Anyone who thinks Stephen Harper, with his fragile government and fractured economy, has the toughest job in the country should consider the task Steve Yzerman is about to face.

The prime minister of the national game - also known as executive director of the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team - must somehow turn the 45 red and white players who will take to the ice this evening at the Pengrowth Saddledome into gold.

Silver or bronze - Canadian hockey's equivalent of winning a minority government - simply will not do.

For every player who will ultimately be chosen for Team Canada in December, another of those lacing up tonight will be turned down, most of them being "cut" from a team for the first time in their lives.

There is no individual shame in this, but Yzerman and his advisers must make the right choices in order to avoid a national humiliation such as happened last Olympics when an old, slow and disorganized Team Canada stumbled to seventh place in Turin. While only first place - for all sorts of psychobabble reasons - is acceptable, anything less than challenging for first when the national game is being contested in the land of its birth would be considered a disaster.

What is Yzerman to do? Does he, as was tried in Nagano 11 years ago, try to assemble a team of distinctive role players, from power-play specialists to designated checkers? Or does he, as worked in Salt Lake City four years later, simply enlist the very best players available and let them find their own roles?

The first impression from the list of players released early in July is that he would like to split it all right down the middle. Old names and new names. Forwards who can score in one end and check in the other. Defencemen who can move pucks up and defencemen who will stay back. "Responsible players," Yzerman called them, though some of those taking to the ice today have never been considered such.

The greatest on-ice responsibility, of course, falls to the goaltenders, the position in which Canada has generally been most smug in international play. Scant months ago, goaltending was considered the smallest of concerns, with veterans Martin Brodeur and Roberto Luongo and rising star Carey Price likely to answer the call. Brodeur and Luongo, however, looked awful the last time they wore the thick pads, and Price was not even asked to Calgary. Nor was Chris Osgood, who came within a fanned wrist shot of being chosen MVP of this spring's Stanley Cup playoffs. Brodeur and Luongo will now compete with Marc-André Fleury, Steve Mason and Cam Ward - with Yzerman praying he lucks into one who will be red hot come February.

Sidney Crosby, who was absurdly not even invited to play in Turin four years ago, is now the team's key player, marking a full and necessary generational shift from the teams that won gold in Salt Lake City but fell so flat in Italy.

Much will be made of certain players - veterans Jarome Iginla and Scott Niedermayer are happily back, all three Staal brothers are invited - but it is only when the team is chosen and the games actually begin that the surprises that are the story of every Olympics will surface.

Who could have imagined that Jiri Slegr, a journeyman defenceman in the NHL, would play the tournament of his life for the Czech Republic in Nagano? Who would have predicted that Martin Gerber would shut out Team Canada for a 2-0 victory for unheralded Switzerland in Turin? Who dared dream that a 70-foot dump-in by Belarus's Vladimir KopatÖ would bounce into Sweden's net off the head of goaltender Tommy Salo, thereby giving Canada a virtual bye into the final at Salt Lake City? Who - and an entire country cringes at the reminder - made the coaching decision that Yzerman and Wayne Gretzky, the two greatest scorers of their time, should sit on the bench in Nagano while five lesser players failed to score in a shootout against the Czech Republic's Dominik Hasek?

It is such opportunity that differentiates the Olympics from other competition. Professional hockey may offer outrageous fortune - $227-million (U.S.) in salaries will be on the ice tonight in Calgary - but only international hockey can give a player immortality in one's own land. Just ask Paul Henderson. Or Mario Lemieux. Or Sweden's Peter Forsberg. Or Hasek.

It could happen to any one of the 45 (a 46th invitee, Ryan Getzlaf, is recovering from sports hernia surgery). It is why they hoped to be chosen in July, why they are willing not to be chosen come December.

The Olympic puck will not drop for six months. Yzerman, who at the moment would survive any imaginable confidence motion, must decide in that time what sort of players Canada wants and needs, what sort of style best suits Olympic hockey not played on an Olympic ice surface and even what sort of coaching would be most appropriate for whatever team comes out of all this.

That in itself will be most interesting to watch, as a battle of wills is entirely conceivable between head coach Mike Babcock and associate Lindy Ruff, both of whom favour attack hockey, and associate coaches Jacques Lemaire and Ken Hitchcock, who preach defensive hockey.

No wonder author Morley Callaghan once called this simple child's game "our own national drama."

But, in fact, it's not our own any more at all. The Czechs took gold in Nagano in 1998, Canada in Salt Lake City in 2002, Sweden in Turin in 2006, with 2010 yet to be decided.

That the game has travelled so far and well only makes the Canadian drama all the more intense and all the more captivating.