04-12-2005, 08:06 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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The Death Card
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Team Canada named
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=121167
Quote:
Brodeur, Smyth lead Canada at worlds
TSN.ca Staff
4/11/2005
Canada's entry for the upcoming World Hockey Championship will be long on international experience. Of the 22 players named to the team on Monday by general manager Steve Tambellini, 19 have represented Canada at previous international tournaments.
In goal, Martin Brodeur will be backed up by Roberto Luongo, Canada's winning goalie for the world championship in 2003 and 2004. The third goalie will be Marty Turco.
On defence, Canadian World Cup members Scott Hannan, Ed Jovanovski, Wade Redden and Robyn Regehr will be joined by Sheldon Souray, Chris Phillips and Dan Boyle.
Edmonton's Ryan Smyth will be joined at forward by Shane Doan, Kris Draper, Simon Gagne, Dany Heatley, Kirk Maltby, Brendan Morrison, Brenden Morrow, Rick Nash, Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and Mike Fisher.
Canada still has to name one additional player prior to its first game of the tournament on Saturday, April 30th versus Latvia in Innsbruck, Austria.
While the team is missing the likes of Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic, Chris Pronger and Jarome Iginla, five of the players named won gold on last year's Canadian squad at the worlds including last year's MVP Dany Heatley.
"We are very pleased to name this group of Canadian players today, and know that each of them is honoured and want to represent Canada with the passion to go for our third straight gold medal and to give back to our game across the country", said Tambellini.
The Canadian team will hold a training camp in Calgary starting April 13th before playing a pair of exhibition games against the United States in Halifax and Quebec City. However, several of the players named on Monday will likely miss the start of camp. Thornton and Nash have just completed their championship season with HC Davos in Switzerland while Souray is still playing in the Swedish Elite League final. Smyth has been given a few days' off in order to spend time with his wife, who gave birth last week to the couple's second child.
The team will then travel to Europe where they will face Latvia and the Czech Republic in a pair of pre-tournament games.
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What do you think? I think it looks like a strong team, even though there are some glaring omissions from people who turned down playing.
I really would have liked to see Iginla, St Louis, Lecavalier on the squad.
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Feh.
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