Team Canada shows promising signs in WJC pre-competition win over Sweden

The balanced attack Team Canada talked of before training camp could be a work on progress

That Olympic model, having four trios that all have "an underlying ability of skill and talent," was played up as a framework for building a lineup that will try to end a five-year gold-medal drought. On Sunday, in its first outing since New York Islanders No. 5 overall pick Michael Dal Colle was squeezed out of the final 13 forwards by brawny Lawson Crouse, Frédérik Gauthier, Nick Paul, Nick Ritchie and Jake Virtanen (and to be fair, waterbug Brayden Point, who simply played with more alacrity than Dal Colle), almost all of their chances were generated by the top two lines. Having the Sam Reinhart-Max Domi-Anthony Duclair troika flourish while Connor McDavid did Connor McDavid things worked well in the 5-2 pre-competition win over Sweden, but the stakes will be much higher in little more than one week's time.

So yes, complementary scoring will remain a coaching (and talking) point. Canada went with a Paul-Nic Petan-Robby Fabbri third line and Gauthier-Crouse-Virtanen in the fourth with Point listed as the utility forward.

"You know what, they were okay," coach Benoît Groulx said of his third and fourth lines. "I thought they created some chances. I also thought that when we moved Petan in the middle [with Paul shifting to left wing on the line with Fabbri], he seemed to look comfortable. Nic hadn't played in 10 days so for him he felt rusty a little bit, especially on the wing. I thought he got better, especially in the middle.

"There's no lines set in stone yet," added Groulx, whose team's last dress rehearsal is against Switzerland in Montreal on Tuesday. "We want to think about what we're doing for the next game."

Canada outshot Russia and Sweden by a combined 96-39 over its 120 minutes of test run for the world junior, which begins on Friday in Montreal. The best defence is a good offence, and Canada cranked up the thermostat around Samuel Ward more often than not when McDavid's and Reinhart's lines were on the ice. Sweden's goals came on a screened point shot on a power play and Toronto Maple Leafs prospect's William Nylander's backhand shelf job on a third-period shot, as Eric Comrie stopped everything he was supposed to.

"At times tonight there was too much gap between our defencemen and our forwards," Groulx said. "It's something that we have to work on, our cohesion to stop the puck in the corners and recover the puck and go in transition. It's something I thought we did pretty good vs. Russia [in the 2-1 loss last Friday]."

The chemistry with the Reinhart line, with opened the scoring 2:26 in on a dirty-area Domi tally on the power play, is evident. Canada also had two goals from the back end — a big plank in the aforementioned Olympic model — with 19-year-old defencemen Josh Morrissey and Shea Theodore also scoring.

Finding a way to best utilize playmakers such as Fabbri and Petan, though, will be paramount. Fabbri, the 18-year-old Guelph Storm star, is one player who has the certitude to go all out and take a chance offensively. He's well suited to the high-paced game Canada says it's aspiring to play.

"He [Groulx] wants us to get to the net," Fabbri said after Sunday's pregame practice. "The first thing on my mind is when I get there I'll use my creativity, and use my linemates and get the puck in the back of the net.

"We want to just play in their end, not our end."

The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Paul is also a big asset who's looking to fit into the grand scheme. The Ottawa Senators signing's value tends to reveal itself over time. Paul has had different linemates (Ritchie and Point, then Petan and Fabbri) in the pre-competition games. The North Bay Battalion standout also appreciates the value of a team having someone other than one of the usual suspects heat up randomly, since that happened when his OHL team during its 2014 run to the league final.

"No matter what order we put them out there, everyone did the job and it was hard for teams to match that," he said on Sunday.

In the big picture, though, Canada looked more self-possessed now that the roster is set. That was a contrast from the perimeter play that characterized the Russia loss, where it scored once on 53 shots.

"You've got to make fakes, you have to be active, you got to be imaginative and that's what we expect from our players in this tournament," Groulx said in the morning.

Following the Switzerland exhibition, Canada's Pool B opener is against Slovakia on Friday.

Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.