Chris Johnston: Canada is ready to send a new wave to Beijing for the Olympic hockey tournament

Oh to have been a fly on the wall in Banff last month when Team Canada’s brain trust set up shop for four days.

The turnover in staff since the last best-on-best international men’s hockey was played meant there were formalities. Get-to-know-yous, and talk of schedules, logistics and strategies. But the group also engaged in the same discussions that will go on in dressing rooms across the country over these next few months.

“We certainly talked about players quite a bit with the coaches,” general manager Doug Armstrong said Friday. “Formally and informally.”

Team Canada is ready to turn over a new leaf.

Following back-to-back Olympic victories in 2010 and 2014, plus the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Armstrong’s staff is preparing for an injection of new blood. Presuming good health, that will mean Olympic debuts for Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon, plus several other hopefuls from a group that includes Mitch Marner, Brayden Point, Mathew Barzal, Mark Scheifele, Bo Horvat, Mark Stone, Cale Makar, Shea Theodore, Darnell Nurse and others.

It reminds Armstrong of the youth movement that occurred during the 2010 Games in Vancouver. Sidney Crosby is a holdover from that team and will be in Beijing this February, of course, but most of the players he has celebrated so much international success with are no longer part of the picture.

“I think the ’10, ’14 and ’16 group basically were born in North Dakota at the (2005) world junior (championship) and stayed together for a long time,” Armstrong said. “Because we haven’t had anything in six years, there’s going to be many faces getting their first look at international competition at this level. And so there’s going to be some intrigue to that and some excitement.”

Hard as it may be to believe, the process of selecting the roster is entering its late stages. The NHL only officially signed off on its Olympic return on Sept. 3 but the management team is more than a year into player deliberations.

And on Oct. 15 they’ll submit a list of approximately 55 players that will comprise the pool from which the final 25-man roster can be selected in January. Those individuals are required to complete paperwork and will be subjected to expanded drug testing leading up to the Games.

This will be the ninth national team Armstrong has had a hand in selecting — “It’s a thrilling ride right from the start. It’s just an honour, basically,” he said when asked what keeps him coming back — and that experience has taught him it’s most constructive to pare the list down as they go.

There are management meetings scheduled for early November and early December. Additional Zoom sessions will likely be added. And as the January announcement draws closer, they will zero in on a small number of players still in contention for the final jobs.

Armstrong plans to include Jon Cooper in the decisions made at the bottom of the roster because he believes it’s essential the head coach sees a role for the depth players.

As for the roster itself, there’s a search for balance — Armstrong would prefer to have an equal number of left- and right-shot defencemen, for example, plus a few veterans to balance out the surge of newcomers. He believes he’s learned to avoid the “landmines” buried in the roster selection process.

“You want players playing at the top of their ability, but you also don’t want to discount experienced players, too,” he said.

There’s a massive amount of enthusiasm building for this tournament. We should consider it the players’ Olympics because the deal only came together after a strong push from the NHL’s young stars.

They’re also assuming risk since the agreement doesn’t include COVID insurance — a player could miss paycheques if he contracts the virus in China and misses time with his NHL team — and they’ll likely be inconvenienced by strict lockdowns inside the Olympic Village, the requirement to wear tracking devices and the expectation that they won’t be allowed to bring along family or friends.

“To accomplish your dreams, you have to make sacrifices,” Scheifele said.

“I think for me and I think for a lot of guys that were on (the North American team at the 2016 World Cup), it’s been a long time coming,” McDavid told the Associated Press this summer. “We’re obviously looking forward to going to the Olympics if we’re all lucky enough to make it.”

That decision now rests in the hands of Armstrong and his lieutenants: Ken Holland, Ron Francis, Roberto Luongo, Don Sweeney and Scott Salmond.

They didn’t get the benefit of holding a summer orientation camp like in previous Olympic cycles, and they plan to meet as many players face to face as they can in the early months of this season. They’ll also be scouting games intently while trimming down their lists.

“There’s certainly a medium-sized group of players that everyone feels comfortable is going to be on the team,” Armstrong said. “So the competition goes from there.”

As does the discussion.

Chris Johnston is a Toronto-based journalist with a new gaming company. His work will be seen on the website and app for the new gaming company, and also in the Toronto Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterchris