Sidney Crosby celebrates his overtime game winning goal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
There are few sporting activities I enjoy more then being an arm chair general manager! As fans of professional sports we all like to feel as involved in the games as possible. We scream out offensive plays for our favorite football teams to run, we lambaste coaches for not giving our favorite young point guards enough playing time and if you are my cousin Ian and I, you spend months and years trying to predict the Canadian men’s hockey roster usually the moment the winter Olympic Games end! It was not long after Sidney Crosby scored the “Golden goal” as it is now famously known, that we were back to the drawing board attempting to draw up a roster that we felt would give our country the best chance at winning gold once again!
Back and forth our text messages would go, tweaking, agreeing or politely pointing in another direction when I claim that Jonathan Drouin would make the Olympic team! Lets face it, most Canadian hockey fans think they would do twice the job that the guys at Hockey Canada do when it comes to putting together national teams. (No offence Mr.Yzerman). They’d all be wrong, with the exception of us! (That’s what they all say to..) What follows is our crack at getting it right for the Canadian team. We have conducted extensive interviews will all of the players, and even brought a handful of them to cousin Ian’s new home and ran them through a rigorous gauntlet of Stephenson style physical tests. They included but are not limited to; wheelbarrowing mounds of dirt from one spot to another, picking rocks, painting fences and then moving some more dirt. Here we go.
On July 22nd, both Hockey Canada and USA Hockey announced the players who have been invited to take part in each nations orientation camps. These camps are one step toward deciding which players will be granted the honor of representing their country at the Winter Olympic games. Cousin Ian and I have decided that this is an excellent time to update our projected rosters for both teams! We will probably do this once more later this year and see how, if at all our projections from the summer have changed! So let’s take a look at our projected rosters for both teams and then analyse some differences. Here are our Canadian rosters and a discussion on where we differ on the make up of the potential roster!
Cousin Ian’s Team Canada Roster
Forwards
Rick Nash – Sidney Crosby – Steven Stamkos
Taylor Hall – John Tavares – Claude Giroux
Andrew Ladd – Jonathan Toews – Logan Couture
Eric Staal – Ryan Getzlaf – Corey Perry
Patrice Bergeron – Jamie Benn
Defensemen
Duncan Keith – Drew Doughty
Dan Hamhius – Shea Weber
Brent Seabrook – P.K Subban
Alex Pietrangelo – Kris Letang
Goaltenders
Carey Price
Robert Luongo
Corey Crawford
Tim’s Team Canada Roster
Forwards
Steven Stamkos – Sidney Crosby – Martin St.Louis
John Tavares – Claude Giroux – Rick Nash
Taylor Hall – Jonathan Toews – Corey Perry
Matt Duchene – Patrice Bergeron – Ryan Getzlaf
Eric Staal – Brad Marchand
Defensemen
Duncan Keith – Shea Weber
Drew Doughty – Alex Pietrangelo
P.K Subban – Brent Seabrook
Kris Letang – Travis Hamonic
Goaltenders
Robert Luongo
Carey Price
Corey Crawford
Up Next: Roster Discussion
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