TORONTO -- It will be up to Wade Redden to decide if he'll play in tomorrow night's World Cup final. Team Canada assistant GM Kevin Lowe told the Sun following practice yesterday that if the Senators defenceman feels his sprained left shoulder is healthy enough, he'll be in the lineup against Team Finland at the Air Canada Centre.
"It's going to be up to him," said Lowe. "If he's healthy, he'll be in there. It's really unfortunate that he got hurt. I thought he was really starting to come into his own when he got injured (against Slovakia). The guy is just so smooth and so poised. He was making some great passes.
"I'm sure he's in a situation where he doesn't want to put the team at risk. He doesn't want to go in there, get reinjured and leave the team in a situation where we only have five healthy defencemen. He'll know if he's ready or not."
Defenceman Robyn Regehr wasn't on the ice with the Team Canada yesterday, but he's expected to play against Finland. Coach Pat Quinn and Regehr both indicated it was simply to give the Flames blueliner a rest.
Redden said he informed team officials Saturday he wasn't ready to return to the lineup against the Czechs. If he does play tomorrow, Quinn would likely sit youngster Jay Bouwmeester.
"You want to do the right thing," said Redden. "The big thing is we've got six guys playing well right now. I talked to the trainer (Saturday) and I let him know I felt that I wasn't ready. I'm not sure they wanted to make any changes either.
"When you go in there, you want to make sure that you can get the job done. I'll have to be able to go in there and be capable of doing what I can do. It's not a matter of shooting the puck. That's not the problem. It's the physical part."
bruce.garrioch@ott.sunpub.com
