[OOT] January 7, nine games.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

St. Louis was pissed last night and rightfully so. I think they're going to regret not naming him to Team Canada. 2 goals against the Jets.

He's 38-years-old and is in competition to make the absolute best deepest hockey roster on the planet. Players who did not make Team Canada absolutely should be disappointed, but people really need to get over the notion that any single player was "snubbed". Virtually every forward and defenseman on the team has a legitimate claim to be there, and from where I sit, there are no glaring omissions like what happened to Vrbata and Hudler and the Czech team.

St Louis is a great player, but he brings a different skill set and provides a different dimension, and for whatever reason, the Canadian team architects clearly prefer to go in a different direction. In his one and only Olympic appearance, he was not exactly a team standout, and that was eight years ago. It's not his fault, but that was the only Canadian team in the past three appearances that failed to win the championship, and I expect that did not go unnoticed by the selecting committee.

[19Yzerman19]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

from where I sit, there are no glaring omissions like what happened to Vrbata and Hudler and the Czech team.

Giroux counts, for me. When you're better at hockey than probably half of the forward corps, and you don't get picked, that's a pretty glaring omission. It seems to have been done on the basis of his slow start and the preference for playing forwards at their natural position, so it's not a totally baffling omission like Vrbata and Hudler, but it's still pretty clearly a snub.

It's not his fault, but that was the only Canadian team in the past three appearances that failed to win the championship, and I expect that did not go unnoticed by the selecting committee.

If that played a major role in the rationale that's pretty silly. It was eight years ago and he wasn't really part of the problem, as far as I can recollect. Different player at this stage. And back then there was no Stamkos to blast his saucer passes behind opposing tendys. But in general, your point that the decision was made on the basis of weighing pro's and con's and establishing a team concept is well taken. We can still say it was the wrong decision (I 100% believe that it was the wrong decision), but not that it was an ill-informed or biased or somehow nefarious decision.