Rumor: 10 members of Canada's Olympic roster revealed!

It was a huge disappointment when the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players Association announced late last year that they would not be greenlighting participation for NHL players in the upcoming Winter Olympic Games set to take place in Beijing, China. It has been far too long since we have seen best on best hockey at the international level and unfortunately it will be at least another 4 years before we get a chance to witness it again, at least as far as the Olympics are concerned.

The news was not bad news for everyone however as it opened up the door to an entirely different roster of players for the upcoming tournament and it sounds like we are starting to get a better picture of who some of those names will be. Last weekend the Russian national program unveiled its training camp roster and now we have 10 names that are rumored to be a part of the final selection for Canada's Olympic roster.

The news comes courtesy of Scott Wheeler of The Athletic who cites multiple sources on the matter, with Wheeler revealing 10 names that are expected to head to Beijing with the Canadian delegation.

First here are the forwards:

Kent Johnson

Adam Cracknell

David Desharnais

Landon Ferraro

Eric Staal

Daniel Winnik

Daniel Carr

It's not what you would consider a star studded roster by the modern standards of the NHL, but nonetheless these are all men with extensive experience at the highest levels of hockey. In fact I would even wager that a player like Eric Staal for example could be using this as a way to parlay himself into an NHL job, assuming that he comes back from the games healthy and performs well at the tournament itself.

As for the defensemen on this squad, here are the names revealed by Wheeler:

Owen Power

Jason Demers

Mark Barberio

Owen Power is obviously going to be the most exciting name among this group, especially when you consider how good he looked at the World Junior Championship prior to that tournament being shut down due to Covid.

This isn't the full roster of course and we will bring you additional updates as more names are revealed.