2014 Olympic Ice Hockey Team Selections—Canada and the United States

This month, we all witnessed how being two of the world’s hockey powers has its advantages and disadvantages.  Notably, some of the nominations—or non-nominations—for the 2014 American and Canadian Olympic Ice Hockey Teams seem to have drawn some attention.  Let’s take a closer look.

For the United States, Bobby Ryan was left off of their roster.  Shortly after the announcement, thoughts from a member of the selection committee were released to the media and the fiasco that ensued was pretty hilarious.  Why any organisation would share such information with a reporter is beyond me!  It did nothing but invite trouble, as we all saw.  In any case, too bad for Ryan—he’s a good hockey player.

For Canada, Martin St. Louis was not selected.  As outlined in the media, Steve Yzerman was in a no-win situation.  The real problem is that Canada has too many good players to choose from.  In fact, Canada could send two teams to the Olympics and it still would be difficult to select the players.  If you take a quick peek at the NHL statistical leaders, you would see that the majority of the leaders are Canadian and some of the individuals who are currently in the top five were not named to the team—including St. Louis.  With his recent four-goal performance, it makes you wonder if it was the right decision to leave him off the team.  We’ll see soon enough!

All of this to say that people will be unhappy regardless of the names included in final selections.  And the media—they create a story and blow it up themselves to bring in the bucks, all at the expense of Bobby Ryan.  If you’re upset by the selections or the media outlets that present them to you, just do what I do: Blame it on fast foods!


- B. J. T. Pepin