Canada’s 2010 Olympic Silver Medal Team

Canada is a nation known for hockey and is automatically considered the favorite of any international hockey tournament.

The reason why Canada has an unbelievable hockey power over any other country is because Canada could easily field two teams in the same tournament and very conceivably have the Gold and Silver medal winning teams.

As strong as Russia and Sweden are as hockey nations, they cannot compete with the level of depth in skill that Canada possesses.

Let’s try and name Canada’s Team B for the upcoming 2010 Olympics. We’ll assume there are some obvious spots currently held for Team Gold. To name Team Silver we’ll use all the players on the bubble of being named to Canada’s 2010 entry and some players that may only get as far as Stevie Yzerman’s grocery list.

Possible choices in goal for Team Silver due to the unavailability of Brodeur and Luongo would be:

Carey Price, Cam Ward, Marty Turco, J-S Giguere, Mike Smith, and M-A Fleury

No other country would have this type of depth to select yet another three goaltenders from, and you could argue any of these goalies would be almost as good as other country’s N.1 goaltender.

Possible choices for Team Silver’s seven defensemen. Assuming that if both Pronger and Niedermayer are still playing only one will be named to Team Gold. Team Silver will happily take on whichever is left out. So here we go:

(Projected 7 for Team Gold: Dion Phaneuf, Mike Green, Dan Boyle, Shea Weber, Jay Bouwmeester, Brian Campbell, and Niedermayer or Pronger)

Niedermayer or Pronger

Duncan Keith

Dan Girardi

Braydon Coburn

Marc Staal

Drew Doughty

Brent Burns

The forward unit for Team Silver has some unbelievable talent. Hard to imagine this would be a country’s second choice.

Centermen:

Patrick Marleau

Marc Savard

Eric Staal

Jordan Staal

Honorable mention at the center position: Mike Ribeiro, Brad Richards, Patrice Bergeron, Shawn Horcoff, Bryan Little, Derek Roy, and John Madden. Any of these players would fill in nicely if the top four made Team Gold.

Wingers:

Patrick Sharp

Nathan Horton

Mike Cammalleri

MilanLucic

Devin Setoguchi

Alex Burrows

Alex Tanguay

Corey Perry

Honorable mention at the wing position: Antoine Vermette, Joffrey Lupul, Kris Versteeg, Brad Boyes, Scott Hartnell, Shane Doan, Michael Ryder, P-M Bouchard…

Lastly, every team needs a management team to run the hockey operations.

Coaching staff:

Head coach: Barry Trotz

Assistant coaches: Andy Murray and Todd McLellan

General Manager: Nelson Santos

Assistant GM: Darcy Regier