Canada and U.S. have Milan Olympic injury replacements standing by

While Jason Robertson and Adam Fox did not make the U.S. Olympic hockey roster, and Sam Bennett and Mark Scheifele were not picked to play for Canada, that doesn't necessarily mean none of those players will be in Milan next month.

USA Hockey and Hockey Canada each has a group of players on standby who could get a call in the event of injuries.

"There's a number of players that we've identified that can fill in if need be," U.S. general manager Bill Guerin said Friday. "There is a plan in place."

Like Guerin, Canada GM Doug Armstrong did not want to reveal how many players are on the waitlist, other than to say all were asked if they wanted to remain in consideration and told they'd need to keep doing Olympic drug-testing.

"It's not one player out, one player in," Armstrong said Thursday. "What we're going to do is say: `If this style of player gets hurt, we'll have a list of players to look at it. If this style of player, gets hurt, we'll have a list of players to look at.' That list, it's long but not too long because there's different style of players that we want."

Bennett, a back-to-back Stanley Cup champion with Florida, Travis Konecny and Seth Jarvis are the only skaters from Canada's 4 Nations-winning roster not chosen for Milan. Bennett and Scheifele, a point-a-game player for Winnipeg, were perhaps the most surprising omissions, with 19-year-old Macklin Celebrini, Nick Suzuki and Tom Wilson making it as newcomers.

"There were a number of players who came right down to the wire," Armstrong said when asked about Scheifele. "There's so many players that are right on the cusp. No player has played their way off this team. We just had to narrow this down to 25."

Canada brought back its entire 4 Nations blue line,