This Saturday marks the re-start of the 2019-20 NHL season with a sixteen team play-in round and two four-team round robins.
A quick look at the schedule shows that the next week-plus will be filled with nearly constant hockey action. For fans that haven’t seen the sport and/or their teams play since March, the potential to make up for the lost time is tantalizing.
That is if you’re an optimist and think they can pull this off. Monday’s testing news is a good sign, but looking at MLB and their situation with the Miami Marlins outbreak, one could be excused for being pessimistic about the return to play.
I’m not sure which camp I fall into, but today let’s focus on something both sides can probably get excited about, the pending return of best-on-best international play. With the NHL likely returning to the Olympics in 2022, I’ve already looked at which Senators could make their national teams in 2022, but this time let’s dive into the past to construct six-man national teams from Sens’ history.
We’ll use the same format as the 2016 World Cup of Hockey did, making teams for Canada, the United States, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, as well as a Team Europe. We’re only dealing with players’ time with the Senators as well, so while Scott Gomez played over 1000 NHL games, his 13 appearances for Ottawa aren’t enough to put him on Team USA.