Hockey

One of Mike Babcock's primary assets as a coach is his desire for input from all available sources, so between now and August, when Canada's men's Olympic hopefuls convene for an orientation camp in Calgary, you can be sure Babcock will touch base with two-time Olympic coach Pat Quinn for advice and guidance.

Quinn doesn't need to tell Babcock how to coach - after all, the latter has won a world junior, a world championship and a Stanley Cup title already in his comparatively short career - but the Olympics (and especially one that will be played in Canada for the first time since 1988) present a far different challenge in terms of scope and pressure.

Quinn was behind the bench for Canada's win in 2002 in Salt Lake City, where the presence of so many Canadian fans in the stands will most closely resemble what Babcock and the 2010 squad will be up against.

Assembling a team on the fly will be Babcock's primary challenge - that and learning how to deal with the vast amounts of pressure that everyone involved in the exercise will face.

"Time is your enemy," Quinn said. "You have so little time to prepare.
"You'll get a little time at the end of August with the players, but there'll be 45 of them there, so it's not the same. But he will have a chance to introduce how he envisions this group playing."

Beyond teaching a system on the fly, Quinn suggested the other primary factor is the "challenge of leadership" - and how that evolves.

"We had it in 2002," he said. "It came together really well there. We had 11 or 12 captains, but they didn't stumble all over themselves.

"When we went to Turin in 2006, we didn't seem to get that same respect for team that we needed to have, and that was shown in 2002 by the Lemieuxs, Yzermans and Sakics.

"That's a very important thing. In that environment, that format, you don't have to win early, but you do have to build your team so that it can withstand that first crossover game, where there's big pressure.

"That's the other important thing to me - talking to the players about the pressure they'll feel playing here in Canada, because it's going to be immense. Good athletes can usually figure it out, but it needs to be talked about."

Of all the players under consideration for the men's Olympic team, the two that may have done themselves the most good with their performance during the Stanley Cup playoffs are Pittsburgh Penguins goaltender Marc-André Fleury and Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Keith Seabrook.

Fleury demonstrated that he could win a game facing the sort of immense pressure Quinn alluded to - his Penguins trailed the series against Detroit 3-2, before winning two straight - and Seabrook showed that he, in tandem with Duncan Keith, were an effective shutdown pair.

Given the comparatively short adjustment period players will have, Lanny McDonald, who was associated with three Canadian world championship teams in the past nine years, suggested Seabrook belongs in the mix for the Olympic team because of his broad range of skills.

Fleury will likely get an invitation, even if Canada opts to bring only four goaltenders to the Olympic camp. Currently, executive director Steve Yzerman is mulling over that number - they will either take four or six net-minders and somewhere between 44 to 48 players overall. Two candidates, who missed extensive periods to injury last season, Colorado's Joe Sakic and Dallas's Brenden Morrow, remain under consideration; and the news that Anaheim's Scott Niedermayer will return to play next season virtually guarantees him a spot on the roster, provided he stays healthy.