Hockey

Given that they're heavily into renovations around Calgary International Airport these days, they might have borrowed a wall from the Montreal Canadiens' dressing room for Monday's arrival of those players trying out for Team Canada 2010.

You know the wall, the one with the quote from Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae's In Flanders Field.

"....to you from failing hands we throw/ The torch; be yours to hold it high..." They came in numbers, they came in singles, they came in dribs and drabs over a long morning, and by the time all 46 showed up at the Pengrowth Saddledome later in the day, the overwhelming sense - without so much as a sharpened skate or a taped stick - was one of seismic shift.

A new generation. A necessary changing of the guard.

Of the aged and plodding team that headed for Italy nearly four years ago to defend Olympic gold, only to return to lowered eyes and cold silence with a seventh-place finish, 10 players are gone. Some, like Joe Sakic, to retirement; some, like Todd Bertuzzi, mercifully.

Goaltender Martin Brodeur, who will have played in all four NHL-stamped Olympics if he makes this team, came wearing a T-shirt blaring "Montreal 1979" - a date beyond which more than two-thirds of the invited players were even born. Four (Milan Lucic, Jordan Staal, Jonathan Toews and goaltender Steve Mason) date from 1988; defencemen Drew Doughty, a 1989 baby, just turned 20 this month.

The contrast was not lost on Ryan Smyth, the Team Canada stalwart - two Olympics, seven consecutive world championships - and owner of a moniker that salutes them all: "Captain Canada."

"It's a new era," said the 33-year-old forward renowned for his heart and determined play.

But it may take more than heart and desire this time for a player whose age and style of play are beginning to tell on his body. He is not the Ryan Smyth of Edmonton Oilers days, not even the slightened Ryan Smyth of the mediocre Colorado Avalanche, as this summer he became a member of the Los Angeles Kings. That he will make the Kings in September is automatic; that he will make Team Canada come December is as uncertain as the weather that day.

Smyth, of course, was a member of the team that foundered in Turin, and all still pay something for that. "There's a little bitter taste in my mouth for what happened in Turin," he says. There's a lot bitter taste among those who watched and looked in vain for something to cheer.

Of the many errors in Turin, leadership has long been said to be a major concern - meaning the "Captain" in "Canada" could well go to one who was not there and therefore not tainted: last year's Stanley Cup-winning captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Sidney Crosby. Crosby just turned 22.

Smyth hopes his experience and his long-time dedication to Canadian teams will hold him in some stead, his ability to muck it up on the North American ice surface in additional stead - but he will be hard pressed to make a team that, this time, cannot afford decisions made for sentimental reasons.

There are older players; Scott Niedermayer, who already dabbled with retirement, is 35, Martin St. Louis and Chris Pronger are both 34, and Brodeur is 37. Players in their 30s used to be the standard; now they are the exception.

"I hope to be there," says Niedermayer, still one of the game's fastest skaters. "And sort of expect to be there if I perform well."

And so he should, as should Smyth if he picks up his game - but this youth movement was declared overdue in Turin and is an undeniable force for Vancouver.

Aging comes upon you quickly in sport, and sometimes its presence is not even noticed for some time. But that does not mean it is not there. As A.E. Housman's To an Athlete Dying Young so wonderfully put it: "And early though the laurel grows/ It withers quicker than the rose."

Experience definitely counts - and experience will certainly survive the later cuts that will come in December. Yet if the Stanley Cup playoffs of this last spring showed anything, it is that experience counts - although not with enough numbers to win.

It was both strange and oddly encouraging to stand in the arrivals area this Monday and not even be able to recognize some of the fresh faces coming along to be whisked away by red-shirted Hockey Canada officials.

Jordan Staal, 20, had his earphones hanging out of one jean pocket so precariously it seemed they might be better tied around his neck. Milan Lucic, 21 in June, wore a T-shirt that seemed somehow a challenge to Martin Brodeur's 1979 model.

"Live fast," Lucic's black shirt said.

Good advice, with December not so far away, and February, surprisingly, feeling even closer.

Brodeur looked around and understood perfectly.

"It's a fire you've got to have," he said. "Even as you get older."