QUEBEC CITY -- Team North America coach Todd McLellan knows the hockey world is watching. He knows he has a team full of the game's next generation of stars and that whatever line combinations he puts out there will be immediately distributed and dissected on social media.
Until Friday, he had resisted the combinations fans have most wanted to see. To paraphrase forward Nathan MacKinnon after practice, he's now giving the people what they want.
Coming off an impressive 4-0 win against Team Europe on Thursday, McLellan shuffled the deck and put Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel together on a top line with Johnny Gaudreau during Friday's practice. There won't be a faster line in the tournament than that one, which features the top two picks from the 2015 draft in Eichel and McDavid, two guys who will be compared to each other for the rest of their careers.
It took a week for the pairing to happen during World Cup training camp, which only built the anticipation more. It was almost as if Chuck Daly had waited five days to put Larry Bird and Magic Johnson on the court together with the Dream Team in 1992.
If McLellan sticks with it, this line will make its debut in Sunday's pre-tournament game (6 p.m. ET, ESPN3) against Team Europe.
"Whatever works and whoever we find chemistry with, that's ultimately what will happen," McDavid said. "If it's us three, then perfect. Who better than to play with [than] those two?"
That McLellan was shuffling the lines at all shows just how high the expectations are for this group from its coaching staff. They shut out Team Europe in a game that showcased their speed and skill on both ends of the ice and, still, McLellan started from scratch with the lines in the next practice.
He wasn't thrilled that the speed tapered off as the game went on. He wants to see more shots, along with second and third attempts on scoring. In short, he thinks this group has a lot more to give than what he saw in one game.
"We've got to find out if there's better combinations before the tournament starts," McLellan said. "We didn't reach our ceiling last night. We didn't come close in a lot of avenues."
Thus, the new line combinations were born.
In putting McDavid, Eichel and Gaudreau together, Team North America is showing off its speed a bit -- but what makes those three potentially great is a high-end hockey sense. They can all make plays at high speed, so it's not just speed for the sake of speed.
Defenseman Aaron Ekblad explained it this way: "They have a ton of speed, but there's no speed without smooth play. That's what they do that might set them apart from other players."
What exactly does he mean by smooth play?
"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast," Ekblad said. "You don't want to go too slow and not do anything, but you want to go slow enough that it's smooth. Hard, crisp passes are fast. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast."
McLellan also pleased the fans, especially those in Halifax, by reuniting Jonathan Drouin and MacKinnon on a line with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins at center. Drouin and MacKinnon were junior teammates with the Halifax Mooseheads in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, where they combined for 180 regular-season points in 2012-13. In the playoffs that season, Drouin had 35 points in 17 games.
While watching his former teammate in the playoffs with the Tampa Bay Lightning last spring, MacKinnon saw a guy making the same plays he did against junior teammates and doing it against great NHL players.
Needless to say, they're excited about the opportunity to give it a go together in the World Cup. As are the other three.
"You could put a list of names in a hat and pull them out randomly and it would be fun to play with anyone," Gaudreau said. "These kind of tournaments give us the opportunity to play with some of the best players in the world. All of us young guys, we're having a pretty good time here."