Wharnsby: (Experienced) youth served for Team Canada

Youth has carried the NHL since the troubled league locked out its players in 2004-05. You want examples? Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are solid starting points.

But examine championship teams, too. Does Carolina win without Eric Staal and Cam Ward? Where would Anaheim have been without Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry? Ditto for Pittsburgh with Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jordan Staal and Marc-Andre Fleury.

The only exception has been the 2007-08 Detroit Red Wings a couple seasons ago, but their age appeared to catch up in a hurry in the final against Crosby and the Penguins last spring.

Do you think Steve Yzerman, a lifetime Red Wing, noticed? If there was one underlying theme in his selections as executive director of the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team on Wednesday, it was that his management team wasn't afraid to choose youth.

A dozen members of the 23-player roster are age 25 or younger. Among the final decisions that kept Yzerman and his coach Mike Babcock debating early in the morning in Saskatoon, was the seventh defenceman and the 12th and 13th forwards.

On the blue-line, they opted for 20-year-old Drew Doughty over Jay Bouwmeester. Up front, Patrice Bergeron, 24, and Eric Staal, 25, received the nods over veterans such as Brad Richards, Martin St. Louis, Shane Doan and Mike Fisher.

Doughty deserves place

There will be criticism that Bouwmeester or Mike Green deserved a spot on Yzerman's defence, not Doughty.

But those critics are not staying up late to watch the Kings.

They don't recognize the fact that he has scored nine goals this season, a total that has him tied with Green for the league lead among defencemen. They didn't see how well he performed for Canada at the world championship last spring. They don't see the fact that Bouwmeester and Doughty have played the same amount of Stanley Cup playoff games: zero.

Some Quebecers are up in arms about the exclusion of St. Louis, the underdog undrafted five-foot-eight dynamo who won a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay and who served Canada so well at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey, the 2006 Olympics and two world championships.

St. Louis is still productive. He is 11th in league scoring. But he doesn't have the versatility of a Bergeron or an Eric Staal.

If you want an underdog story, there is Bergeron. He almost lost his career to a severe head injury he suffered when smacked from behind by then Philadelphia Flyers defenceman Randy Smith two years ago.

2005 junior team dots selections

Bergeron has found his game again this fall, the same form he displayed when he teamed up with Crosby on the 2005 Canadian world junior championship team. That world junior tournament received plenty of attention because the lockout allowed Canada to put together a dream team.

Interesting, seven members from that gold-medal winning team in Grand Forks, N.D., will suit up in Vancouver for Yzerman. There is Bergeron, Crosby, Shea Weber, Brent Seabrook, Perry, Getzlaf and Mike Richards.

Yzerman obviously did his homework. He may have served youth, but it is experienced youth. Weber, who will be relied on as a shutdown defenceman at the Olympics, did a number on Ovechkin in the 2005 world junior final.

Weber also is versatile, just like almost every other member of Yzerman's team. He also can provide offence. In fact, if youth is the most intriguing theme to Yzerman's selections, the second is how well these players perform in each of the three zones of the rink.

Sound familiar? Do we need to point out that when Scotty Bowman talked Yzerman into becoming a complete player midway through his Hockey Hall of Fame career that the Red Wings started winning championships?

Thanks to the youth, this is a team that has tremendous speed, can move the puck, defenders who can jump into the rush, but at the same time know how to take care of their own end.

As a result, Yzerman believes this team will take care of business in six weeks in Vancouver. Thirty-four million other Canadians are hoping, too.