TORONTO — Team USA general manager David Poile’s testimony that 2010 USA GM Brian Burke — colorful bad-mouthing quotes aside — had been Bobby Ryan’s strongest advocate among the hierarchy selecting the Olympic squad was seconded to Slap Shots by a team executive with knowledge of the deliberations.
“Absolutely, he was,” we were told. “Brian had Bobby Ryan on his final team and he spoke up for him in a forceful manner a number of different times, so it’s really unfortunate that this issue took on a life of its own and overshadowed almost everything else about the process.”
Once Poile issued the mandate for the Yanks to bring five centers to Sochi, Ryan became a victim of a numbers squeeze on the wing.
And though the approach has, for whatever reason, been mocked in some quarters, Team USA management’s responsibility was without a doubt to build a team that includes, if not features, players to fulfill defined roles and not merely to select the 25 “best” Americans.
The best American team ever, the 1996 squad that won the World Cup, included Joel Otto and Adam Deadmarsh, neither of whom would have made an all-star team but thrived as role players in the tournament.
If there were an obsession with speed and constructing a team to play to the larger rink surface, so much the better.
Judging from the reports filed by embedded journalists Scott Burnside of ESPN and Kevin Allen, Poile was painstakingly meticulous in attempting to build a consensus among the selection committee, in which nine people seemed to have had a voice.
From afar, we’d suggest to a fault. If a vote is 6-3 and the GM is among the three, the minority should win. Team construction isn’t — or shouldn’t be — a democratic process.
What surprised me, and again, based on the reports that have not been disputed or refuted, is how much of the team was set in stone by the start of the season.
What also surprised me was the willingness of the group to essentially disregard disappointing seasons from Jimmy Howard, Dustin Brown and Derek Stepan and name them to the squad nevertheless.
Ryan’s exclusion from Team USA generated more attention than Mark Messier’s exclusion from the 1998 Team Canada squad in favor of, among other people, Rob Zamuner, no less.
Well it’s not as if Canada’s coaching staff bypassed Wayne Gretzky in a shootout or anything that year in Nagano.
The thing with Howard having big game experience? If the US is in the position of turning to its third goaltender — behind Ryan Miller and Jonathan Quick in one man’s particular order — then the Yanks won’t be playing in a big game.
This is for head coach Dan Bylsma and his staff, but if Ryan Suter and Kevin Shattenkirk form the top defense tandem and the Penguins’ unit of Brooks Orpik and Paul Martin enter the tournament as a shutdown pair, then what does that leave for Ryan McDonagh?
And who will be on McDonagh’s right side, Justin (The One with the ‘U’) Faulk?
I’d say it won’t take long at all for McDonagh to become the left D on the shutdown pair.
The notion Kyle Okposo was bypassed because he plays for the Islanders gets the belly laugh of the week.
Andy Greene’s omission from the original long list of candidates that disqualified the Devils defenseman from consideration because he hadn’t been subjected to drug-testing could well be management’s least understandable mistake.
An informed source reports Brandon Dubinsky, who is having a very good season in Columbus, did indeed receive considerable support within the selection committee and is among a handful of players who could be added to the squad if injury strikes.
As of Friday night, the Oilers (26), Sabres (26), Flames (21) and Islanders (21) were the only teams in the league to have lost more games in regulation than the Rangers (20), though the Panthers had lost that same amount in 60 minutes.
The Sabres had won four games in regulation, the Flames had won seven, the Oilers and Islanders had won nine. The Caps, meanwhile, had won 10.
And Washington is in second place in the Metro Land of Sidney and the Seven Dwarfs.
The case for trading Michael Del Zotto essentially is this: Alain Vigneault seems to have as much use for the defenseman as John Tortorella did for Chris Kreider.
Seriously, all you hear from the Rangers coach is what Del Zotto doesn’t do, rather than what he does.
The case against trading Del Zotto is essentially this: He alone among the team’s defensemen is capable of handling top-three minutes on either side if injury strikes McDonagh, Dan Girardi or Marc Staal.
The case for giving away Del Zotto cannot be made.
By the way, one NHL general manager talking to Slap Shots last week about Dubinsky said this: “Dubinsky and [Ryan] Callahan … they were the identity of the Rangers.”
Now the identity of the Rangers is Null and Void.