Let's just get this out of the way first--American hockey sucks. The only players I can name on the Olympic team are Ryan Miller who is one of the top keeps in the game Joe Pavelski who plays for my favorite team, the San Jose Sharks, who are sending seven players to Vancouver (including both goalies). They'd likely send more, but 14 of their 23 players on the roster are from Canada. The Sharks sent their stars Marleau, Thorton, Heatly and Boyle to the team, but players such as Ryan Clowe, Devin Setoguchi and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, while good players that would start for the US, were left off Canada's Olympic roster. Why? Because Canada has assembled what could possibly be the best Olympic team since the Edmonton Oilers of the 80's (who never participated in the Olympics, but probably could have beaten any one country's team).
Aside from the best players from the currently best team in the Western Conference,
Canada has Sidney Crosby, which should probably seal their fate for a gold right now. I could go on naming forwards such as Rick Nash, Jerome Iginla, Mike Richards Steve Stamkos and Patrice Bergeron, or a defense studded by Scott Niedermeyer and Chris Pronger, but what's more amazing is the lineup of goalies. Martin Brodeur, Marc-Andre Fleury and Roberto Luongo. Even the Russians will have a hard time putting the goal in that net.
Hockey legend Don Cherry says team Canada has to win. "There is no question, we can't settle for silver." With that lineup, I have to agree. They can't settle for silver, and definitely not for another 7th like in Torino. They're biggest challenge will be Russia, which better be the final, because their's nothing in hockey as exciting as a Crosby-Ovechkin battle (except a Sharks-Ducks game--by the way, I wonder if Thorton and Getzlaf will start a fight on the bench 2 seconds into the game like they did in Game 6 of the playoffs last year).
In other exciting Olympic hockey news, I just thought that this list of players still on their team's rosters would be amusing to anyone who knows anything about hockey.
Russia- Sergei Federov 40 years old
Czek Rep.- Jaromir Jagr 38 years old
Sweden- Nicklas Lidsrom 39 years old, Peter Foresberg 36 years old
Finland- Teemu Selanne 39 years old
1 comment:
Thank you Keith for once again bringing the most pertinent issues of our time to the forefront of our consciousness.
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