Source: Chris Johnston, Sportsnet.ca, April 5th, 2016
Assembling Team Canada’s roster for the IIHF World Hockey Championship is trickier than working through a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Every decision triggers a cascading set of circumstances. Injuries and other commitments can quickly pare down the list of must-haves. The possibility of adding a few of those dispatched in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is enticing, but also unpredictable.
“It’s a more involved process than you would think,” George McPhee, the co-general manager of this year’s team, said in a recent interview.
The work is well underway, with Bill Peters officially named head coach of the team on Tuesday, and the first batch of invitations to players now being distributed.
McPhee and the management staff – fellow GM Brad Treliving, senior advisor Doug Armstrong and vice-president of hockey operations Scott Salmond – held a conference call on Sunday afternoon to review the list of potential players.
A number of teams were mathematically eliminated at that point, but there were also some new possibilities to consider after the Boston Bruins dropped below the playoff line for the first time in months on Saturday night.
There’s obviously no guarantee they’ll remain there.
The real key is getting some roster cornerstones in place early and building from there. The bar was raised considerably last year with a team McPhee helped assemble – Claude Giroux, Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza, Nathan MacKinnon,Matt Duchene, Taylor Hall and Brent Burns were among the early players to commit and then Sidney Crosby called and requested to join them after Pittsburgh was knocked out of the playoffs.