Building Team Canada: Which defencemen, goalies should go to Olympics?

Last week, when I sat down to write out who I would have in my forward group for Team Canada’s men’s Olympic team, I started by addressing the one question I knew many would have: How can you possibly leave Connor Bedard — who is fourth in NHL scoring — off your team?

I had him as Canada’s 15th forward, the next up when someone is inevitably hurt, but yeah — not inside my healthy 14.

And so, I started laying out the facts about the other players and team building — not about Bedard, who’s been excellent — and that ended up explaining how a guy like the Blackhawks star could get squeezed.

In a nutshell, a full hockey team requires different skill sets — stuff like penalty killing, checking and other defensive situations — and so you need some guys who excel in those spots too. Once you add a few of those guys to the outright locks that they’ve already picked, there suddenly aren’t many spots left.

I’m gonna steal a quote from Bill Guerin in a recent article in The Athletic, where he talks about picking the U.S. team:

“Honestly, I just don’t think you can put into words how tight those games were (at 4 Nations),” the Team USA GM said, “how little room there was to operate. And how well these elite players can check. In NHL games, they’re not always counted on to do that, but when they are, they can. And not everybody can play in those situations. No matter what their offensive gifts are, if you can’t check, it’s probably not the tournament for you. … There’s just no room out there.”

I will say, since I wrote that piece, I’ve also come to believe that the Canadian team won’t even make as many changes as I suggested from the 4 Nations Face-Off. I’m holding pat on Bedard (on the outside, but he could find his way in), and not as sure about Mark Scheifele being on the team as I initially thought, either.

I get more into those forward conversations here, but I mention how it took shape simply to point out that the team’s defence and goaltending positions are … not like that. It’s strange, actually, how little debate there is to be had about Canada’s defensive core when you consider the hand-wringing that went into the forward group.

That’s because, well, here are the seven guys Canada took to the 4 Nations, plus Thomas Harley, who joined in as the eighth guy due to injury. Remember, you can take eight D to the Olympics:

Cale Makar, Colorado Avalanche
Devon Toews, Colorado Avalanche
Josh Morrissey, Winnipeg Jets
Shea Theodore, Vegas Golden Knights
Drew Doughty, Los Angeles Kings
Travis Sanheim, Philadelphia Flyers
Colton Parayko, St. Louis Blues
Thomas Harley, Dallas Stars

Welp. That’s a pretty good eight that just won gold a year ago.

Other contenders:

Matthew Schaefer, New York Islanders
Brandon Montour, Seattle Kraken
Evan Bouchard, Edmonton Oilers
Jacob Chychrun, Washington Capitals

And I don’t have the list much longer than that. There are courtesy mentions to be made past those guys — both Mike Matheson and Noah Dobson have been great for Montreal, for example — but like Bedard, it’s more about the quality of the guys they’d have to climb over.

In the year since the 4 Nations — where one of Canada’s strengths was this long, rangy defensive group that disrupted just about everything — I’m not sure anybody did anything to play their way off the team.

Four debate-free locks:

Cale Makar, Colorado Avalanche
Devon Toews, Colorado Avalanche
Josh Morrissey, Winnipeg Jets
Shea Theodore, Vegas Golden Knights

Doughty’s track record and competitiveness are known quantities and Canadian advantages. If he’s healthy, he’ll go.

So that’s five.

That leaves this piece of the group:

Travis Sanheim, Philadelphia Flyers
Colton Parayko, St. Louis Blues
Thomas Harley, Dallas Stars

Sanheim has been good, logging huge minutes (25:27, fifth in the NHL) against top competition with heavy D-zone starts, leading the team in penalty-killing minutes by a mile. Canada needs a guy like that.

Parayko has a similar profile, albeit not quite as heavy a lift, but his team GM Doug Armstrong knows and trusts him. I can’t see him removing either of these guys.

Suddenly, we’re up to seven, with one spot left.

The only guy I’m not as sure about is Harley, whose underlying numbers in Dallas this season have been strangely … not great:

Harley played through injury for a while (and was apparently sick for a stretch) this season before the Stars put him on IR, so he’d be able to get right. What’s hard is, we know how good he can be — as his new contract validates — and we saw how incredible he was as an extra D for Canada at the 4 Nations (I can’t overstate that enough, at times he looked like their best D). I’m inclined to just keep him, as I believe his game will come around.

