Sunday, December 16, 2001
Arrangements leave room for discussion
By AL STRACHAN -- Toronto Sun
One of the longest discussions at Friday's Team Canada selection meeting had to do with the allocation of roommates.
"We're really going to concentrate on who rooms with who," executive director Wayne Gretzky said. "It becomes very important in terms of the chemistry of the team."
Some roommates are fairly obvious. Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan, who play together in Detroit, will be able to revive their Nagano custom of a pre-bedtime ice cream at 11 p.m.
Eric Lindros and Theoren Fleury, linemates and teammates in New York, would be another pairing.
But who rooms with Mario Lemieux? A potential Olympic linemate like Paul Kariya or another long-term player like Al MacInnis?
Perhaps the best bet might be Simon Gagne. After all, Gagne is one of Canada's hopes for the future and who better to learn from than Lemieux?
Also, the Olympics can be a very disorienting experience and by rooming with Lemieux, Gagne would be able to relax in his first language, thereby making the Olympic pressure easier to handle.
One of the problems the organizers will face is the fact that the team has been allotted 10 double-occupancy rooms and one triple occupancy.
Who gets the triple occupancy?
It would be easy to suggest that the three goalies should be roomed together but, for the most part, starting goalies on game day are like bears roused from hibernation. And let us not forget that Ed Belfour is on the team. He's grumpy at any time.
A starting goalie usually opts for a mid-afternoon nap, whereas the non-starters wouldn't. If the organizers put the goalies together, then two people are displaced on game days.
2002 Games Men's Hockey Coverage
