Hockey

Mike Babcock will be only the second man to coach Team Canada on home soil. However, unlike Dave King who coached the national team in Calgary in 1988, the expectations heading into Vancouver in 2010 will be very high.

To a man, the group of analysts who will scrutinize every move made by the Olympic team for the Canadian broadcast consortium all agree, Steve Yzerman could not have picked a better coach for the job.

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STEPHEN BRUNT
"It's hard to argue with appointment of Mike Babcock as coach of Canada 2010 men's Olympic hockey team. In the past two seasons he has won a championship and lost game seven of the Stanley Cup finals. He is the point man of the best organization in hockey, and his Detroit teams have played with the combination of smarts and poise that will be essential in a home country Olympic tournament."

"This isn't about winning style points - it's about winning a gold medal, or bust. And in many ways the Olympic situation and the Wings' situation will be analogous: both present a coach with great depth of talent to be creatively combined and managed, and both include the luxury of an exceptional support staff."

"Since 1998, Canadians have come to understand that there are no sure things in Olympic hockey - a truth reinforced in Turin. Even our best are fallible. Marc Crawford will never fully live down his choices in the shootout game against the Czechs, and Wayne Gretzky, though he is hockey's Teflon man, has to answer for some of the personnel decisions he made in picking the 2006 team."

"Babcock will enter a tournament in which Canada's traditional goaltending edge may not be a given, in which the two best players in the world may well be wearing Russian uniforms. The pressure, the hype, will be unprecedented in hockey history. Even in 1972, the biggest games weren't played on Canada's home ice."

"It's going to be tough. But today, it's hard to make the case that there is anyone better up to the challenge."

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DARREN DREGER
"Canada's Olympic team will be built, primarily, on the model of the Detroit Red Wings. Why? Because the Red Wings have been the most competitive team in hockey in the last five years. There's a familiarity that exists between Yzerman and Babcock and while the coach and the player maybe didn't always see eye to eye, the reality is their focus was united - that focus was on winning. They are both two way thinking people, so that is going to be the focus for Team Canada in 2010. One dimensional players need not apply because there will be no space for them."

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PIERRE MCGUIRE
"When you think about Mike Babcock, he's a guy that knows how to engage a game plan. He knows how to make in-series and in-game adjustments, he doesn't panic under pressure, he's coached in a game seven, lost when he was in Anaheim with a team that shouldn't have been there yet they were, he coached in a game seven with a team that should have been there and probably should have won, so he gets it... and he won a game six in a Stanley Cup final. Short tournament doesn't matter, he'll be ready."

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NICK KYPREOS
"This was really Mike Babcock's job to lose and it's nice to see that even though he could not get over the hump in Game 7 against Pittsburgh, that he is still the guy. You talk about the success that no one else can match the last few years, the Stanley Cup and even prior to that the World Championships, taking Anaheim to a Stanley Cup final. This is a guy that reeks of success and (the Olympic coaching position) was his job two to three years ago. In terms of structure, you watch the way the Detroit Red Wings have played the last few years. It's all about maximizing their talent and their skill level. It's about not giving the puck up and you take a look at the way he coaches with Detroit and that's what we should expect to see in Vancouver. You're going to be four lines deep of tremendous skill so it's going to be about puck possession. It's going to be about making good decisions, educated decisions."