elias- had not played all season with hepatitis or whatever, they were not sure what kind of shape he would be in, even less certain than Canada with Nash.
petr sykora
he was on the bubble, it seems like the euro teams wanted at least one european pro on most of them and sykora's nhl numbers were pretty lacklustre with Anaheim.
samsononv
Russia has a bunch of left wings, Samsonov has been battling nagging injuries and right around the time of the selection he had started a skid. He was good for about a point a game but has very quickly fallen behind that pace.
radek dvorak
Been injured and the Czechs were eager to add a couple of new faces; I still think this was a bad move because he played well for them in Austria. That team had such great chemistry, I would have brought back as many players from it as possible along with Hasek. Hamrlik also got left off the Czech team.
leetch
this one puzzled me, too, here you have some pretty questionable selections or at least young players getting taken and leetch gets left off. to me he deserves the level of respect Chelios gets and even though he has made some mistakes this year in Boston he is still a guy who can log minutes even strength, on the PP or the PK. I guess they thought they had enough puck handlers.
palffy
Injury or he'd be there, he was a serious question mark for the WCs and didnt play in the World Cup; Slovaks have been plagued by injuries and lack of depth on defense. Budaj is a better goalie than they have had, I think.