Name: Projecting the 2022 Canadian men's Olympic hockey roster
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Projecting the 2022 Canadian men's Olympic hockey roster

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Feb 2, 2021The 2022 Winter Olympic Games are just a year away and to celebrate, we’re projecting what the rosters for the major teams might look like in Beijing.&nbsp;| | | | | &nbsp;Remember how the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang unfolded? Canada won a hard-earned bronze medal playing a stingy brand of defence under coach Willie Desjardins and lost only a single game in regulation – to Germany in the semifinals – before defeating the Czech Republic to earn a place on the podium.Just one thing was missing: players. Hockey’s crème de la crème. Three years ago, the NHL decided not to participate in the Winter Olympics for a lot of reasons that made little sense to the hockey world which made the Games look a little like the Spengler Cup.Thankfully, as part of the collective bargaining extension signed last summer, the NHL is returning to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing — assuming the logistical details can be ironed out among the league, the IIHF and the IOC and that the pandemic is under some sort of control.With apologies to all the players who competed so hard for Canada in 2018, the selection process this time around will be far more difficult because of the staggering depth of the talent pool.One thing Canada never lacks at the highest level of hockey is oodles of options at both forward and defence. The players who don’t make the grade for Canada would fill out a ‘B’ team that would contend for gold.How might Team Canada 2022 look? Thought you’d never ask. In our eternal quest to be helpful to the managerial powers-that-be, here are our projections for a 25-player roster, which is what the IOC permitted for Sochi in 2014.As always, remember that in Canada, for an exercise such as this one, there really aren’t many bad options. Just too many good ones.The last time men’s hockey had a best-on-best tournament was back in 2016 and if that World Cup taught us anything, it is that the younger generation of players dominating the game today had no stage fright whatsoever when they were got a chance to play together as North America’s 23-and-under team. They were fun to watch and unlucky not to advance to the medal round.In previous Olympics, sometimes Canada’s management team would opt for veteran players over young up-and-comers because of a fear that they might be overwhelmed by the moment. Team Canada’s biggest Olympic bobble in the NHL era came in 2006 and you wonder what might have happened if they’d injected the youth and vigour of onto a team that seemed slow and plodding on the big ice of Turin.By contrast, the decision to go with the 20-year-old in Vancouver proved quite prescient – he was one of the key contributors that year and then again in 2014 in Sochi, as Canada won back-to-back golds.Nowadays, Doughty is one of the more polarizing players in the game. He still plays a ton of minutes for the and oozes confidence. On a blue line that features a whole lot of next-gen talent – from and to and — chances are they’ll opt for one or two steadying veterans on the blue line. We’ve selected and Doughty to fill out what is otherwise a talented but relatively green defence corps that’ll get the puck up to the forwards, with great dispatch and accuracy.Canada’s 2014 gold-medal team won with a stingy brand of hockey and timely saves from , whenever he was called upon. That can be a challenge sometimes – playing goal on a team that surrenders few Grade-A opportunities and tests your level of focus and concentration because there will be the occasional breakdown that you will need to be in a position to respond to.Long-term, will likely take over from Price as Canada’s go-to starter in goal, but there are still some inconsistencies in his game that drops him down to the No. 2 position. One wild card I considered here was the Devils’ , who had an excellent rookie season last year and was off to a good start this year as well. Chances are if ’ GM Doug Armstrong has the final say, would likely be the third goalie on this roster.All of which leads us to the hardest, most controversial decisions which involve the forward group. There’s the usual problem of having too many natural centres on the roster and so someone will have to switch to the right wing. Among the elite-level centres in Canada, both and are right-handed shots and could swing over to the wing. One likely will have to and in this scenario, it’s Scheifele, if only so that MacKinnon and , who developed some familiarity playing for Team North America in the World Cup, can play together.That creates some flexibility if the coach – we’re picking – ultimately wants to shift Nugent-Hopkins up to ’s line.Splitting Crosby and may also just be temporary. In 2016, those two along with were the clear top line for Canada, and scored all the important goal. But Bergeron will be 36 by the time the Olympics roll around, and thus, didn’t make the final group here. You could theoretically put Marchand, Crosby and MacKinnon (playing right wing) together on an all-Nova Scotia line and the chemistry could be magical.The beauty of Canada’s roster is the versatility of so many of the better forwards – Ryan O’Reilly, , and could all play the wing as well as down the middle. Chances are, every line that Canada rolls out will include two natural centres making face-off match-ups easier for the coaching staff, if they can fit both a right- and a left-hand centre onto each line.The bottom line: With a player pool so deep, Canada has incredible talent and flexibility. Talent enough to get the go-ahead goal in a tight game.Flexibility enough to juggle lines as needed and get the defensive match-ups as