Team Canada was announced on Wednesday, and Toronto Maple Leafs superstar Mitch Marner has made the roster.
Unfortunately for fellow Toronto Maple Leafs Chris Tanev, Morgan Rielly and John Tavares, Marner was the only member of the team to make the cut.
Joining Marner will be Connor McDavid, Sam Reinhart, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon, among others.
Interestingly, Canada - who doesn't have good goaltending - have elected to dress a whole bunch of role players like Brandon Hagal, Sam Bennet, Colton Parayko, and Anthony Cirelli instead of superstars like Matthew Barzal or Connor Bedard.
The fact that Canada could take an all-star team but aways insist on putting a bunch of lesser "character" players on the roster is enough to drive you nuts, but it's also comletely typical and expected. Canada has failed with this stratagy before, and in my opinion they should just take the most talented players, but they should still win because they have MacKinnon, Makar and McDavid, who are three of the five best players alive.
Toronto Maple Leafs Mitch Marner makes Team Canada roster
Before getting back to Marner, I feel like I should complain a bit more about Canada's roster. No Evan Bouchard? That seems completely insane. No Zach Hyman? OK if you're not taking those players, they don't take him. But if you're taking Hagal, Bennet and Cirelli, why wouldn't you take Hyman before those guys? That's just dumb.
And Chris Tanev left off for Colton. Parayko? Are you kidding me? That's bonkers.
Back to Marner - not including last night, he's scored two points eight of the last ten games, and he's starting to make some Hart and Art Trophy noise. The Leafs for some ridiculous reason let him enter this season without a contract for next year, and so it would be no surprise if he actuallly ended up winning some hardware this season, just because his price going through the roof would be so typical for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Auston Matthews of course is joing the American team, while William Nylander will be on Sweden. If you need to know who the underdog of this tournement will be, look no further than the other member of the Leafs to be added to a 4 Nations roster: Jani Hakkanpaa.
Hakkanpaa isn't even good enough that he should dress on the Leafs regular roster (if he was healthy, which he hasn't been. He has only played 2 games for the Leafs this year) so that should give you a good idea of how good Finland's team is.
Team Canada should probably have taken John Tavares, but it's impossible to complain about a moderate decision that could have gone eiterh way when they actually left Evan Bouchard off the roster, which, again, is just crazy.