An early exit before the semifinals for Team Canada's junior hockey team will have repercussions. The question becomes where those ripples will end up.
Will it be on the ice, changing how players get selected, or from the top down, as executives lose jobs over this failed outing?
For now, speculation is all that's possible. But one thing seems certain: Dave Cameron will not be back as head coach of Team Canada next year. If he is, the outrage from coast to coast will be immediate and deafening.
One poor decision from Dave Cameron as coach seemed to be followed by another, with each one backfiring in some form, until the team finally lost heartbreakingly.
His failure to discipline his players or utilize his best talent at the most critical junctures gave every appearance of a coach who was out of his depth.
Amazingly, he said that he did not regret his approach and even appeared bemused that anyone would ask him if he should.
Whenever Team Canada doesn't reach the semifinals, introspection and regret are to be expected, actually, even demanded.
Among the most heinous examples came with Cameron's move to give his players three days off in total during a somewhat condensed tournament schedule.
Rest is important, sure, but three days in one week? It was a question that raised many eyebrows and contributed to the result.
Cameron acknowledged the stiff competition and the difficult road Canada would have to navigate as if to say that predicting the difficulty somehow absolved him of responsibility.
But foresight without the corresponding preparation is hardly praiseworthy. The criticism doesn't stop there.
An anonymous scout, speaking to Steve Ellis, said they wouldn't even trust Cameron to manage a McDonald's drive-thru at 3 a.m., a damning statement that underlines the general lack of confidence in his leadership.
For a country so proud of its hockey legacy, this failure calls for nothing less than introspection and course correction.