Team Canada orientation camp won’t answer roster questions

When Team Canada gets together for the men’s hockey orientation camp Sunday in Calgary, it will be greeted with more roster questions than answers. Don’t expect any of those questions to be answered by the time camp breaks on Tuesday.

Team Canada has invited 47 players to take part in the event, the squad’s first step in preparing for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Of those 47 players exactly zero will step on the ice at this orientation camp. Yes, zero.

With the cost of health insurance to cover this team skyrocketing, it just doesn’t make financial sense to put players at risk this early in the preparation process. Instead, the team will meet with International Olympic Committee workers about banned drugs, hang out with the media, and play a little golf. All in all, not a bad way to spend four days getting to know one another.

But the fact remains that only 25 players will make this team and this group won’t even have a single practice together before flying to Russia Feb. 9. That’s a major hurdle. Granted, most teams – if not all – will be in the same boat and Canada’s talent already has the club pegged as Sports Interaction’s co-gold medal favorite, priced at +230 along with Russia.

Choosing the team without seeing how players work together on the ice is going to be very tricky. Team Canada GM Steve Yzerman admitted that only about 10 players are guaranteed a roster spot barring injuries. Vancouver 2010 hero Sidney Crosby will be there, as will Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Toews, John Tavares, Shea Weber and a handful of other legitimate superstars. Outside of them, who knows?

Goaltending is a big question mark with Roberto Luongo, Carey Price, Mike Smith, Braden Holtby, and Corey Crawford all vying for spots while the blue line situation is almost as murky. Much will depend on which players get out of the gate quickly when the regular season opens in October, but that too has its wrinkles.

How will the five Stanley Cup winning Chicago Blackhawks on Team Canada’s radar bounce back after an unusually short offseason, thanks to the lockout What about Eric Staal’s knee after he was injured in the IIHF World Championships last spring? Will veterans like Dan Boyle, Joe Thornton and Martin St. Louis still have their legs after a short summer?

And those are just some of the questions surrounding this hockey club now at the end of August. The worst part of this is most of these questions won’t be answered for another six months.