Canadian Lines (2002)

[Trolt]

After listening to a little segment about iginla believing that sakic was put on another line separate from mario lemieux, i'm curious as to the initial lines that team Canada opened with (during the round robin)

 

[Puckgenius*]

In 2002? If I recall correctly the top line was

Lemieux-Sakic-Fleury

 

[Blades of Glory]

No, these were the lines.

Kariya-Lemieux-Yzerman
Gagne-Sakic-Iginla
Shanahan-Nieuwendyk-Fleury
Smyth-Lindros/Peca-Nolan

Pronger-MacInnis (not always together)
Jovanovski/Brewer-Blake
Niedermayer-Foote

Lemieux's line carried Canada into the Gold Medal game, as pretty much everyone else was having a horrible tournament. Then, not surprisingly, Joe Sakic carried them in the Gold Medal game, racking up 2 goals and setting up Jarome Iginla's 2 goals (with some help from Steve Yzerman). Note that these were Canada's lines for almost the duration of the entire tournament, and it did not change much between the round robin and the medal round.

 

[Ironslave]

No, these were the lines.

Kariya-Lemieux-Yzerman
Gagne-Sakic-Iginla
Shanahan-Nieuwendyk-Fleury
Smyth-Lindros/Peca-Nolan

Pronger-MacInnis (not always together)
Jovanovski/Brewer-Blake
Niedermayer-Foote

Lemieux's line carried Canada into the Gold Medal game, as pretty much everyone else was having a horrible tournament. Then, not surprisingly, Joe Sakic carried them in the Gold Medal game, racking up 2 goals and setting up Jarome Iginla's 2 goals (with some help from Steve Yzerman). Note that these were Canada's lines for almost the duration of the entire tournament, and it did not change much between the round robin and the medal round.

That's what they finished with, I believe they opened with

Kariya- Sakic- Lemieux
Gagne- Yzerman-Iginla
Shanahan- Lindros- Fleury
Smyth-Nieuwendy/Peca- Nolan

 

[Blades of Glory]

That's what they finished with, I believe they opened with

Kariya- Sakic- Lemieux
Gagne- Yzerman-Iginla
Shanahan- Lindros- Fleury
Smyth- Peca- Nolan
Nieuwendyk

Yeah, I remember that they swapped Sakic and Yzerman and pushed Lindros down to the fourth line after he had a terrible first few games of the tournament. Yzerman's knee was at a point that they couldn't ask him to center two young and speedy players, so they put him on Lemieux's wing and created the best line of the tournament (until the GM game).

 

[CloudReader]

One defense pairing that started the games was Brewer-MacInnis. They weren't used to reading their distance from the boards on olympic ice yet and got torpedoed by Alfredsson and Sundin.

 

[Ziostilon]

and this is how far Brewer has fallen