Searching For Six

I just wanted to quickly touch on the comments from Monday’s article. I need that first one translated into English, but I’m slightly concerned that the result will be a recipe for dog burgers.

I’d like to thank Thy Drunken Rookie for his kind words and book suggestion, but I will ask that, in the future, he refrain from using words I don’t know.

What the fuck does ‘epistemological’ mean?

The World Junior Hockey Championships begin on Boxing Day with the best players under the age of 20 vying for hockey supremacy.

The tournament is always one of my favourite traditions of the Christmas season. We rally around these kids, ensconced in a patriotic fervour only surpassed by the Olympics. It also helps that Canada is pretty much a lock to be in the gold medal game every single year.

This year’s team is striving for Canada’s sixth straight gold medal. For some reason, the World Juniors are taking place in Canada again, which hardly seems fair to the other countries, but who really gives a shit?

If you can’t be xenophobic during the holidays, when can you be?

It is this national pride that leads me to today’s column topic. If I’m eligible to play in this tournament, I’m playing no matter what (and judging from my hockey skills on that video I posted a while back, my only detriment in not suiting up for Canada is my age).

This is why I can’t understand that every year Canada fails to dress its top players as there are always a few tournament-eligible players playing their rookie season in the NHL.

I understand that the NHL is ultimate goal of every youngster to lace up a pair of skates in this country, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take two weeks off at Christmas for one more chance at World Junior glory.

A quick and less than thorough search has given me the following list of players who could play for Team Canada on Saturday, but are currently on NHL rosters: Ryan O’Reilly and Matt Duchene of the Colorado Avalanche, Tyler Myers of the Buffalo Sabres, Michael Del Zotto of the New York Rangers and John Tavares of the New York Islanders.

That is quite a bit of firepower that Canada could have at its disposal. That could be your number one power play unit for Christ’s sakes!

Obviously, NHL teams are reticent to loan out their valuable assets for the tournament, but wouldn’t it be prudent for these kids’ development to be the alpha dogs for Team Canada instead of playing ho-hum regular season NHL games at the end of December?

I would think playing in the pressure cooker that is the World Juniors and having the expectations of a nation on your shoulders would be a boon for these players’ progress into bonafide NHL stars.

You can play in the NHL for 20 years; you only have a finite number of chances to represent your country at this tournament.

I would love for one of these guys to stand up and say that they want to suit up for Canada on Saturday. National pride and patriotism seems to be at an all time low in this country. We need to get that back.

Unfortunately, a couple of Russians are leading the way. I love the declaration by Alex Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin that they will take a break from the NHL to represent Russia at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi (whether NHL players participate or not). Consequences and forfeited salary be damned.

That’s a fantastic precedent set for national pride and hopefully some of our boys follow suit.

Go Canada Go!