With the Sochi Winter Games just a year away, which players would you suggest to suit up for the Canadian team?
Imagine pulling up a chair in the same boardroom as Steve Yzerman, Doug Armstrong, Ken Holland and Kevin Lowe a few weeks ago, when they assembled to discuss ghost rosters for the 2014 Canadian Olympic men's hockey team.
With the Sochi Winter Games just a year away, which players would you suggest to suit up for the Canadian team?
It's hard to say right now.
VOTE: Play GM & pick your own Team Canada roster!
The problem for Yzerman -- the Tampa Bay Lightning general manager who returns as Canada's executive director after assembling the squad that won Olympic gold in Vancouver -- and his management team is that they don't yet know whether the NHL will participate in the Sochi Olympics. That will be determined in the next several weeks when the NHL, IIHF and IOC begin to haggle over specifics of an arrangement.
If the NHL shuns the Olympics this time around, Hockey Canada has a backup plan. Yzerman and his group instead will cobble together a roster of non-NHLers.
While it would be kind of neat to see Glen Metropolit, who at 38 has enjoyed another banner season for Lugano in Switzerland, playing for Canada, we're banking on NHL participation.
With that in mind, I enlisted a six-member committee, which included four NHL scouts, Hockey Night in Canada's Elliotte Friedman and myself, to pick a 23-player Canadian roster (13 forwards, seven defencemen and three goalies).
There were no easy decisions. Did we error in not choosing any of those red-hot San Jose Sharks forwards -- Joe Thornton, Logan Couture or Patrick Marleau -- or 37-year-old Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Martin St. Louis, who is among the Top 10 in scoring thanks to brilliant start?
Here's what we came up with (number in brackets indicates how many of the six ballots a player was named on):
Goalies
Carey Price, Montreal Canadiens (named on all 6 ballots)
Cam Ward, Carolina Hurricanes (5)
Roberto Luongo, Vancouver Canucks (4)
Others: Marc-Andre Fleury (3)
Defencemen
Shea Weber, Nashville Predators (6)
Drew Doughty, Los Angeles Kings (6)
Duncan Keith, Chicago Blackhawks (6)
Brent Seabrook, Chicago Blackhawks (5)
Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis Blues (5)
Marc Staal, New York Rangers (4)
*Dan Boyle, San Jose Sharks (2)
*Kris Letang, Pittsburgh Pengins (2)
*Tie for seventh defenceman
Others: Dan Hamhuis (1), Tyler Myers (1), Mike Del Zotto (1), Justin Schultz (1), Jay Bouwmeester (1), Brian Campbell (1)
Forwards
Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins (6)
Claude Giroux, Philadelphia Flyers (6)
Jonathan Toews, Chicago Blackhawks (6)
Steven Stamkos, Tampa Bay Lightning (6)
Corey Perry, Anaheim Ducks (6)
Patrice Bergeron, Boston Bruins (6)
Rick Nash, New York Rangers (5)
Eric Staal, Carolina Hurricanes (5)
Jordan Eberle, Edmonton Oilers (5)
John Tavares, New York Islanders (4)
Mike Richards, Los Angeles Kings (4)
Jamie Benn, Dallas Stars (4)
**Ryan Getzlaf, Anaheim Ducks (3)
**Milan Lucic, Boston Bruins (3)
**Tie for 13th forward
Others: James Neal (2), Patrick Marleau (1), Taylor Hall (1), Joe Thornton (1), Jeff Skinner (1), Jarome Iginla (1), Tyler Seguin (1), Logan Couture (1)
Follow Tim Wharnsby on Twitter @WharnsbyCBC
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