Canada now has complete package
By AL STRACHAN -- Toronto Sun
Another defenceman has gone. This time, it's Wade Redden who has a shoulder injury that will keep him out of the World Cup for a week or more.
But where is the panic? Where is the concern about the national hockey program?
It wasn't long ago that the sports pages and airwaves were full of the-sky-is-falling stories.
EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS
The Olympic team had lost a shootout in Nagano; the juniors' string of gold medals had come to an end; and the National Hockey League's leading scorers weren't Canadian.
The hand-wringing over the state of Canadian hockey reached epidemic proportions
But there isn't much of that anymore. Nor should there be.
In addition to Redden, the Canadians are without Ed Jovanovski, injured in the tournament opener. Rob Blake and Chris Pronger had to withdraw before training camp.
When Jovanovski went down, in came Scott Hannan without so much as a ripple of consternation.
Hannan is a superb defenceman, perhaps overlooked in the East where he doesn't get a lot of exposure. But he's excellent positionally and he has remarkable mobility. Attacking forwards trying to go around him invariably find that they might as well try to avoid their shadow on a sunny day.
He clears the front of the net and, when he's playing for the San Jose Sharks, always gets the assignment of negating the opposition's top power forward.
If you don't know who wins those battles, you weren't watching this year's Western playoffs.
Now, with Redden out, Jay Bouwmeester will step in. Again, there is no concern among the Team Canada executive.
Like Hannan, Bouwmeester is an excellent young defenceman who can acquit himself adequately at any level. He's big and mobile and, since he was Hannan's defence partner throughout the World Cup training camp, will be able to step into a familiar role, should coach Pat Quinn choose to go back to that pairing.
So despite the absences, Canada will be able to send out six world-class defencemen for tomorrow's game against Russia.
And waiting in the wings, had the necessity arisen to choose them, are the likes of Mike Rathje, Brad Stuart, Chris Phillips and Bryan McCabe, all of whom represent only the most minute reduction in talent level.
This does not sound much like a nation short of hockey talent.
Go back to the first modern-era international tournament -- the 1972 Summit Series -- then trace development through the Canada Cups, Challenge Cups, world championships and so on, and you'll find one common theme. Canada's defence was always notoriously weak compared with the rest of the team.
Top-notch goalies were plentiful. Elite forwards were too numerous to count. But a full corps of defencemen of the same calibre? Not a chance.
Obviously, that's no longer the case. We still have the goalies -- more than ever -- and we still have plenty of forwards. But now we have the defencemen to round out the package.
You could make a good case that Jarome Iginla is the best forward in the world. Some hockey insiders say that the heir apparent is Dany Heatley.
Martin Brodeur is as good as any goalie in the game and there are lots of youngsters coming up behind him who may assume that mantle in the not-too-distant future.
GREAT DEFENCEMEN
And now, we have a crop of great defencemen to supplement it all.
Perhaps there was cause for concern a few years ago. Perhaps there wasn't.
But there certainly isn't much cause for concern now.
