Team Canada 2008, Part 2: The Competition

At the 2007 IIHF World Championships, Canada had perfect dominance even against the toughest teams like the United States, Slokakia, Sweden, and finally Finland in the gold medal game.

This year, I believe the competition is slightly less-than-spectacular when it compares to Canada.

Canada's group consists of U.S.A., Latvia, and Slovenia. I think that it is quite obvious to everyone that the only competition for Canada is the U.S.

Teams like Latvia and Slovenia have very little NHL experience so they are seen as easy tune-up games. The look for these games will be to rack up some goals so we can stay ahead of the United States in the standings.

The United States team has always threatened Canada in international competition. Goaltending has usually been a problem for the country, but they might catch a break as the New York Islanders seem to be slipping in the standings, giving Rick DiPietro a chance to represent his country.

This would give a huge boost to the defensive side of their team.

The States' defense could be very well the same as many of the players from last year watch their teams falling to the ground of the standings. In the past few years, the U.S. has used many players from different American universities to boost their young talent.

This is a good thing, but you still need those veterans like Mike Modano or Jeremy Roenick—and it doesn't look like they will be available.

The Americans offensive side could dramatically change as a good majority of the players from last year's roster look to be playing in the NHL playoffs instead. The offense will have to rely much on young guns like Patrick Kane, Toby Petersen, and perhaps Rob Schremp who is still looking for his NHL debut in Edmonton.

Once we get to the medal round, the competition for Canada will definitely start to heat up from teams like Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Russia, and others.

Finland is a team that showed good promise last year and they look to do it again. Thier goaltending looks to stand strong with Atlanta drooping to the bottom of the East. I'm sure Finland will hope to have Kari Lehtonen playing on their back end.

Like last year, Finland's defense are not too strong, with most of their player coming from European leagues, not the NHL. Their offense is similar with the exception of a few NHL players like Niko Kapanen, Tuomo Ruutu, and Jere Lehtinen.

The NHL playoffs are another sad thing for teams like Sweden and Russia who have their stars of Markus Naslund, Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Alexander Ovechkin, and Evgeni Malkin representing their NHL teams in the playoffs instead of their country's.

I believe that one of the underdog competitiors in this tournament will be Slovakia. They have strong NHL talent that they will be able to use in this tournament such as Jaroslav Halak, Zdeno Chara, Miroslav Satan, and Marian Hossa. They have strong players at all ends and I think it will surprise most people to see how well they will do.

With so many teams this year not being able to showcase their true NHL talent, it gives more hope to teams with not so much NHL talent like Belarus, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland.

This year's IIHF world championships will definitely be an exciting one, especially for Canadians having it in their home country.