Ben Wright has the list up at the Blueland Blog. Eleven (I'm assuming Toby was asked but had to decline because of injury) different players were asked by their countries to represent them at the World Championships, and seven will go for sure. Dustin Byfuglien was asked but is still deciding.
It's a fairly interesting list, to be sure:
Canada:
- Evander Kane
- Andrew Ladd
USA:
- Tim Stapleton (?!?)
- Blake Wheeler
- Mark Stuart
- Dustin Byfuglien (possibly)
Russia:
- Alexander Burmistrov - on tryout
Czech Republic:
- Ondrej Pavelec
Best of luck to Burmistrov to be asked in on the Russian team's tryout. Everyone else asked, regardless of if they accepted or not, I understand, save for Tim Stapleton. I don't want to take anything away from him, because he busted his butt every game for the Thrashers and was playing better as the season progressed, but he's not international-play material. With the selection of Zach Bogosian, I'm going to figure that they chalked his horrible +/- to the team he played for, and figured he'd play better with better defensive teammates, Since he declined, we'll never know. Honestly, though, Bogosian's +/- was a huge outlier even on the Thrashers, so I wonder how much justification they tried to give their choice.
Team Canada is always stacked and they'll benefit from the play of Ladd and Kane. The Czech Republic'll be using Pavelec as a backup to Tomas Vokoun, presumably.
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