"We Were Playing Our Canadian Style": Cole Reschny on Wearing the C for Canada
A day after his box score showed three second-period assists, Cole Reschny tells TSN how Canada erased a 3-0 deficit against Finland: hits, pucks deep, and wearing the other team down. He also opens up about wearing the C for the first time.
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Cole Reschny wore the C for Canada on Thursday. Asked what that meant to him afterward, he turned the question back on the room.
“It’s all of us returners could wear a letter,” he told TSN after Canada’s 5-3 comeback win over Finland at the World Junior Summer Showcase. “We’ve got a special group returning here.”
That answer is the whole player in one line. Reschny finished the night with three assists, all inside a five-minute stretch of the second period, on the goals that erased a 3-0 deficit. He did not lead with that either.
Canada trailed 3-0 before that stretch, and Reschny’s explanation for the turnaround was plain: it was a plan, and it was physical.
“It was kind of our plan, playing our Canadian style,” he said. “We were playing hard, getting checks, putting pucks in deep in their zone, and you could see them start to wear down. Things started to go our way. We had a lot of momentum, a big power-play goal in the third, and we just stuck with it the whole time.”
“Our Canadian style” is doing real work in that sentence. Team Canada arrived at this Showcase still carrying last year’s result, and Reschny said as much to TSN two nights earlier: “We weren’t happy with last year’s summer camp and then last year’s result at the World Juniors, so it’s a whole different mindset here this year.” A team that spent an off-season looking for its identity found one Thursday night, in a hole of its own digging, by getting heavier than the other team.
Reschny was asked about his linemate Dima Zhilkin, who scored twice on the run, and reached for the same idea.
“He’s got a bit of a bite to his game too, so I like to think of myself like that too,” Reschny said. “He’s not the biggest guy, but he sure gets in there.”
He also scored the winner in the shootout that followed, a bonus session that doesn’t touch the final score. Asked what he saw on the move, he did not dress it up.
“Bad ice. That’s what I was seeing.”
Independent commentary. Not affiliated with the Calgary Flames or the NHL. Quotes via TSN.