve both been a pleasure to work with and they’re both good people and you want good things to happen to them. It sucks if you’re not playing but it’s also pretty cool to be part of it, especially with the way the year has gone for everybody. Nobody’s playing hockey, so that’s even more reason to try and embrace it as much as possible.”

While Gauthier will be too old for next year’s tournament in Edmonton/Red Deer, Garand has one year of eligibility left.

“I was saying that to Garand (during practice Sunday), I said I know it’s not easy this year for you but you can take this experience on the ice and look around, this could be you in a year with a full building and how awesome would that be,” said LaBarbera.

LaBarbera was the goalie coach for last year’s world junior team that came back to beat the Russians in the final in Czech Republic and he considers this year’s edition more talented. Because of the pandemic, NHL teams made their top prospects available which raised the calibre of the team, which (including the injured Kirby Dach) has 20 first-round draft picks. The 19-year-old Gauthier is the only one of the 25 players not drafted into the NHL.

“There’s probably more skill on this team through the lineup than last year, I think we are deeper this year, especially up front, and that’s probably the biggest difference,” LaBarbera said. “Those first two periods against Finland were impressive, we didn’t let them breathe, and you need four lines to play like that. It’s impossible to play like that every night and it’s impossible if you’re only rolling three lines.

“Most Canadian teams are relentless like that and the smother teams with their work ethic and pace and we do have an elite group in that sense.”

The national team camp began Nov. 10 and after two players and a staff member tested positive for COVID they spent 14 days in quarantine in their hotel rooms in Red Deer and another five days sequestered individually in Edmonton before tournament play began.  There have been no positive tests for Team Canada in the Edmonton bubble.

With no fans in the building for any of the games, LaBarbera misses that energy a Canadian crowd would bring.

“You still feel the intensity and the emotion but during a TV timeout it’s just dead, there’s no noise, it’s weird,” he said. “They have this piped-in noise in the building and as cheesy as it is at least it kind of sounds like something on TV, but live it’s weird, because that building’s so big.”

LaBarbera just signed a three-year contract to become the Calgary Flames goalie coach after four years with the Calgary Hitmen and he’ll join the Flames at training camp on Thursday. His playing career ended in 2015 when he retired after 16 seasons and 187 games in the NHL. He played minor hockey in Prince George for several years before he left the city at age 15.LaBarbera hasn’t seen his family in nearly two months and is looking forward to heading back home to Calgary Wednesday morning, hopefully with a gold medal around his neck to show his wife Kodette and sons Easton, 9, and Ryder, 11.

“It’s been a haul, for sure,” he said. “You get so consumed by what you’re doing here and you’re so busy and that helps and there is technology with Facetime but it’s not the same. You miss out of Christmas and those kinds of things but you get to experience it and they’re having a good time watching the games and feeling they’re a part of it too.”