A Carolina Hurricanes blog with occasional news about the rest of the NHL.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Team USA to be named today, Coach Lavi featured in NYT

The final roster for team USA will be announced today. Somehow I missed it, but yesterday, the New York Times ran a pretty nice article » (login info)« about Canes coach Peter Laviolette, who will be coaching the boys in Turin.

Fire up your DVRs or better yet, tune in to OLN tonight for the Stars v Wild game at 8:00 eastern time. The announcement will come live. I suppose during the first intermission.

From that game, Brian Rolston of the Wild and Mike Modano and Bill Guerin of the Stars are expected to be shoo-ins. Despite their age, Guerin and Modano can still turn it on, and I would expect Modano to wear the C.

I can't give a full prediction on who will be on the final roster, but I can say that I'd really like for J-Ro and Tkachunky to be left off. I'm not alone in wanting Roenick left behind, but I know lots of folks are counting on fat boy to be there.

I'll also say that I'm hoping to see two Minnesotans that nobody ever talks about in terms of Team USA -- Jamie Langenbrunner and Matt Cullen. Cullen is probably the darkest of dark horses, but Laviolette likes the guy a lot.

A lot of people are talking about John-Michael Liles as a darkhorse, but I don't see how in the world he could be left off. Wherever you see people penciling the name Chris Chelios, scratch that off, and put Liles in his stead. People can't seriously talk about keeping Chelios on the USA roster. He's actually old enough to have played on Herb Brooks' 1980 team, and he was the only bright spot on that fiasco of a team in Nagano '98, but he's not what he used to be. We need to go with youth where we can.

1 comment:

Pat Angello said...

YAY fir John-Michael Liles! WOO! He's been on fire so far this season and really deserves this honor. And WTF is Chelios doing on this team? Did they need a speed bump, or is he there to be John Beibe?

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