Thursday, February 12, 2009

2010 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team Preview/Prediction from CNNSI

Only a year away till Vancouver. What may well be the last time that NHL players participate in the Olympics (if the league office gets their way) is highly anticipated and the subject of much debate.

To that end... CNNSI just published Michael Farber's take on the U.S. roster as well as Allan Muir's predictions for the Canadian roster. In addition to these posts, CNNSI also links to a comments page from the site Fan Nation.

From these, I want to first look at Farber's predictions for the U.S. team along with players he may have left off. Subsequently, I'll look at Muir's view of Team Canada. The links above to each story are very much worth viewing as there's analysis of each player.

2010 U.S. Olympic Team - by Michael Farber

Goaltenders
1. Tim Thomas
2. Ryan Miller
3. Jonathan Quick

Defensemen
Ryan Suter & Brian Rafalski
Ryan Whitney & Mike Komisarek
Paul Martin & Jack Johnson
extra guys: John-Michael Liles & Matt Niskanen

Forwards
Zach Parise, Paul Stasny & Phil Kessel
Dustin Brown, Scott Gomez & Patrick Kane
David Booth, Chris Drury & Brian Gionta
Jason Blake, Ryan Kesler & Jamie Langenbrunner
extra guys: Blake Wheeler & Jason Pominville

Here's the guys brought up on the Fan Nation comment page as others that may get the nod...

Defensemen
Brooks Orpik, Keith Ballard

Forwards
Tim Connolly, Erik Johnson, Peter Mueller, Brian Gionta, Lee Stempniak, Erik Cole, Patrick O'Sullivan, Ryan Malone and Keith Tkachuk

Finally, there's an interesting story from The Sporting News linked on Yahoo! Sports about the choices facing U.S. GM Brian Burke as he and the other team leadership decide what to do with longtime stalwarts such as Mike Modano, Doug Weight, Bill Guerin and... Keith Tkachuk.

2 comments:

Mike Chen said...

I'm 99% certain that Joe Pavelski and Peter Mueller will be on that squad.

Anonymous said...

would love to see T.J. Oshie make it. Very good player.