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Originally Posted by cDnStealth
We already have plenty of excellent players who can put the puck in the net who aren't defensive liabilities. Pass.
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None of whom, with the debatable exception of Duchene, can skate like Taylor Hall. Insisting on having everyone play selke defense is how you end up 2-2 in the third. Taking your best offensive players is the best way to ensure it's 5-2 at that point instead.
I don't like Ryan Lambert often, but his criticism of Canada's roster selection process in the context of the WJHC team rings true (though after reading that article it apparently also applies to the USA team).
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If you're Hockey Canada, the organization responsible for running the national sport in what is objectively the most talented hockey nation in the world, how do you approach the building of your junior and senior national hockey teams?
If you're smart, you do it by finding the several best players at their respective positions — 15 forwards, eight defensemen, three goalies; you get the drill — and you put them on a roster together and watch them cream every opponent they came across. This was how things went when the Canadians won five WJC gold medals in a row. This is now how things go now. Hockey Canada has a funny way of running things in choosing its teams, which is to say that they try to pick players that “fit the situation” or “give the team identity” or whatever, and that's how you get Kris Draper on an Olympic team.
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People who are worried about having Hall on the ice late in a close game... if it's tied in the last 5 minutes, Babcock isn't sending out Hall. He isn't sending out a lot of guys. He's sending out a steady diet of Toews and Crosby. Hall is there to run the score up in the second period so the game's never in doubt in the first place.
Especially on international ice, speed is what's hard to defend, and the weakest point on basically every team Canada will play will be their depth, especially on the blue line. That weak point must be exploited by giving the opposing coaching staff no good options. They have to play their bottom two D against someone, and if it's Crosby's line they might as well forfeit, so pick between Stamkos, St Louis and Hall, who will skate right past them, or Perry and Getzlaf, who will skate right through them, or Toews and Bergeron, in which case you're putting your worst D men with your best forwards (since that's who Toews and Bergeron are likely playing against).
What it comes down to is this. All I want from Team Canada is:
at no point, do I want to feel like the guys on the ice are there so that Crosby's line can get a rest before going back out and threatening again. The opposition, especially their D, gets no minutes off. At no time do they get to think "well at least we don't have to deal with that other line". For me, the best way to do that is to bring as much elite talent as possible. The other team is facing the best player in the world in Crosby, or arguably the best pure scorer in the world in Stamkos, or a freight train in Getzlaf and Perry, or the MVP of the last olympics in Jonathan Toews, and no matter what their assignment, life
sucks for them.