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Leading up to the World Cup roster announcements for Team Canada there was a lot of talk that one - or even both - of Mark Giordano and T.J. Brodie could be named to the team.
Giordano was putting the finishing touches on an excellent campaign where he tallied 21 goals, 56 points and drove possession while playing top competition on a nightly basis and dressing in all 82 games.
Brodie's offensive totals weren't quite as spectacular but were impressive nonetheless. He finished the year with 45 points in 70 games and, like Giordano, performed admirably while logging a lot of extremely difficult minutes.
Neither player ended up making Team Canada's roster which, while somewhat surprising, could be justified given how many high-end blue liners Canada has to choose from.
What was surprising is who was chosen over those guys. Shea Weber and Alex Pietrangelo, for example, are not players I'd take over Giordano and Brodie. If the latter two were to miss out on Team Canada one would think it'd be because the likes of P.K. Subban and Kris Letang would be taking up spots. That obviously was not the case, though.
The real slap in the face came very recently as, due to injury concerns, Duncan Keith had to pull himself from the tournament. Who was his replacement? Surely it had to be Subban, Letang or one of the Flames, right? Wrong.
None other than Jay Bouwmeester.
He was once a fantastic blue liner. That is no longer the case. The rational I've seen behind the selection is that Canada wanted another left-handed shot. That hurt Subban and Letang's chances, obviously, but I can't understand how Bouwmeester is a better left-handed option than the two Flames.
Rather than go on a tirade about all the ways Giordano and Brodie are better than Bouwmeester I'll defer to the great
HERO Charts from OwnThePuck to help illustrate my point. These charts take into account the last few seasons but put more stock into the most recent campaign.
As you can see Giordano is unquestionably better than Bouwmeester in shot generation, shot suppression and creating offense.
Let's compare Bouwmeester and Brodie now.
Once again it's a landslide in favor of the current Flame.
I get Bouwmeester has experience playing for Canada, playing with Pietrangelo and Doug Armstrong is obviously very familiar with Bouwmeester. In saying that there were unquestionably better options available to Canada that they appear to have passed over without a second thought.
Canada's roster is still excellent but decisions like this add up and could prove costly given the quality of all the other World Cup teams.
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