A hypothetical Team Canada B team would be competitive at the Sochi Olympics. How about a theoretical all-world snub team? Here's how the two additional teams would look.
With apologies to Dallas Stars defenseman Sergei Gonchar, he didn’t even make our all-snub team.
Armchair quarterbacks and Sunday second-guessers are having a field day today asking why certain players didn’t make certain Olympic teams. Here’s our take, with contributions from THN intern Gareth Bush.
Your call on how Team Canada’s snub team and the Rest-of-the-World snub team would do in Olympic competition against the top seven nations in the world. In my opinion, neither team would medal, but the Canadian all-snubs would finish in the top five and the all-world all-snubs would be in the top seven.
Here’s how they look. For simplicity’s sake, we’re selecting 12 forwards, rather than four of each at the three forwards positions.
Team Canada snub team
Forwards
Claude Giroux, Philadelphia
Joe Thornton, San Jose
Martin St-Louis, Tampa Bay
Eric Staal, Carolina
Logan Couture, San Jose
James Neal, Pittsburgh
Milan Lucic, Boston
Taylor Hall, Edmonton
Tyler Seguin, Dallas
Jordan Eberle, Edmonton
Mike Richards, Los Angeles
Jeff Skinner, Carolina
Defense
Brent Seabrook, Chicago
Dan Boyle, San Jose
Kris Letang, Pittsburgh
Mark Giordano, Calgary
Francois Beauchemin, Anaheim
Marc Staal, N.Y. Rangers
Goalies
Corey Crawford, Chicago
Jonathan Bernier, Toronto
Team Rest-of-the-World snub team
(made up of players from the other top six hockey powers)
Forwards
Bobby Ryan, Ottawa (USA)
Kyle Okposo, N.Y. Islanders (USA)
Jason Pominville, Minnesota (USA)
Jiri Hudler, Calgary (Czech)
Radim Vrbata, Phoenix (Czech)
Tomas Fleischmann, Florida (Czech)
Alexander Semin, Carolina (Russia)
Nail Yakupov, Edmonton (Russia)
Patric Hornqvist, Nashville (Sweden)
Marcus Johansson, Washington (Sweden)
Sean Bergenheim, Florida (Finland)
Miroslav Satan, Bratislava (Slovakia)
Defense
Keith Yandle, Phoenix (USA)
Dustin Byfuglien, Winnipeg (USA)
Erik Johnson, Colorado (USA)
Dmitry Kulikov, Florida (Russia)
Victor Hedman, Tampa Bay (Sweden)
Jonas Brodin, Minnesota (Sweden)
Goalies
Ben Bishop, Tampa Bay (USA)
Cory Schneider, New Jersey (USA)
We didn’t include injured players such as Pekka Rinne and Saku Koivu because they weren’t officially snubs.
(Edit note: Erik Johnson was put in to replace Tobias Enstrom, who opted not to play.)
Brian Costello is The Hockey News’s senior editor and a regular contributor to the thn.com Post-To-Post blog. For more great profiles, news and views from the world of hockey, subscribe to The Hockey News magazine. Follow Brian Costello on Twitter at @BCostelloTHN