Junior players on Olympic radar

CANADA HAS CONSIDERED JUNIOR PLAYERS FOR OLYMPICS: QMJHL COMMISSIONER

Quebec Major Junior Hockey League commissioner Gilles Courteau says he has talked with Hockey Canada about using junior players at the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics.

Adding junior players — amateurs under the age of 21 — to Canada’s men’s team might be an option if the Kontinental Hockey League decides to boycott the 2018 Winter Games. Canada’s current men’s senior team, already stretched thin after the NHL decided its players will not compete at the Olympics, has over a dozen players on KHL teams.

“We’re talking with Hockey Canada,” said Courteau, whose league also has several players from the United States and Europe. “I don’t know what’s going to be the development with European countries, if they want to look at some junior players. I have no idea at this time.

“We have very good communication with Hockey Canada and we’re open to looking at different possibilities if Hockey Canada would like to have some of our junior players going to the Olympic selection camp.”

Relying on junior players is one of the contingencies left to Hockey Canada after the NHL pulled out of participating in the Winter Olympics on April 3. Right now, Hockey Canada is using top-level players from other professional leagues, mainly based in Europe.

That team is participating in three international tournaments this winter — the Karjala Cup, the Channel One Cup and the Spengler Cup — to build team chemistry and to help Hockey Canada’s Olympic management group, led by former NHL goalie Sean Burke, settle on a final roster.

However, the KHL, Russia’s top professional league, announced on Nov. 4 that it might withdraw its players from the Olympics if Russia was sanctioned for its doping program at the 2014 Sochi Games.

The International Olmpic Committee punished Russia on Tuesday for doping violations.