Starting with Wayne Gretzky, Canada will be sending a lot of familiar names to the Nagano Olympics.
Mark Messier won't be one of them.Messier, a winner of six Stanley Cups and three Canada Cups, was left off the national Olympic team announced Saturday by Canadian general manager Bobby Clarke.
"We need to focus now on the players that were picked, that have the privilege to play for Canada, and forget about all the negativity," Messier said in Toronto after leading the Vancouver Canucks to a 4-2 victory over the Maple Leafs.
"We need to pull together as a country if we want to be successful and support not only the players but the people making the decisions, too, so we go there with good energy and a real positive attitude."
Just like that, Messier, a fixture of past Canada Cup teams, put to rest any possible backlash against Clarke.
"I talked to Mr. Clarke this afternoon and I didn't want to make him give an explanation," Messier said. "When he phoned me I kind of knew what the news was and I said, `Don't worry about it. I wish you luck."'
Clarke announced his choices at the Corel Centre in Kanata, Ontario.
"We put together what we felt was the right team with the players that were available to us," he said. "We certainly had to make very, very tough decisions. It was never meant to be a slight at anybody."
But Canucks coach Mike Keenan, who coached Canada in the 1991 Canada Cup, was disappointed.
"With Mark's experience and the way that he's played for us, and what he's done for Canada ... he's won six Stanley Cups ... so I thought he deserved, as a future Hall of Famer, to be named to the team," he said.
Messier could join the team if a player gets injured, and he wouldn't hesitate about making the squad by that route.
"Not one bit," he said. "I'm going to do the best I can, you never know. A lot of things can happen. If I was ever needed to go because of someone's unfortunate injury, I'd be honored to go."
Russian star forward Pavel Bure acknowledged his country can only gain by not having to face Messier at Nagano.
"For me, Team Canada without Mark is hard to imagine," he said.
Messier certainly made things hard on Clarke with his play lately. Including his goal in Saturday night's game, Messier had eight goals and 17 points in his last 14 games.
He was a leader for Canada on the international stage, playing in the 1984, 1987 and 1991 Canada Cups, the 1989 world championship and the 1996 World Cup.
Also on those teams was Messier's good friend, Gretzky. Gretzky desperately wanted Messier on the Olympic team.
"There's always controversies to which guys should be on the team and which guys shouldn't," Gretzky said in a conference call Saturday night. "When you get a guy of Mark's stature who's done for the game what he's done, it was probably a very difficult decision for Bobby Clarke and his staff to make. I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision."
Other notable veterans who weren't named to the Canadian team were Claude Lemieux and Paul Coffey, who played with Messier on the 1996 World Cup team.
Clarke, meanwhile, named his own captain on the Philadelphia Flyers, Eric Lindros, captain of the Olympic team. Detroit's Steve Yzerman and Colorado's Joe Sakic will be the assistant captains.
The goaltenders will be New Jersey's Martin Brodeur, Edmonton's Curtis Joseph and Colorado's Patrick Roy.
Defensemen include Rob Blake of Los Angeles, Boston's Ray Bourque, Philadelphia's Eric Desjardins, Colorado's Adam Foote, Al MacInnis of St. Louis, Chris Pronger of St. Louis and New Jersey's Scott Stevens.
The other forwards are Philadelphia's Rod Brind'Amour, Montreal's Shayne Corson, Calgary's Theo Fleury, Anaheim's Paul Kariya, Vancouver's Trevor Linden, Dallas' Joe Nieuwendyk, Carolina's Keith Primeau, Detroit's Brendan Shanahan and Tampa Bay's Rob Zamuner.