Brodeur, Luongo, Bertuzzi lead Canadians
Team Canada goes with experience over youth
A couple of days ago I reviewed the 2006 US Men’s Olympic Hockey Team. Sure, they’re a talented bunch, but the Canadian team announced yesterday promises to skate circles around the young, talented, and underexperienced American team.
How good is Canada on paper? Well, let’s check out who WASN’T selected to wear the Maple Leaf. No Sidney Crosby (“The Next One”). No Eddie Belfour, who backstopped the Dallas Stars all the way to a Stanley Cup in 1999. No Steve Yzerman, perhaps the greatest teammate a hockey player could ever have. And no Curtis Joseph, who, when it comes to NHL goaltenders, takes a back seat to no one.
Canadians can and no doubt will debate the composition of this team, but there can be little doubt that this team sends a clear message. It’s not an All-Star team by any means. It IS a team built to win an Olympic Gold Medal, which it may well do. In terms of talent and physical presence, there will not be a team in Turin superior to Canada. There may be teams with more overall speed and more offensive firepower in the Olympic tournament, but no team will take the ice with more grit and determination than Canada. No team will be shouldering a heavier burden of national expectations. Of course, if you grow up playing hockey in Canada, this is the sort of stuff you dream of…and it doesn’t get much better than this.
While the US team seems to be built to gain experience for a run at a gold medal in 2010, Canada (as always) is built to win NOW…and it may well be able to do that. In a short tournament such as the Olympics, goaltending could well make the difference, and no team will have a better goaltending corps in Turin than the Canadians. If Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo, and Marty Turco play up to their pedigrees, it’s difficult to imagine any team being able to beat Canada. They won’t win a lot of 9-7 barnburners, but then again they’ll shut teams town long before things get out of control. They will win the 2-1 and 3-2 tight games that are usually the hallmark of Olympic competition.
Game on, eh?? I can hardly wait….
