Due to work commitments I'm a little late here on my first thought analysis. So here's just a few notes:
- The actual team only differed from my projected team by three players. I had Martin St. Louis, Brad Richards and Jay Bouwmeester. The actual team instead includes Patrice Bergeron, Eric Staal and Drew Doughty.
- I am mostly comfortable with this Team Canada. No doubt there will be a lot of second guessing going forward, especially concerning Mike Green, but Canada has done a good job attempting to bring some instant chemistry to the lineup.
- Some people are concerned about the experience level. They are young, and the pressure in Vancouver will be immense. But as Hockey Canada points out - "All 23 players have international experience, including 53 gold medals, eight Olympians and, as a group, the players have played in 702 international games, 13,136 NHL regular season games and 1,219 NHL playoff games."
- I commented already on Green, and strangely I'm comfortable with the exclusion of the highest scoring NHL defenseman in the past couple of years. If Canada's power play sputters like it did in Torino, heads will roll though.
- Green's spot was taken by Dan Boyle more so than Seabrook, Weber or Doughty. They are essentially the same player, but Boyle has instant chemistry with San Jose's PP kings Thornton, Marleau and Heatley. That's big. As a PP quarterback, you really got to know your players, advantage Boyle. Weber can eat up PP minutes too, as his big shot will allow Canada to keep the PP simple - put it to the point and crash the net for rebounds.
4 comments:
Well, I still miss Mike Green, NHL devensive leader in points, but also +/- (at least counting those 7 nominees). But I see both you and Stevie Y have some serious reasons to ignore him. Still - I'm kind of stunned.
Maybe if Ovechkin would be a Canadian, he had been nominated. :-)
I also miss Marc Savard and Ryan Smyth a bit. The Captain Canada, always willing to represent country, always fighting.
Okay, at least it's still a young, "healthy" team. Not like aged Slovakia and Finland.
That's how I see it from my big cosy chair in Ostrava, CZ.
As a Canadian, I think Slovakia could be the surprise of the tournament.
Either them or the Americans.
Slovaks are basically a disguisted Czechs. I'd be happy too see them with the gold medals around their old necks. :-)
Here in Czech Republic it's always the same: "just no Russians".
As Eric Duhatschek has said today, if Canada's best players play their best they should have a great shot at winning gold. The final few picks for the team won't be a decisive factor.
John J
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