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Originally Posted by troutman
What was the criteria?
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One, whereas NHL team all-timers must have played at least 225 regular-season games with their NHL teams, there is no minimum for inclusion on Team Canada. Sample sizes are just too small for too many players. That is why you will find Bobby Orr (seven Canada Cup games), Paul Henderson (eight NHL Summit Series games, plus eight WHA Summit Series games) and John Tonelli (eight Canada Cup games) on the team. Their impacts were colossal, if not their game totals.
Two, for the NHL all-time teams, players were slotted at the positions they played for those teams. That led to players such as legendary Toronto centre Darryl Sittler being squeezed out. On Team Canada, however, coaches have a history of picking a surplus of centres and playing them on the wing to maximize skill level. Two of the most famous goals in international hockey history were scored by centres playing wing: Sittler was on left wing with Marcel Dionne when he scored the 1976 Canada Cup-winning goal and Mario Lemieux was on right wing with centres Wayne Gretzky and Dale Hawerchuk when he scored the 1987 Canada Cup-winning goal. And consider this: 11 forwards on Team Canada 2016 could be classified as centres.
Three, the Team Canada all-time lineup has been expanded to 23 (plus a foundational player) to conform with international roster sizes. For that, we say thank you. That gave us three more much-needed spaces: one each for a goalie, a defenceman and a forward.