TORONTO -- Imagine being Rob Blake over the past 24 hours.
As part of Team Canada's management team, he was fully invested in a major win over rival Team USA at the World Cup of Hockey. No better feeling for a former Team Canada star player now turned executive.
On the flip side, it's not fun seeing his Los Angeles Kings GM Dean Lombardi getting raked over the coals for his decision-making in putting together Team USA.
"It's a tough position," Blake, assistant GM for the Kings, told ESPN.com Wednesday. "I think they all know they have to go through Canada at the end of the day. They talk about it a lot and they probably use it as a way to get the guys motivated and that. But then when it doesn't go that way, there's going to be fallout. It'll be tough on him because he doesn't make any of those decisions without doing a ton of work in the background. That I know for sure, I see him in the office every day doing that. You know, it's not like he's throwing a team on a piece of paper and says, 'Here we go.' He put a lot of work into the background and everything."
Blake, as of Wednesday afternoon, hadn't reached out yet to Lombardi. He wanted to give him some time, but he was going to give him a call soon enough, as there's also some Kings business to go over together.
The narrative now in the wake of Team USA's ultra-disappointing performance here is that USA Hockey needs to rethink its ways. I mentioned to Blake that it was reminiscent to what happened here with Hockey Canada after Canada's semifinal loss to the Czech Republic in the NHL's first foray in the Olympics at Nagano in 1998. That came two years after losing to Team USA in the World Cup finals, Blake part of both of those Canadian squads. Hockey's birth country had a total meltdown after Nagano, and it actually led to a major summit in Toronto assembling some of the game's smartest coaches and executives in an effort to rethink how players were developed in Canada.
Part of the legacy of that summit was that Hockey Canada did indeed change many of its ways, spawning an impactful generation of players that has since dominated best-on-best hockey with Olympic wins at Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014.
"I think the intriguing thing for both countries right now is the young stars, the North American team," Blake said of the 23-and-under squad featuring Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Johnny Gaudreau. "There's a lot of talent on that team for both those countries that are up and coming.
"But yeah, it's no different when we lost in Japan [in 1998], it was like they had to redo everything," Blake said. "But I think you want that pressure because you're expected to win these tournaments. I'm sure from knowing Dean and their management side on the U.S., they had the same expectations, they were expecting to win. It's no different from the guys in Canada. The expectations are always to win."
And when you don't, you accept the fallout that comes with it.