{"id":849,"date":"2016-09-08T21:34:03","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T01:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/?p=849"},"modified":"2016-09-23T11:33:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T15:33:34","slug":"connor-mcdavid-to-captain-team-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2016\/09\/08\/connor-mcdavid-to-captain-team-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Connor McDavid to Captain Team North America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday evening, <strong>Team North America<\/strong> announced that <strong>Edmonton Oilers<\/strong> forward <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/m\/mcdavco01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connor McDavid<\/a><\/strong> would be the captain of the team. The team also announced\u00a0<strong>Florida Panthers<\/strong> defensemen <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/e\/ekblaaa01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Ekblad<\/a><\/strong> and <strong>Philadelphia Flyers<\/strong> forward <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/coutuse01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sean Couturier<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0would serve as the alternate captains of the team. The announcement was made just a couple of hours before Team North America&#8217;s <strong>World Cup of Hockey<\/strong> pre-tournament game against <strong>Team Europe<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WCH2016?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#WCH2016<\/a> UPDATE: Announcing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cmcdavid97?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@cmcdavid97<\/a> as <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TeamNA_WCH?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@TeamNA_WCH<\/a> captain, with Sean Couturier &amp; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ekblad5FLA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Ekblad5FLA<\/a> dubbed alternates. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/jkYqXdKHDw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/jkYqXdKHDw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NHLPA (@NHLPA) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NHLPA\/status\/774018983217405952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 8, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>McDavid, Ekblad, Couturier and Team North America will be competing in the first World Cup of Hockey in 12 years, the last one taking place in 2004\u00a0when\u00a0<strong>Team Canada<\/strong> won it all. \u00a0The 19-year-old Oilers star will captain the group of under-23 stars throughout the tournament. Team North America is in Group B along with <strong>Team Finland<\/strong>, <strong>Team Russia<\/strong>, and <strong>Team Sweden<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h2>McLellan Points To Strong Leadership<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;On a team full of future NHL captains, we have a strong leadership group on Team North America,\u201d Team North America head coach <strong>Todd McLellan<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wch2016.com\/news\/connor-mcdavid-named-team-north-america-captain\/c-281643442?tid=281230238\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">said in a press release<\/a>. \u201cIn particular, these three players \u2014 Connor, Sean and Aaron \u2014 have identified themselves in camp as key leaders for our team. They will be assisted by their teammates to ensure the full group is working together towards our goal of having success in the World Cup of Hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Team North America faces off tonight against Team Europe in their first preliminary game, and will then play Team Europe again on September 11th in their first tournament game.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/519292114\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/519292114?et=K_Eala-BQ-9ncSlWuXe1bg&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=4sD62YmjgmS3ADq5F-FPOSD9pQQhCom2DbvU7-kdssE=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday evening, Team North America announced that Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid would be the captain of the team. The team also announced\u00a0Florida Panthers defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Philadelphia Flyers forward Sean Couturier\u00a0would serve as the alternate captains of the team. The announcement was made just a couple of hours before Team North America&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1187,"featured_media":862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"1473363540","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"McDavid named captain for Team North America.  Ekblad, Couturier= alternates","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,304],"tags":[210,346,139,37,38,387,345],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-international-hockey","tag-2016-world-cup-of-hockey","tag-aaron-ekblad","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-north-america","tag-sean-couturier"],"modified_by":"Zachary DeVine","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}