Sending poor rosters when everyone is available doesn't diminish it. That's a choice. And if Canada had won that I'm positive it'd be counted.lol
The 2005 World Championships Team Canada is an interesting roster.
The goaltending was pretty wild with both Brodeur and Luongo.
You can see how many European-centric players were involved. They relied a lot on past members of Team Canada, sort of an all-star team of previous WC attendees.
You had a lot of returnees from previous World Championships (* for guys on the 2006 Olympic team):
Forwards:
-Ryan Smyth *
-Dany Heatley *
-Kirk Maltby
-Kris Draper *
-Shane Doan *
-Brendan Morrow
-Joe Thornton *
-Patrick Marleau
-Scott Walker
-Brendan Morrison
Defence:
-Wade Redden *
-Chris Phillips
-Ed Jovonovski
-Robyn Regehr *
Goalies:
-Martin Brodeur (albeit way back in 1996) *
-Roberto Luongo *
-Marty Turco
Then you had the guys with no WC experience but who played in Europe during the lockout:
-Rick Nash *
-Mike Fisher
-Dan Boyle
-Sheldon Souray
Then you had a few guys who used 2005 as their first real WC/European experience:
-Simon Gagne *
-Scott Hannan
Team Canada stats, scoring leaders and demographics breakdown at Ice Hockey World Championships in 2005. Player birth country and age distributions, draft rounds of players in the 2005 tournament.
www.quanthockey.com
1. Previous NHL Season (2003-2004)
So, who was missing as far as the previous NHL season is concerned and their league-wide ranking in scoring:
-Martin St. Louis (1st)
-Joe Sakic (3rd)
-Cory Stillman (8th)
-Brad Richards (10th)
-Alex Tanguay (11th)
-Mark Recchi (14th)
-Jarome Iginla (16th)
-Steve Sullivan (17th)
-And here we have Joe Thornton as the top scoring member of Team Canada at 18th, Shane Doan next at 24th, Scott Walker at 26th
-As far as ranking by points-per-game (due to injury etc.), Marc Savard is at 3rd, Todd Bertuzzi at 28th
-It's harder to grade defencemen, but Scott Niedermayer and Bryan McCabe were on the end-of-season 1st and 2nd All-Star teams respectively
2. Subsequent 2006 Best-on-Best Olympic Roster
So, who was missing as far as the next best-on-best Olympic team is concerned, less than a year later in 2006:
Forwards:
-Joe Sakic
-Vincent Lecavalier
-Martin St. Louis
-Brad Richards
-Todd Bertuzzi
-Jarome Iginla
Defence:
-Jay Bouwmeester
-Rob Blake
-Bryan McCabe
-Chris Pronger
-Adam Foote
(not including Spezza, Staal, Crosby because they had little or no NHL experience in 2005)
3.
Conclusions
-The goaltending is as good as it could be. Luongo and Brodeur were consensus best-on-best goalies.
-The forwards were a pretty decent group, interestingly enough. 7 of 13 forwards on the 2006 Olympic team played on the 2005 WC team. Sakic, Iginla and the Tampa Bay Lightning guys are the most obvious omissions based on both prior NHL performance and 2006 Team Canada selection. Bertuzzi is a bit of a special case given his troubles around that time.
-The defence included 2 of 7, in Regehr and Redden, so a few notable omissions here.
-I think it's sort of in between a best-on-best team and a World Championship team.
-However, those tournaments took place in a bit of a lull for Canadian talent IMO, with 2002 as the swansong of the 80s-early 90s superstars (like Lemieux, Lindros and Yzerman) and the later 2000s guys yet to emerge
-As far as future HHoFers are concerned, you're looking at 3 or maybe 4 guys on the 2005 WC team, 2 of whom were goalies: Brodeur, Luongo, Thornton, (Doan / Heatley (if no car crash)).
-By the 2010 Olympics iteration of Team Canada, you're looking at 12 to 16 future HHoFers:
Forwards:
-Jonathan Toews
-Sidney Crosby
-Ryan Getzlaf
-Patrice Bergeron
-Joe Thornton
-Jarome Iginla
-Eric Staal (?)
-Corey Perry (?)
Defence:
-Scott Niedermayer
-Duncan Keith
-Drew Doughty
-Shea Weber (?)
-Chris Pronger
Goalies:
-Martin Brodeur
-Roberto Luongo
-M-A Fleury (?)