With the Olympic team rosters set to be announced on New Years’ Eve, everyone is preparing their predictions on who will make the team, while also sharpening their knives getting ready to critique the choices and vehemently say who should have made the team instead.
I am going to throw my two cents in on who I would pick if I was the GM. This isn’t a prediction, to be clear, and certainly more than one of these choices will not make the actual team. But if I was in charge, they would. And should any of the players chosen in their stead falter, well, suffice it to say that I will be sure to toot my own horn (and pretend that I never made those choices should the players I snubbed perform well).
Forwards
Sidney Crosby – Nathan Mackinnon – Brad Marchand
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Connor McDavid – Zach Hyman
Macklin Celebrini – Nick Suzuki – Sam Reinhart
Brandon Hagel – Brayden Point – Connor Bedard
Mark Stone, Mitch Marner
The most controversial take is obviously the inclusion of both Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman on the team. This team leaves out Seth Jarvis, Sam Bennett, Travis Konecny, and Anthony Cirelli from the 4 Face Off as well, with Nick Suzuki, Macklin Celebrini, and Connor Bedard being added instead.
Why would I choose Nuge and Hyman over those players, or other players that are being looked at, like Mark Schiefele or Tom Wilson? Chemistry (and also this is an Oilers blog so…).
Yes, the “chemistry is important in a short tournament” is a controversial opinion, which was the reasoning behind Chris Kunitz making it in 2014 only to put up just one goal in six games.
But when you are talking about an all-Canadian line that has five seasons worth of history with a Chances For percentage of 60.98%, a Goals For percentage of 61.73%, and even higher expected goals for percentage, that seems pretty compelling. Nuge and Hyman are also both point-per-game players this year, so they are performing as well.
For Celebrini and Bedard, they are the future of Team Canada, and we saw that leaving an 18-year-old Sidney Crosby off the roster in 2006 was not a good idea. But they are also the present. Celebrini is third in the league in scoring with 60 points in just 39 games, and Bedard had 44 points in 31 games before an injury.
The argument for players like Cirelli, Bennett, Konecny, and Wilson is that they bring other things to the table other than scoring, and that Team Canada never lacks for offensive firepower. But my philosophy is that these are all good enough players who want to win for their country, so they will accept different roles and be able to play them.
Plus, you have Marchand, Hagel, Suzuki, Stone and Hyman who bring the physical and defensive consciousness to the team, in addition to being able to score. Picking the other, more one-dimensional players gives big “a boat is a boat but a mystery box could be anything, it could even be a boat” energy. Frankly, I still am afraid of undisciplined players like Bennett and Wilson playing under international rules and getting dinged for majors (remember, the 4 Nations was NHL rules, not international).
Defence
Devon Toews – Cale Makar
Josh Morrissey – Colton Parayko
Shea Theodore – Evan Bouchard
Matthew Schaefer, Drew Doughty
This roster leaves off Travis Sanheim and Thomas Harley from the 4 Nations, replacing them with Evan Bouchard and Matthew Schaefer. It also omits some of the top scoring defencemen in Jakob Chychrun, Darren Raddysh, and Morgan Reilly.
Toews and Makar are the “chemistry” duo, although Toews very likely makes the team even without that reason. Morrissey and Parayko also return as a pair from the 4 Nations, where they played very well in a shutdown role. That saves Parayko, who isn’t having as good of a season. I debated putting in Aaron Ekblad instead, but do we want to risk Olympic drug testing?
Like Celebrini and Bedard, Schaefer is the future of Team Canada, but is also killing it in his rookie season, as he is eighth among Canadian defencemen in scoring with 24 points in 39 games. It is a difficult choice to take Harley out for him, but I think that type of performance can’t be ignored.
He is balanced out with Doughty, who brings the veteran experience and still has game, even if he isn’t the player he used to be. He can easily be plopped in any situation, and you can expect him to step up.
Evan Bouchard is the most controversial pick, especially having him in the lineup rather than as an extra. The argument against him is that he has some spectacular defensive blunders and that with Makar the team doesn’t need another offensive dynamo.
But we saw last year what happens if Makar can’t play, where there was all of a sudden a need for a defenceman to anchor the top power play.
He is also a proven big game player, with 72 points in 59 playoff games since he was given the top line role for the Oilers in 2022–23. That is impressive in its own right, but when you see that the next highest scorers are Ekblad and Harley with 27 points each (in 63 and 56 games respectively), that is kind of nuts. Granted, Makar has 25 points in just 24 games, but that is still a lower points per game than Bouch.
Also, that is why you have two extra defencemen. If Bouchard isn’t playing up to snuff, you have two options of different types to slot in: the younger, dynamic Schaefer, or the steady veteran Doughty.
Goalies
Mackenzie Blackwood
Logan Thompson
Jordan Binnington
Blackwood has the best save percentage among Canadian goalies and the second-best in the league at 0.924. Sure, he is the goalie for the best team in the league (and potentially in league history), and his backup also has some of the best stats in the league, but at the end of the day he is still performing.
Thompson was a huge omission last year when he was arguably the best Canadian goalie, and he is again playing well this year. Unlike Blackwood, Thompson is on a wild card team, but still has a 0.915 save percentage. That is pretty good backup material.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Binnington is not only in the conversation for worst Canadian goalie this year, but worst goalie in the NHL period. Does his performance at the 4 Nations warrant making the team in spite of that? Why not pick someone like Darcy Kuemper, who is having another good season in L.A.
I think having someone who has that experience and shown he can rise to the occasion is worth it in the third goalie spot. The biggest reason is that if the other two falter/get hurt, you know that Binnington being thrust into that pressure cooker is likely not going to be too rattling for him.
Will the actual team choose any of my non-standard choices? Based on rumours, it would appear to.
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