Hockey

Wayne Gretzky played for Canada during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano and then managed the men's hockey team for each of the next two Olympics - Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006.

He has a different role in mind for Vancouver 2010 - spectator. Gretzky plans to be in attendance when Canada stages a Winter Olympics for the first time in 22 years, but his intention is to watch rather than participate.

One of Gretzky's primary regrets from his previous three Olympic experiences was how his focus needed to be squarely on the task at hand - trying to help Canada win a gold medal, which happened in 2002, ending a 50-year drought.

But he had few opportunities to get out to the other Olympics venues and watch speed skating, skiing, curling, figure skating and the other sports on the schedule, something he intends to remedy this time around.

Gretzky is mindful that his replacement as executive director, Steve Yzerman, is under enormous pressure to deliver a gold medal, in the same way he was eight years ago.

"It's a fine line for both Steve and I, in the sense that I really don't want people to think I'm influencing him," said Gretzky, who estimated he's spoken to Yzerman two or three times over the past seven or eight months.

"It's his team and his management group.

"What I can give him is the experience of what I went through and what we went through as a group. So we really don't talk about individual players.

We don't talk about the style of player. We really just talk about what to expect - the things you need to do to protect the players, to get them ready, things that I have first-hand knowledge of because I went through it."

Gretzky is particularly well-known for his rally-the-troops rant in the middle of the 2002 Olympics, when Canada got off to a slow start, losing its first game in one-sided fashion to Sweden and then getting through the preliminary round with a modest 1-1-1 record.

Gretzky's us-against-the-world press conference put the focus squarely on him and helped lift the pressure off the rest of the team. Canada went 3-0 in the playoff round and played its best game in the gold-medal game against the United States, a 5-1 victory.

Yzerman, playing despite a bad knee, held a pivotal leadership role on that team.

With about six weeks to go until the 2010 roster needs to be submitted to the International Ice Hockey Federation, Gretzky suggested this was "the most critical time" in the evaluation process for Yzerman and his staff.

Barring injury, players such as Sidney Crosby, Jarome Iginla and Martin Brodeur will be chosen no matter what. The controversies will focus on the bottom end of the roster, where "you're always going to have questions about the four or five guys people figure should be there, and the four or five guys people think shouldn't be on the team."

Gretzky made a controversial choice in 2006 by adding Todd Bertuzzi instead of Crosby, the emerging young star, who would have been a far more popular choice.

"The bottom line is, if you win the gold medal, you picked the right guys - and if you don't, you're subject to questions. But they'll have a very good team. I think he's got tremendous goaltending, good depth, size and speed. I think this is going to be one of the better Canadian teams that we've ever put together."

Canada lost in the semi-finals in 1998 to the Czech Republic in a shootout, the only Olympics in which Gretzky played. He watched the defeat unfold from the bench, as five of his teammates were foiled, in succession, by Czech goaltender Dominik Hasek.

Still, playing in the games was far preferable to sitting high above the ice surface, in the manager's box, with his hopes and aspirations in someone else's hands.

"When you're playing, your nervous energy is before the game, or the night before," Gretzky said. "Once you put on your equipment and go out for the warm-up, all that nervous energy goes away and you just want to go out and play well.

"In management or coaching, you're really not that concerned the night before or the morning of. But then when the game actually starts, you physically can't do anything about the outcome of the game. That's when your nervous energy starts - when you're watching the game. So it's the complete opposite of being a player on the ice."

As for being a fan this time around, Gretzky relishes the prospect.

"There's always a lot of pressure on the Canadian hockey team," Gretzky said.

"Obviously, with this being in Vancouver, the pressure is going to be even greater than it was on the teams in the past. But they have good management, good coaching and the leadership of the players - guys like Iginla and Crosby - they've faced these pressures before and they understand what it's all about. I'm sure they'll be fine."

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The European leagues are coming off a 10-day international tournament break - with most of the action centred on the Karjala Cup in Finland because Peter Forsberg was there, playing for Sweden, with a view to giving his career one last shot.

Russia won the tournament, capturing semi-final and final games in overtime. In both games, the winning goal was scored by Alexei Morozov, the ex-Pittsburgh Penguins forward who keeps resisting offers to return to the NHL because he's a star in his home country's Continental Hockey League and earns more money playing for Ak Bars Kazan than he would in North America.

Meanwhile, Germany, coming off a dismal performance at last year's world championships, won its own tournament, the Deutschland Cup, for the first time since 1996 - and did so by defeating two higher-ranked opponents, Switzerland and Slovakia, along the way.

Germany, which will be in a group with Sweden, Switzerland and Belarus at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, is coached by Uwe Krupp, who won a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche, coincidentally, in 1996.

There are 11 German-born players on NHL rosters, including Marco Sturm of the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks defenceman Christian Ehrhoff, who will get to play the tournament on his home NHL ice. The San Jose Sharks' backup goalie, Thomas Greiss, is likely to get the starting nod in goal for Germany in 2010.

STOCK UP
Martin Brodeur
Not that the three-time Olympian had to worry about his spot on Canada's team, but Brodeur has his New Jersey Devils off to a strong start, in no small part because of his solid play in the nets. He had a 2.16 goals-against average and a 12-4 record heading into New Jersey's game last night against the Philadelphia Flyers.

Brodeur, the goalie with the most wins in NHL history, had a little bump along the road last year in the deciding game of the Carolina Hurricanes series, in which the Devils were eliminated from the playoffs. But he has returned to competition in good health, refreshed and looking as if he can shoulder the No. 1 duties in goal in Vancouver, even at 37.

STOCK DOWN
Steve Mason
The reigning Calder Trophy winner needed to follow up his sparkling NHL debut with a solid second season to squeeze his way into the Olympic conversation.

Instead, the Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender has struggled in the early going and possesses one of the worst GAA among starting goalies in the NHL - 3.67 before the Jackets' game against the Edmonton Oilers last night, or 41st out of 42 listed in the NHL's stats sheet.

It didn't help his cause that he was victimized for most of the damage in a 9-1 loss last week to the Detroit Red Wings, a team that's coached by Mike Babcock, who's also coaching the Olympic team. At 21, Mason might be just too young for inclusion this time around.