required. The greatest coaching challenge is usually selling a one-for-all and all-for-one vision. If a star player is forced to adopt a secondary role, he’ll need to handle it with maturity and grace and cannot start pouting because he isn’t the first option on the PP or the PK the way he might be on his club team.Managing egos is as big a part of the job for the coaching staff as setting lines and spooling out ice time. — Eric DuhatschekI’m going to keep this very simple.Hockey Canada has a formula. It involves a few key rules that have helped Team Canada dominate best-on-best competition to an unprecedented degree over the past decade:1) Everyone plays on their strong side.2) Wherever possible, bring pairs of players that play together in the NHL so you have an immediate chemistry advantage in a short tournament.3) Bring extra centres and just have them play on the wall.4) Experience and tenure matter. If you were on the last team and are still elite, you have an edge in the event all other factors are equal.Now, Hockey Canada has also opted to play grinding, low event hockey over the past decade. It’s cynical, it’s ruthless and it delivers gold.However, this approach stinks. It shows a certain ruthless focus, which I appreciate, but it actually lacks any grander ambition.Hockey Canada could aspire for more. They should aspire for greatness.They should aspir for a national men’s team with the purpose of articulating a national vision of a beautiful, skillful and yet still assertive and physical two-way brand of hockey. Canada’s men’s team could play hockey beautifully if Canada decided to play hockey beautifully, and that’s what this team is going to do — within the framework of Hockey Canada’s otherwise winning formula.Right off the top, I’ve built the fastest first line in the history of the sport. McDavid moves to the wing mostly for handedness reasons. A top line of McDavid, MacKinnon and are going to test the limits of what’s possible to accomplish in hockey playing at the highest possible speed.Until one of Marchand, Crosby and Bergeron fall off and aren’t among the NHL’s best individually, they’re a set line for Hockey Canada. This is the easiest choice there is. They have chemistry, experience, swagger as a group, and they bring the DNA of Hockey Canada’s decade-of-dominance to this forward group.The third line is where things get interesting, particularly because this is where the toughest omission from my team — — kicks in. Ultimately I’m going to make a decision to prefer ’ experience, ability to cover in the event of a centre injury and his chemistry with Mitch Marner over Huberdeau’s electricity.I’m not bringing Rob Zamuner or Kris Draper to fill a role or anything, but my fourth-line definitely has the identity of the highest-end possible version of an energy line. Honestly, in some matchups, this trio may well end up being Hockey Canada’s matchup line ahead of the Crosby line, since it’s just a collection of the countries most willful two-way players.I’m bringing and Couturier as extra forwards, basically two centremen — a lefty and a righty — which means snubbing Bo Horvat and , my toughest omissions besides Huberdeau.We weren’t asked to name coaches, but I should add that I’ve named Pete DeBoer and as assistant coaches, partly because they’re deserving and partly so that my top-four can get reps together throughout the NHL season leading up to the 2022 Games.There’s a factor in the international game that I still don’t think Hockey Canada has fully incorporated into their player selection process, but they really should: Puck-moving defenders are everything.Which is why — probably my most surprising selection — is a slam dunk no brainer for this team and is likely to play a prominent role. Thanks to Bednar’s colluding with me to win a gold medal, he’ll spend more time with Makar in the season leading up to the Olympics (although they’ve spent 200 5-on-5 minutes together the past two seasons, so they’re not exactly strangers). Same goes for Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore, who have played together a bit at 5-on-5 in the early going for Vegas (about 35 minutes so far), but will become the Golden Knight’s fixture top pair in 2021-22 for the purposes of Olympic preparation.Doughty makes the team because he’s still performing at a high enough level that his status as the most important Hockey Canada veteran defender matters. And Morgan Rielly will be his partner on a mobile third pair, narrowly edging out Giordano.is custom made for the international game and my Hockey Canada will have zero reservation bumping him up the lineup if injuries call for it.In net, Price and Hart are coming to represent the past and the future while Jordan Binnington gets the nod to round out my trio of netminders. I’m comfortable enough with all three goaltenders that whoever is performing the best ahead of the tournament will go into the round-robin as my defacto starter. — Thomas Drance(Photo: Christopher Morris / Corbis via Getty Images)

Feb 2, 2021The 2022 Winter Olympic Games are just a year away and to celebrate, we’re projecting what the rosters for the major teams might look like in Beijing.&nbsp;| | | | | &nbsp;Remember how the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang unfolded? Canada won a hard-earned bronze medal playing a stingy brand of defence under coach Willie Desjardins and lost only a single game in regulation – to Germany in the semifinals – before defeating the Czech Republic to earn a place on the podium.Just one thing was missing: players. Hockey’s crème de la crème. Three years ago, the NHL decided not to...

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Thomas Drance

Eric Duhatschek

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Projecting the 2022 Canadian men's Olympic hockey roster

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