Sunday, August 22, 2004
Team Non-World Cup
I made a quip earlier that I thought I'd follow up on.
If all of the injured players decided to get healthy and form their own little team, they would probably kick some serious booty in the tournament...it�s getting ridiculous in that aspect.
So, I decided to formulate a team of all the injured and defected players to see how powerful Team Non-World Cup, or Team Pampers, would be.
Goalies:
Nikolai Khabibulin
Ed Belfour
Evgeni Nabokov
It helps that both of Russia's star goalies have pulled out of the tournament, leaving Maxim Sokolov as the poor sucker who has to take the brunt of his team's defections. Most countries would take this trio over what they currently have.
Defense:
Rob Blake - Chris Pronger
Mathieu Schneider - Derian Hatcher
Pavel Kubina - Andrei Markov
Alexei Zhitnik
Pronger and Blake on one unit (Ouch! for Canada) makes any defense corps automatically kick some tail. We got a lot of offense in this group with a couple of monster mashers. Again, this unit it stronger than many of the countries could hope for.
Forwards:
Sergei Federov - Steve Yzerman - Zigmund Palffy
Alexei Zhamnov - Robert Lang - Valeri Bure
Sami Kapanen - Jeremy Roenick - Esa Pirnes
Maxim Sushinski - Jan Benda - ??
A very powerful offensive group, but we need a 12th man plus some big players and defensive players. This unit is a bit too one-dimensional, especially with Valeri Bure up front. If Peter Forsberg pulls out (which is the rumour floating around), we can add him as the 12th group and we'd have a group that would put more than a few pucks in the opposition's net.
Really, this roster just shows you the large number of big names that have pulled out of this tournament. I can't remember a MAJOR tournament that had this many defections. As training camps are under way, hopefully we don't have many more.
Who would coach this squad? Well, Ivan Hlinka is dead and cloning technology is still in it's infancy...since Scotty Bowman was offered the Russian job and turned it down, we'll give him the reigns.
If all of the injured players decided to get healthy and form their own little team, they would probably kick some serious booty in the tournament...it�s getting ridiculous in that aspect.
So, I decided to formulate a team of all the injured and defected players to see how powerful Team Non-World Cup, or Team Pampers, would be.
Goalies:
Nikolai Khabibulin
Ed Belfour
Evgeni Nabokov
It helps that both of Russia's star goalies have pulled out of the tournament, leaving Maxim Sokolov as the poor sucker who has to take the brunt of his team's defections. Most countries would take this trio over what they currently have.
Defense:
Rob Blake - Chris Pronger
Mathieu Schneider - Derian Hatcher
Pavel Kubina - Andrei Markov
Alexei Zhitnik
Pronger and Blake on one unit (Ouch! for Canada) makes any defense corps automatically kick some tail. We got a lot of offense in this group with a couple of monster mashers. Again, this unit it stronger than many of the countries could hope for.
Forwards:
Sergei Federov - Steve Yzerman - Zigmund Palffy
Alexei Zhamnov - Robert Lang - Valeri Bure
Sami Kapanen - Jeremy Roenick - Esa Pirnes
Maxim Sushinski - Jan Benda - ??
A very powerful offensive group, but we need a 12th man plus some big players and defensive players. This unit is a bit too one-dimensional, especially with Valeri Bure up front. If Peter Forsberg pulls out (which is the rumour floating around), we can add him as the 12th group and we'd have a group that would put more than a few pucks in the opposition's net.
Really, this roster just shows you the large number of big names that have pulled out of this tournament. I can't remember a MAJOR tournament that had this many defections. As training camps are under way, hopefully we don't have many more.
Who would coach this squad? Well, Ivan Hlinka is dead and cloning technology is still in it's infancy...since Scotty Bowman was offered the Russian job and turned it down, we'll give him the reigns.
