Olympics: Using junior players may be option for Canada
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 KHL decides to boycott the 2018 Winter Games.
Canada’s current men’s senior roster — already stretched thin after the NHL decided its players will not compete at the Olympics — has more than 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 Nov. 4 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 by its athletes by banning the country from competing in February’s Winter Games in South Korea. Some Russians will be allowed to compete as neutral athletes.
“Maybe following an update from the (International Ice Hockey Federation) and KHL and all of that it might be another story, not only with Hockey Canada but with all the other countries,” Courteau said.
“We’ll see. As of today we have nothing official. Things evolve on a daily basis and we have to take it a step at a time and we’ll see what the final request will be.”
The KHL threatened its boycott as Canada’s senior team was in the air, travelling to Helsinki, Finland for the Karjala Cup.
That roster had 15 players on it from the KHL, including goalie Ben Scrivens (Salavat Yulaev Ufa), who started every game at the tournament for Canada. Gilbert Brule (Kunlun Red Star), Eric O’Dell (HC Sochi) and Matt Ellison (Metallurg Magnitogorsk) all had goals in Canada’s three games in Finland.
Those players, as well as notables like Wojtek Wolski (Kunlun Red Star), Brandon Kozun (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl), Teddy Purcell (Avangard, Omsk), Matt Frattin (Barys Astana) and Max Talbot (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl) could all be disqualified from the team because of the KHL’s boycott.