Don_Cherry said:
There are a lot of bitter Easterners here and I don't understand it. Hockey Canada selects the best players it can for this tournament and it just so happens this year the western part of the country is stacked with tremendous talent. It's not a knock against the other leagues, it's just an abnormality.
And how many checkers and grinders do you see on that list? It's made up mostly of high end forwars with high end skill. To say the team won't win because of the western style is a much too simple statement to make. It's going to be a powerhouse team and I'm confident they'll win gold.
I think it's tempting, but a bit facile to make this argument in terms of East vs. West. Yes, the West definitely is the best league right now, with the best talent. And it shows in terms of the assumed incumbents for Team Canada. But I think Easterners would have a valid beef when looking at some of the other invites.
For example, you can't tell me that those goalies are unarguably the best four in Canada. There is nothing really to separate the pack that we as outside observers could point to. Hence, it is fair to wonder why all four are from the West.
Up front, I don't buy that Ladd is much better or different than Bernier, or that you couldn't choose Alex Picard before/in the same breath as Fehr or MacArthur, etc. And I would submit that there are Colin Fraser types scattered throughout all the leagues, it's just that this one is the one who happens to be in the Sutter's own backyard. Guys who aren't even worthy of consideration for the team (just picking, say Max Lapierre's name out of my own familiar backyard hat) compare favourably, and there are tons of others.
It cuts a little bit both ways, of course, in that I'm not convinced that Dixon is a truly the best player for the team either, if indeed they give him a pass on veteran status. But that's one rather isolated counter-example in a sea of pro-West bias.
At the end of the day, however, I'm not personally the least bit bothered, because I agree that this team will be very strong regardless of how they fill out those few remaining open spots. And I can also sympathise entirely with the coaching staff wanting to pick the guys they are most familiar with from their own personal experiences. I'd probably do the same thing. So I'm not saying it's
wrong that there's a Western bias, but I wouldn't go around denying it either.