I was thinking that as well, particularly the point on the 1991 team. While hockey has changed a lot since then and our muckers and grinders for lack of a better term (say, Cirelli, Bennett, Hagel, Konecny) are much more skilled and better overall players than our muckers and grinders in 1991 (Graham, Tocchet, Sutter, Corson), I think we'll see a clearly-defined top-6 and bottom-6 at the 4 Nations tourney that we haven't really seen at recent bests-on-bests in the Yzerman/Babcock era. Babcock tended to deploy a top-9 with one heavy forechecking line (the Getzlaf lines in both tournaments) and the 4th line was more or less the spare parts and saw limited playing time.
I think we'll see a bit of a shift away from the Babcock approach and more toward what we saw 30+ years ago with the separation between those who's job it is to score, and those who's job it is to do other things. Tactically it makes sense for Canada to batten down the hatches defensively, given the state of our goaltending. A high-paced puck pressure/disruptive forechecking approach can be quite entertaining to watch when done properly, which I have no doubt Canada will given its coaching and player selection.
If this is in fact the approach then the players selected make a lot of sense, all the way down to Jarvis. The player selection kind of confirms what the approach will be, in fact.
I do hope Cooper is flexible enough to shift around players in his lineup depending on performance and fit.
We can quibble about guys like Thomas, Bedard, etc. but given the track records of the individuals involved in selecting the team I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they've thought things through.
