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Canada crushed the Czechs in a pair of pre-tournament games — and has a 12-1-2 record against them in the history of the world juniors — but no one is taking them lightly, especially with the tournament moving to a single-elimination format.

“You can’t take any team for granted,” said Strome, who was part of the team that lost last year’s quarter-final to Finland. “It was a 2-3 seed game last year and we’re in a 2-3 seed game this year. That game (against Finland last year) was 6-5 and you’ve got to be prepared for anything. Finland obviously had such a great team and who knows if they were expecting a 6-5 game. Nobody was, probably. It was a crazy game, back and forth. It’s quarter-finals and you’re playing for your life now, so you have to throw out all the stops.”

That’s where the new lines come in. Canada finished with the third-best record in the preliminary round, but there are many areas where it can improve. After scoring just one goal against the U.S., Canada is looking for ways to generate more offence — particularly in 5-on-5 play.

In four games, Canada has scored 21 goals, nine have come on the power play.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that we need to create more 5-on-5,” said Strome, who has scored both his goals on the power play. “Try to switch it up a bit and hopefully we can create something. I think we’ve been doing an OK job of working them down low, but we have to find ways to score goals.”

“Five-on-five goals are huge in this tournament and we don’t have enough of them in this tournament, so we have to find ways to create them.”