If you’re not as into the analysis of any of the last three names, there’s the “fringe selections” list, with my thoughts:

Matthew Schaefer, New York Islanders

If he continues to play at his current clip, it’s going to put the Team Canada brass in a tough spot. My god, is he good. He’s still young, though, and still takes risks and makes overly aggressive mistakes. Because of that, he doesn’t play the toughest matchups, so I’m not sure how it’d look in best-on-best, but having an elite partner would definitely help. At this point, though, he looks like one of the world’s most dynamic players, and if he can sustain that label, boy, he’d be tempting as your eighth guy. He can get the puck up the rink and into the hands of your elite forwards, there’s no doubt about that.

Brandon Montour, Seattle Kraken

Montour is having a great year, and can provide a bit of everything, which might be the knock on him in the end. A “Jack of all trades, master of none” sort of thing. But he’s won a Cup and he’s competitive as hell, and Canadians sure love that in a player.

Evan Bouchard, Edmonton Oilers

I made the case for Bouchard making it on Twitter awhile back, noting that after a slow start he seemed to be finding his usual dynamic game. I made the case that there are few in the world who can create like him, and if scoring becomes an issue, you could see him getting plugged into the lineup as a specialist. More than anything, his astronomical 1.08 points per game in the playoffs backs up his reputation as a big-game player (he generates 0.69 in the regular season). He’s been in the biggest moments, and can handle the heat.

The problem is, he needed to be excellent for this exact stretch while the team was making its decisions, and he just hasn’t been. He’s had some good games, but the lost battles, the brain farts, the little frustrations with him just never seem to get cleaned up. I advocated for him before, but I just can’t see this management group actually rolling the dice on him for extra offensive upside, while the team is this loaded up front.

Jacob Chychrun, Washington Capitals

Chychrun has a better case than you may think. He plays a ton, and in all situations, has nearly a point per game and is a big guy who competes. I find it hard to believe he’d jump Harley, but I think Chychrun might be close. If there are injuries, I bet they find themselves talking about him an awful lot.

The one thing I keep hearing through all this is that it’s the same management, they won a year ago, and it’s not going to be wildly different. Betting on the same eight guys is definitely the odds-on favourite with Canada’s D-corps, and at this point, they’re the same guys that I would be taking, too.

GOALIES

I’m gonna try to keep it tight on goalies, because it no longer seems all that complex:

Jordan Binnington is going. He’s developed the reputation as a big-game guy, as a clutch player, and he delivered in the biggest moments just a year ago. I’m sure they’re going to take him.

Logan Thompson is going. We’re consecutive years into him being one of the NHL’s elite goalies, and no other Canadian keeper’s numbers are even close to his. He’s made comments about getting things cleaned up with Kyle Dubas and the Team Canada brass, and I just find it impossible to believe they’d let whatever relationships issues from the past get in the way of taking their best guys. He’s gonna go.

So then we’re left with a pool maybe something like this:

Darcy Kuemper, Los Angeles Kings
Scott Wedgewood, Colorado Avalanche
Jet Greaves, Columbus Blue Jackets
Jake Allen, New Jersey Devils

For me, Kuemper is the third guy.

He was a key part of a Stanley Cup run just three years ago, emerging as the victor. He’s a six-foot-five veteran who’s got a career .915 save percentage(!), and has a .910 this year in a league where “average” is officially sub-.900. If you have to turn to someone you trust, he’s it.

As for the rest, it seems to come down to taking the hot hand. Can one of these guys get red-hot at the right time, the exact month when selections are being made?

Wedgewood seems to be doing that, but Greaves has a case as one of Canada’s goalies of the future. You’ve heard it said that if Canada needs its third-stringer, it’s in trouble, anyway, so you might as well let him gain the experience.

Finally, Allen is a reliable back-up who would be … fine. He’d be fine, I like him. Four Nations goalies Sam Montembault and Adin Hill don’t seem like very viable candidates, at this point.

All told, I could live with something like:

Thompson
Binnington
Kuemper

Give the top two names a game each early, then ride the hot hand. This tournament is about getting hot at the right time, and with goaltending, you’ve gotta lean into that.