Often times television personalities or public figures will get tossed under the bus for making a bad prediction but at the end of the day, even when wrong, predictions are really just a lot of fun and should never really be taken all that seriously. With there being no hockey to speak of as of late the people over at TSN got a little creative and tried to work out which players they expect to see in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games that will be held in Beijing, China.
They laid out their predictions for both the Canadian team as well as the American team and although these will almost certainly prove to be wrong in the end, they laid out a star studded roster for both countries. Of course 2 years is a very long time a ton could change between now and then, so again just take these as a bit of fun. As you would expect they feature some of the biggest names in the National Hockey League playing today.
First here is a look at the predictions for the Canadian roster:
And now here is a look at the predictions for the American roster:
It has to be pointed out that the majority of both rosters feature veteran players that have already established themselves as bonafide NHL stars it seems likely that any head coach/general manager combination would lean heavily on those types of players for an event as rare and as important as the Olympic Games. This because even more true when you consider that for many this will be the first chance in 8 years that they have to participate in an event of this nature, making this perhaps their only chance at Olympic glory.
Although I doubt I will remember every pick on this board when the teams are actually announced when it comes to play in Beijing, it will be very interesting to see if any young players in the NHL manage to bump some of these veterans off of this list. For the most part the players on here will be hard to budge, but I would be surprised if we didn't see a few young upstarts make both the Canadian and American rosters in 2022.
