Youth Movement on Team Canada at LinesMaker

Youth Movement on Team Canada

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – At 3:36 a.m. Zurich time, with most of them in the air fly­ing here, Team Canada became Canada’s Team.

When the Ottawa Sen­a­tors were elim­i­nated from the Stan­ley Cup play­offs in Game 7 in New York, it became the first time since 1996 that no Cana­dian fran­chises would be involved in the sec­ond round.

And if there ever was a year for that to hap­pen again, it’s per­fect for the play­ers on Team Canada prepar­ing for the world hockey cham­pi­onships, which open next week in Helsinki. They’re likely the most star-studded col­lec­tion of young Cana­dian hockey stars to ever be assem­bled to com­pete in the event.

They deserve to find a much greater focus than nor­mal. Only the much more vet­eran gath­er­ing of Canada’s best for the lock­out year in 2005 in Inns­bruck, Aus­tria, would likely trump this team.

It may be “No Canada” back home but it’s clearly “Oh Canada” over here and that isn’t lost on this group.

“You have a Cana­dian team still play­ing over here, and you can tell that all these guys know it and are excited about it,” said Brent Sut­ter, the recently departed coach of the Cal­gary Flames.

“This team has, I guess, been a bit of a bene­fac­tor of there not being a Cana­dian team left in the play­offs,” added Sut­ter as his group gath­ered in front of the hotel for their bus for a short late-afternoon skate in nearby Kloten where they’ll play the sec­ond of two games against the Swiss national team on Tuesday.

With three Oil­ers, two Maple Leafs, two Jets and one player from each the Flames and Cana­di­ens, that’s almost half his hockey club.

It’s not often you see so many young stars so clearly impressed to be in the com­pany of other young stars as the ones who arrived here Friday.

“It’s such a young group, such an excit­ing group to be part of,” said Dion Pha­neuf, an absolute fos­sil at the age of 27.

“There are just so many skilled guys who have done so much at their age. They’re all young, excit­ing and fast. It’s going to be a great expe­ri­ence for all of us. I’m really look­ing for­ward to play­ing with all these guys,” he said.

P.K. Sub­ban looked around at the guys at the rink in Kloten, at least the ones who had arrived and who had their equip­ment arrive as well, and laughed.

“Most of these guys are 19, 20 and 21 years old. I’m 22. I feel kind of old. And I’ve played on Hockey Canada teams before with guys like Evan­der Kane, Jor­dan Eberle, Luke Schenn and John Tavares.

“It’s great to be back wear­ing the country’s colours again. And it’s just a great chance to show what we can do, on the big ice, before the Olympics.”

Eberle and Devan Dub­nyk are in their third con­sec­u­tive springs with this squad.

They can see the dif­fer­ence in tal­ent from the teams that failed to make the medal round, and left Canada seeded fifth going into this tournament.

“There’s def­i­nitely a lot more tal­ent and, despite the ages of every­body, a lot more expe­ri­ence. The sur­pris­ing thing is how many of these guys have played with each other before,” said Eberle.

“I’m pretty sure on the first day of my first year with the team I was a lit­tle star struck. My first year I was still in junior. I hadn’t played in the NHL yet,” Eberle added, look­ing at his Edmon­ton Oil­ers line­mate Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Everett Sil­ver­tips junior Ryan Mur­ray stand­ing in the group around the team bus.

“It’s awe­some, for sure, espe­cially com­pared to the last cou­ple of years,” said goal­tender Dub­nyk, join­ing the first wave of arrivals at break­fast, their suit­cases parked beside their tables.

“It’s fun to get together like this at the start.”

It’s Dubnyk’s third year with the team, but the first two he was the third goalie. This year he’s shar­ing the Cana­dian crease with Cam Ward.

“The first year, I was in my first year of the NHL, so mostly I looked around and kinda kept quiet. To pick this year to be a big­ger part of it, with the group of guys who are over here this year, is awe­some. This is going to be an amaz­ing experience.”

It’s a spe­cial team in a lot of ways.

“It’s def­i­nitely dif­fer­ent,” said Scott Salmond, senior direc­tor of oper­a­tions of Hockey Canada.

“Not many of these guys are mar­ried. We’re not going to have the num­ber of wives and kids around like other years. One year we set up a day-care cen­tre, with a mini hockey rink in the mid­dle of the room.

“Most of these guys will have their par­ents there.”

Fol­low me on Twitter.com/sunterryjones

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