Top 4 contenders for Olympic gold — The Fourth Period

Forward

As with Team USA, there are so many directions you can take this. Both McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon could be 1st line center. You could play them together (can you imagine?!). Sidney Crosby could be this insane 3rd line shutdown center. Any of the right wingers could play on the first line. This is a fun offense to construct.

While it wouldn’t surprise me (and should not surprise anyone) if Macklin Celebrini starts on the fourth line, you’ve gotta think that at some point, he does something ridiculous and Team Canada Head Coach Jon Cooper says “Okay, up you go” and puts Celebrini with Connor McDavid. Not for nothing, Canada does not have any special LW depth so if Cooper is smart enough to start the league’s 4th leading point producer (16th league-wide in goals, 4th in assists, 28-53-81 in 55 games), then we also shouldn’t be surprised. I feel like I solved a lot with that paragraph. Sam Reinhart, who was quiet at Four Nations but explosive in Florida’s two Stanley Cup runs brings the defensive conscience, more goal-scoring ability, and an ability to keep up with McDavid to the top line.

Staying on the right side, I’ve got Mark Stone and his 1.4 ppg (115-point pace) ahead of Mitch Marner (1 ppg this year) on the 2nd line. Can Stone keep up with MacKinnon, who like McDavid is fast and plays fast? Who knows. What I know for sure is that in MacKinnon and Marner, you have two right-handed players who both like to enter the offensive zone with the puck (already a negative as there’s only one puck) and who, if they do not see an opening upon entering the zone, collapse to the side wall with the puck. If I’m coaching against a line with MacKinnon and Marner, my D is watching tape of that and timing it, collapsing down against them and forcing the puck off their sticks all night. My forwards would know to come back and be ready to fall to the wall, lift a stick, and steal the puck from M&M’s blindside. At least with MacKinnon, when he does this, he keeps moving his feet like they’re on hot coals. When Marner does it (especially in the playoffs when the game gets faster, as it will be in the Olympics), he stops moving his feet, and invariably kills the play (and you wonder why he didn’t produce in the playoffs for Toronto and the fans let him know about it – that’s why). Therefore, it has to be Stone riding the Cole Harbour express with MacKinnon and Crosby (who as we know skate together in the summer and have great chemistry) on the left side.

The third line becomes a shutdown line, with Brandon Hagel (who’s gotten a lot of unnecessary flack for making the team, he’s done well this year, 27-27-54 and a wild +29 in 50 games, along with 6 game-winning goals (T-4 in the league and he gets the tiebreaker over Brock Nelson for having played less games) on the left, along with Nick Suzuki, who plays the loudest quiet game I’ve seen in ages, and Marner. This line can skate, they can create offense, they’re defensively responsible. It’s a line that, like Suzuki, will sneak up on you and before you know it, they’ve stolen the puck from you and its in your net.

With how this roster is constructed, I don’t know how you don’t end up with the 4th line being The Grind Line (© Detroit Red Wings, 1997, all rights reserved). Marchant. Bennett. Wilson. Why wouldn’t you do this?

With all due respect to Anthony Cirelli (15-20-35 in 49 games), Sam Bennett and his more recent bonafides (back-to-back Stanley Cups, this past spring’s Conn Smythe winner as playoff MVP, game-tying goal in the Four Nations Finals) should have been chosen in the first place. Even this year, after I slagged off on Bennett in a November article (3-2-5 in his first 18 games), Bennett went off like fireworks on Canada Day. Since that point, he has 37 points in 39 games, which over a full season would be a career pace for him. Combine that level of play on the fourth line with Rat Marchant (25-25-50 in 46 games, highest PPG on Florida) and Steamboat Willy himself, Tom Wilson (23-26-49 in 50 games, leading Washington in goals, goals per game, points, and PPG) and you’ve got a line that theoretically could play in the 3rd line role. At the very least, defensive zone faceoffs, line-matching vs that US line of B. Tkachuk-Larkin-M. Tkachuk, and you’d see some incredibly gritty hockey. The line that wins that matchup could be the team that wins gold.

So look, as the guy who wrote the “Connor Bedard should be on Team Canada” column before the hockey world blew up about it and said article lasted on the site’s main page for over two months…I get why he wasn’t brought as the injury replacement for Brayden Point. Bedard only has 9 points in 13 games since he came back and Chicago is 3-5-2 (read: seven losses) in their last 10 games. Bedard hasn’t gotten back to his early season level. As someone rooting for the kid, it sucks, however there are no participation awards at the highest level. I look forward to seeing his post-Olympic response. Same goes for Zach Hyman, who’s been on a tear since his season started in mid-November with boxcars of 22-14-36 and a deceptive +10 in 39 games. I say deceptive about Hyman’s +/- because the advanced stats say his defense is hurting Edmonton. Comparing both of these players to the newly-added Seth Jarvis, he of his own underwhelming Four Nations play, Jarvis comes out ahead of both, partly because he’s scored a team-leading 25 goals this year on a Carolina team that, while the team’s overall goal total is 5th in the NHL, the Hurricanes only have one player (Finland’s Aho) averaging a point per game. Jarvis looks a little faster this year (and EDGE agrees), and his ability to impose his will on games has taken another step (probably why he’s scoring more). Add that to the fact that he was on the Four Nations’ team last year, and his addition to the Olympic team should not be a surprise.

Defense

This defense is basically identical to Four Nations. You hope that Shea Theodore stays healthy and Canada can dress their best six, as the US is (and Sweden isn’t). You hope that Drew Doughty can snap his fingers like he did 12 months ago and find his A-game (same for Thomas Harley). And you hope that you don’t have to dress Colton Parayko in an important game, who played really well in the Four Nations, but has been part of the problem in St. Louis this year.

If Canada’s repeat D does become an issue, then you’re going to hear a lot of noise about these two players not being there…