Who belongs in Canada's all-century Olympic hockey lineup?

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Every day this month, the NHL has been rolling out a "quarter-century team" for each of its 32 franchises. The main idea is to select a starting lineup of the best three forwards, two defencemen and one goalie who played for that team since the year 2000.

So, with the 4 Nations Face-Off coming up in a couple weeks and NHL players returning to the Olympics next year, I thought it might be fun to pick an all-century lineup from Canada's Olympic men's hockey teams.

Even though our scope here is technically 25 years, we really only need to look at three Olympic tournaments — 2002, 2010 and 2014. The 2006 Games were a disaster for Canada, which got shut out by both Switzerland (!) and Finland in the group stage before losing to Russia in the quarterfinals by the same 2-0 score. And of course NHL players did not participate in 2018 and 2022.

I also should be clear that I'm making these picks based on how players performed in the Olympics, not in the NHL. If that were the case, we'd all just pencil Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux into two of the forward spots. Too easy. Also, I'm putting extra weight on peak performance and big moments while also considering players' overall Olympic body of work.

Alright, enough with the preamble. Here are my picks.

Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Jarome Iginla, Joe Sakic

A rule of thumb for me is that if you score the goal of the century, you get a spot on my all-century team. But Crosby's accomplishments go beyond the Golden Goal. He had four goals and three assists in seven games in Vancouver, then captained the 2014 gold-winning team that some