Welcome to the Hotstove! As always, I'm your host, Travis Yost.
About a week or so ago, we spent a few hours debating a few peculiar and hotly-contested decisions made by USA Hockey to leave the likes of Bobby Ryan and Keith Yandle off of their Olympic rosters. It appears the United States aren't the only hockey country to leave some notables at home -- Sweden decided to shelve Victor Hedman and Jonas Brodin, and perhaps more curiously, Russia decided to keep the ultra-talented Alex Semin at home.
Hockey Canada announced their full roster today. As expected, there were a couple of eyebrow-raisers. The full list below:
GOALIES: Roberto Luongo, Mike Smith, Carey Price.
DEFENSEMEN: Jay Bouwmeester, Drew Doughty, Dan Hamhuis, Duncan Keith, Alex Pietrangelo, P.K. Subban, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Shea Weber.
FORWARDS: Jamie Benn, Jeff Carter, Sidney Crosby, Matt Duchene, Ryan Getzlaf, Chris Kunitz, Patrick Marleau, Rick Nash, Corey Perry, Patrick Sharp, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, Jonathan Toews.
For the most part, I think Canada got it right. There's not too much here that I find objectionable.
If there are any head-scratching decisions, it's probably the omission of Claude Giroux at forward. One has to wonder whether his point-scoring lull to start the season played a big role in losing out to the likes of Chris Kunitz, Rick Nash, or Jeff Carter. And, if you want to split hairs, I probably would've went out and taken Taylor Hall. I can't find it in myself to penalize a guy for playing on a crappy hockey team, and finding guys who have scored more per game than Hall since his draft year is pretty damn tough to do.
I'm sure a bit of time will also be spent on Martin St. Louis and Joe Thornton missing the cut, too.
Defensively, Canada did it right with grabbing P.K. Subban, a name that was on-again, off-again regarding Olympic projections for months. They seemed to want to really balance out the blue-line, taking four left-handed shots, four right-handed shots. Dan Boyle's probably the biggest name not on there.
No surprises in net. The Luongo-Price 1-2 was a long-time coming, and both guys played their way into the starter and back-up role. How Canada doles out ice-time at Sochi remains to be seen.
The Q: How do you feel about Canada's roster? Any objections? Or, are you content with this lineup as it sits today?
Thanks for reading!