Marathon meetings next week will decide bulk of Canadian men's Olympic hockey team

By the time the management group for the Canadian men’s national hockey team emerges from marathon meetings on Tuesday, as much as 80 per cent of the roster going to Italy next February should be written in pen.

Six players were named to the men’s Olympic team in June: Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Connor McDavid, Brayden Point and Sam Reinhart.

Since then, the management group has been whittling down a longer list of players under contention to wear the maple leaf at the first Olympics to feature NHLers since 2014.

That management group, led by general manager Doug Armstrong, will meet beginning on Sunday. Canada will play its first Olympic men's hockey game against the Czech Republic on Feb. 12.

“We’re not selecting an all-star team,” Armstrong said in an interview with CBC Sports on Wednesday.

“We’re selecting a team, and on a team, you have to have every aspect covered. That’s five-on-five, four-on-five, six-on-five. Every area needs to be done, and we want to make sure we give [head coach] Jon Cooper the appropriate tools in his toolbox to be ready to play in any situation.”

One curveball that has come their way in recent days is news that the new Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena under construction in Milan will have a smaller than expected ice surface.

The ice could be three or four feet smaller than an NHL-sized surface, Canadian assistant coach Peter DeBoer said on Sportsnet’s Real Kyper and Bourne radio show earlier this week.

“It won’t affect how we choose the roster, but it will be interesting,” Armstrong said on Wednesday. “We’ll have to get out the old VHS tapes and look at the Aud and the old Boston Gardens to see how to play in that smaller barn.” 

The GM said they know the dimensions of the ice inside the 16,000-seat arena, but not specifics around which areas of the ice will be smaller.

The organizing committee for the Milano Cortina Olympics has said for months that there is no backup plan should the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, where both men’s and women’s hockey games will be held, not be ready in time.

Construction on the privately-developed arena began late, and it won't be ready for testing until January.

"There are daily updates in the sense that our team is there working every day," Andrea Francisi, the chief games operations officer for Milano Cortina, told The Associated Press last week. "The companies which are involved with the building of the facility have sped up their work significantly.”

Armstrong isn’t worried about whether the arena will be ready in time, pointing to construction delays ahead of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.