Canada forward Jonelle Filigno kicks the ball past New Zealand midfielder Betsy Hassett during the first half at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, June 11, 2015.Erich Schlegel
Down in the Brain Room, Canadian coach John Herdman prepares his team for all possibilities. He may have overlooked acts of God.
Four minutes after the start of Thursday's game against New Zealand, lightning prompted referee Bibiana Steinhaus to clear the field. The teams retreated indoors.
Herdman was the only person left outside, pacing compulsively. There was no way to hurry things along. By FIFA rule, a weather delay must last at least 30 minutes.
The fans, many of whom had been sitting in the slating rain for more than an hour beforehand, also stayed stubbornly in place.
A repeating message bleated: "For your own safety and comfort, we need you to proceed to the concourse in a calm and orderly fashion."
Few people moved. It's Canada. If you were the sort to bend to the whims of meteorology, you wouldn't last long up here.
Once the rain stopped, the drought resumed.
"We're a better team," Herdman said beforehand. You wouldn't know it by watching.
New Zealand – who has never won a game at a World Cup – was every bit Canada's equal. Which is to say, neither team was particularly sharp.
After many untaken chances at either end, it finished in a 0-0 draw. The result puts Canada on four points in Group A, and almost guarantees it a place in the knockout rounds. It's not certain, but it's close.
Since Canada has ridden its luck so far, why not continue?
In the team's first game, a late, fortunate penalty gifted them the win. On Thursday, a 33rd-minute New Zealand penalty came back off the Canadian crossbar.
Increasingly, Canada is one-third of a decent team – reasonably tight in the middle and flapping loose at either extremity. In that instance, a careless hip-check by fullback Allysha Chapman drew the nearly disastrous foul.
You get the strong impression Canada will come out of the first round of this tournament all right. But then what?
The defensive gaffes – lazy passes at the back, giveaways near their own goal, organizational confusion – will haunt the team eventually. After another discombobulated game, defender Lauren Sesselmann was pulled two-thirds of the way through. That group is already thin.
Just as worryingly, the lack of goalscoring from is edging out of "we have a few concerns" territory into "sound the klaxons, we have a full-blown emergency."
Stretching back to Germany, 2011, Canada has now gone four World Cup games without a goal from open play.
It has only one offensive gambit – hoof the ball toward Christine Sinclair and hope like hell. The team's midfield string-puller, Sophie Schmidt, no longer bothers glancing left or right when she's moving with the ball. Her eyes are tethered to the captain's jersey as it disappears up the middle.
Sinclair had several gilded chances. On a first-half semi-breakaway, she scuffed her shot. An instinctive snapshot in the second half was pushed onto the New Zealand bar. In the final minutes, she finally had the goalkeeper beaten, and curled it wide.
She is still a marvellous player, but Sinclair is not the laser-sharp attacker we remember from the London Olympics. Not yet, at least.
The other two starting forwards – Melissa Tancredi and Jonelle Filigno – are largely invisible, left drifting out on the flanks, unserved. When Tancredi was left all alone late in the game, she drilled it into the goalkeeper's feet. She's a flickering shadow of the force we saw in 2012.
It's hard to fool anyone when you aren't bothering to try. Right now, scouting Canada is a two-word proposition – "Blanket Sinclair." Once that's done, everyone else in red develops situational blindness and begins desperately launching the ball toward no one in particular.
It's not working, but nor is it failing. That makes it the perfect time to consider a radical fix.
In the early Group A game, China – who'd turtled in the opener against Canada – dominated the Dutch. Only the poor quality of Chinese finishing prevented a baseball score. China won 1-0.
One of the results of expanding this tournament to 24 from 16 teams is exposing the gap between countries who've done this for a while and the countries who've just begun to embrace the women's game. The Dutch are plainly the latter.
If Canada beats the Netherlands on Monday in Montreal, it moves through as group winner. That game is now more important than a result or a placing.
It may be a last chance for Canada to round into elite form before it begins facing elite teams.
Cathal Kelly