Team Canada unveils lineup for first game against Team USA.

The National Hockey League has made it clear that they have no intention of allowing their players to participate in the upcoming men's hockey tournament in Beijing, China for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, but in spite of that the tournament will move forward as planned.

Unfortunately for fans that means that we will not be seeing a best on best type of tournament and undoubtedly that will take a lot of the shine off of the tournament itself, but there will still very likely be a good amount of excitement around some of the bigger games set to take place. One such game is the rivalry between the Canadian hockey team and the hockey team representing the United States of America, two nations that have come to expect excellence from their respective hockey programs.

We are now only a few days away from what will likely only be the first showdown between these two teams at the tournament and we now have a little preview of what the Canadian squad will look like when they finally hit the ice. Alexandre Pratt from French media outlet La Presse has reported on what the Canadians lineup will look like for an exhibition match set to take place before the tournament officially gets underway in the preliminary round.

This gives us a pretty good idea of what we can expect from the Canadian squad going forward, and as you would expect given the circumstances there aren't a ton of huge names that have made the list. Here is a full breakdown of the Canadian Men's Hockey lineup for that upcoming game against the United States.

Forwards:

McTavish-Staal-Ho Sang

Tambellini-Weal-Knight

Street-O'Dell-Ferraro

Winnik-Desharnais-Cracknell

McBain

Defensemen:

Power-Robinson

Wotherspoon-Noreau

Barberio-Demers

Grant

Goaltenders:

Pasquale

Tomkins

Pratt reports that his source for this information comes directly from Hockey Canada, stating that he spoke to a representative from that organization following a match between the Russians and the Canadians. There's no doubt that this is the lineup they will be moving forward with and while I mean no disrespect to those that have made the journey all the way to Beijing I can't help but feel it is a little underwhelming to say the least.

Hopefully this trend of the NHL skipping the Olympics does not continue.