Thumper to the Rescue?

Coach Stone's Secret Weapon: Thumper!

Lyndsey Fry is the last, forgotten, forward for the Team USA women. I don't recall her getting a shift in the 3-2 loss to Canada on Wednesday.  For those familiar with Fry's story, you know that she is carrying two dreams, and a second jersey belonging to the late Elizabeth Turgeon.

http://www.usahockeymagazine.com/article/2013-12/sisterhood-traveling-jersey-lyndsey-fry-skates-memory-elizabeth-turgeon

But her plight is more than the realization of two dreams by making Team USA and marching in the Opening Ceremonies. She is now a vital chess piece in the bitter rivalry with Canada as the two nations are dead even co-favorites for the treasured gold medal. You may wonder how a forward with no minutes in the previous game can have so much potential impact on the golden outcome. Well here's how it breaks down: prior to USA star Amanda Kessel's recent return from a lower body injury, Fry was inserted onto the best line in women's hockey, playing alongside Brianna Decker and the insanely fast Kendall Coyne.  And they cooked. In the game that turned around the USA fortunes, Fry set up the winning goal with the sweetest helper of the night, and her line was a physical force all game long.  The Americans were rolling 3 explosive lines, banging bodies, and humiliating Canada in their own Center of Excellence, putting an end to the Canucks 3-game win streak. Fry's physicality and jump created space for two of the best forwards in the world, and she was also feeding them pucks tape to tape.  Fry's Olympic dream was doing just fine, thank you very much. She was thriving: playing with reckless abandon, creating offense and thumping opponents, probably the best asset of the 5'8" 170 pound power forward.  

But when the frail yet gifted Kessel returned, she was plugged back into the offensive unit that lit up Canada in last year's World Championship, and Fry slid down to the end of the bench. Team USA ran through Switzerland and Finland by a combined 12-1 score with three lines, former captain Julie Chu on the first Penalty Killing unit, and Fry stapled to the bench. And then the Americans ran into Canada, or actually vice-versa. The Canadians ran the Yanks, repeatedly and convincingly, and never more violently than when Coyne got double stapled behind the Canadians net at the end of the second period. She wobbled off the ice and surprised the NBC announce team by showing up for the third. Team Canada coach Kevin Dineen had clearly put physical intimidation on his white board, with the vaunted Kessel-Coyne-Decker line on the top of the list.  And it worked.  Canadian hockey media mogul John Shannon was convinced that Stone was short shifting her star line, limiting her club to two and a half lines, as Canada pulled away in a game that turned into a lopsided corner war. 

So in this see-saw battle of the two women's hockey superpowers Canada now has the edge, a physical edge, and it couldn't be at a worse time for the Americans. They have one last shot to salvage their 5-ring dream, and they have become the nail to Canada's hammer, which is never a good thing in hockey. And here's the solution: Put Lyndsey back in the fray.  Here's what she had to say after banging heads with Canada in a tight loss at the 4-Nations Cup this past November in Lake Placid.

“I think the reality, at this level, when all of us are as strong as we are and as solid on our skates as we are, yeah, we can throw our bodies around. You wont see these kinds of hits in college because you don’t have, collectively, the strength out there to take the hits and you know I think everyone wants to talk about the hostility between the two teams, but I don’t necessarily think there’s anything cheap in that game. I think everybody played really cleanly on both sides, battle on the walls, yeah, we’re going to throw our weight around.”

And then Fry revealed some personal stuff between little giggles that came across delightfully after being asked if the physical battles were fun for her.

“I mean I’m a big kid, so it’s really fun for me. I love it, I played boys hockey until I was in high school, I was a thumper, I loved it.  So it’s good to be back playing at a level where I can throw my body around.”

In a gold medal game in which physicality is at a premium, Fry, the Thumper would be the x-factor USA desperately needs.  So where do you insert her without disjointing the team's balance?  She and the other spare forward Julie Chu are a bit too similar to carry a line themselves. So here's the solution:

1) Return Fry to her line with Decker and Coyne. They will go from being the hunted to hunters with Thumper banging bodies and collecting pucks for her gifted linemates;

2) Kessel forms a new line with Julie Chu and the splendid skating swingman Jo Pucci, currently one of 7 defensemen but equally capable at forward.  You suddenly have 3 special players with unique skill sets.  They will be a dangerous 4th line.

3) Katey Stone will no longer have to match lines and play chess with NHL veteran Kevin Dineen. She just has to just sit back, roll four wonderful lines, let the Canadians scramble, and remember to smile from the top of the podium.

It will require a ton of guts to "demote" America's most celebrated female player from 2013 from what was best line in women's hockey a year ago.  But suitcases full of gold medals for eternity don't come easily; guts and glory go hand in hand.