Jacob Trouba talks about his World Juniors experience
By Michael Caples –
ANN ARBOR – After his Tuesday night game with the Michigan Wolverines, Jacob Trouba said the last few weeks really hadn’t “set in” yet.
Considering what he had been through in the last few days, nobody could really blame him for not finding the time to sit back and process his new accomplishments.
Trouba was one of Team USA’s top performers in the 2013 International Ice Hockey Federation Under-20 World Championship in Ufa, Russia from Dec. 26 through Jan. 5. In fact, he played so well that he was named the top defenseman in the entire tournament – which is a collection of the top under-20 talent the entire world has to offer.
Yet the adventures didn’t end there for Trouba; Team USA’s Sunday flight experienced delays during the long trek back from Russia. The freshman standout for the Wolverines didn’t arrive back in Ann Arbor until 9:30 a.m. Monday morning. A red-eye flight wasn’t enough to prevent him from returning to practice, however; Trouba was on the ice with his teammates for a 3 p.m. skate on the same day.
Michigan coach Red Berenson gave his star defenseman the option of finally taking a break and missing the Wolverines’ game against Bowling Green last night; Trouba elected to start, instead.
All the more reason for the 18-year-old to confess that he hadn’t really thought about the World Juniors that much yet – but it wasn’t hard to talk about how he felt when that final buzzer sounded to confirm that he and Team USA were champions.
“It was a pretty cool feeling,” Trouba said late Tuesday night. “I don’t know, it still hasn’t really set it in yet, I guess I’ll probably think about it more in the summer when that comes around, but yeah, it was definitely, definitely pretty cool. I thought we had a pretty special team. It was definitely a pretty cool experience.”
“Pretty cool” is putting it lightly. Trouba led all defensemen in scoring in a tournament that featured an even higher talent level than most years due to the NHL lockout. His four goals and five assists helped his team survive in the ‘win-or-go-home’ situation they were in from the final game of the preliminary round. And he helped hold rival Canada to a single goal in a 5-1 semifinal win for the U.S. that will be talked about for a long time to come.
Yet Trouba just wanted to give credit to his goaltender – tournament MVP John Gibson.
“I thought I played well, Gibson played well, he saved me a couple times,” Trouba said. “All the ‘D’ played well; I think the top three scoring defensemen were on our team, so it wasn’t just me. Everybody played well. It takes more than one or two guys to win a gold medal, so it was definitely a team effort.”
The victorious Team USA squad is a team that Trouba won’t soon forget, either. Many of the players he traveled to Russia with are former teammates with the National Team Development Program, where Trouba played for his last two years of high school. And two of those teammates – Ann Arbor native Patrick Sieloff and Livonia native Riley Barber – won youth hockey titles with Trouba during their Compuware AAA program days.
“It was definitely cool, it was our third – no, fourth, I guess – big championship, two with Compuware and then last year and all that,” Trouba said, last year as a reference to Team USA’s championship at the World Under-18s last April. “It’s always nice playing with those guys and getting to see old friends, so it was pretty cool.”
The tournament victory marked the third time that Team USA captured gold at the World Juniors, and their third time in the last four years that they have medaled in the prestigious tournament. Trouba said that this year’s success was important for USA Hockey.
“I think it means a lot,” Trouba said. “I think hockey is growing in the U.S., and it’s only going to continue to get better.”