The Coyotes face off against the Flames tonight who are coming off a win last night in Colorado. While the Coyotes are yet to win a game this year, Calgary is one of the league’s worst teams and the ‘Yotes should be able to get back in the win column tonight. As per Daily Faceoff, Thomas Greiss gets the start.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson and his “upper-body injury…/ concussion and/or shoulder injury (suffered last Thursday against Columbus) will be not be in the line-up and his status remains mysterious. Surely there is no is reason for the NHL and its teams to keep their fans informed, and I am probably beating a dead horse by mentioning it again, but come on– the guy is one of the best players in the league and there is a vacuum of news surrounding his injury, which I find really frustrating.
--- Nice to see Mike Smith get the nod as one of Canada’s goalies, even if he is just the back up to the back up, it’s still an honor. He was really the only Coyote to be in consideration for the team, so it’s great to see him there.
Joining Yandle on the bizarre omission list is Radim Vrbata who was inexplicably left off the Czech team to which fellow teammates Michalek and Hanzel were named. In a move that is more hilarious than anything else, the Czechs left off Vrbata and yet named former 90’s quasi-star Petr Nedved to the team, despite his being old enough to have possibly been the inventor of hockey. No word on whether Dominick Hasek will be their goalie.
Alongside Smith, Hanzel and Michalek, the Coyotes will also be sending Korpikoski to team Finland and of course, Oliver Ekman-Larsson will anchor the backend for team Sweden. Were the Danish in the tournament, Boedker would have of course lead that team, but playing in their traditional wooden skates, the Danes could not make it out of the qualification round.
Overall, it’s really nice to see how well represented the Coyotes will be at the Olympics, even with a couple of hand-wringing omissions.
--
In a move that will no doubt cause people to be even more upset than us Coyotes fans were about the omission of Yandle to team USA, the Canadians have left Claude Giroux off of their team. No doubt that Giroux is one of the best players in the world, so I don’t really get it, but I’ll leave it to others to discuss. What this did get me thinking about though, was how an alternate Team Canada could probably be the Silver Medal favorite, were Canada allowed to enter two teams.
I thought it might be interesting to put together a fake roster, so here it is:
Forwards:
Hall Giroux Neal Seguin Nugent-Hopkins Lupul Lucic Thornton Eberle EStaal Mike Richards Culture
Defense:
Phaneuf Seabrook Green Letang Boyle MStaal
Goalies
Fleury - Crawford - Bernier
Looks good to me.
As always, that’s what I think and I’d love to hear what you think Thanks for Reading