#WCH2016: Murray, Jones key for Team North America’s defense

MONTREAL — Team North America should be able to do some damage offensively with its skill and speed, but will it be up to the task of defending some equally high-powered opponents at the World Cup of Hockey 2016?

Based on the first three days of practice, it appears Team North America coach Todd McLellan will turn to the defense pairs of Seth Jones and Ryan Murray of the Columbus Blue Jackets, and Aaron Ekblad of the Florida Panthers with Morgan Rielly of the Toronto Maple Leafs for that assignment.

“I’ve got some pretty good chemistry the second half of the season with Ryan and I think that we’re pretty comfortable together,” Jones said after practice at Bell Centre on Wednesday. “We played against some pretty good competition this year in the NHL, so I think we’re up for it and we’re going to do what we can to be solid defensively for the team.”

Jones said he’s not worried about facing wave after wave of elite scorers, including Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin of Team Russia, Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin from Team Sweden, and Team Finland’s top line of Aleksander Barkov, Jussi Jokinen, and Patrik Laine, in the preliminary round.

“With all the international tournaments we play, it’s all-star teams, so even third and fourth lines are still players that put the puck in the net,” Jones said. “You can’t take a shift off. In the NHL, you can’t go out for a single shift and lollygag around and get caught up, or think you can take a break on one shift, and then go hard on the next one. There’s none of that. This isn’t anything but like an NHL game for us.”

Ekblad said that preparation will be essential for Team North America, which has three pretournament games to get ready for its opener against Team Finland at Air Canada Centre in Toronto on Sept. 18 (8 p.m. ET; ESPN2, SN, …

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