Ottawa Senators All-Time National Teams
By Jack Baines
United States
Shawn McEachern – Ryan Dzingel – Bobby Ryan
While the franchise’s Canadian stars may have been underwhelming, the Americans fall well short of the national team as a whole. While they’ve never won a men’s Olympic gold in the NHL era, they’ve been right up there with Canada on many occasions, including forcing them to overtime in the 2010 gold medal game. This team though, simply doesn’t have the star power the Canadian squad did, but you never know, they could pull off a miracle.
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Truthfully, the forwards are pretty solid. With McEachern and Ryan being the team’s two longest-serving Americans. Mix in the skill and speed of a Ryan Dzingel and while it may not be a top-line like Canada’s, it could certainly cause problems for some of the lesser teams.
The blue line is where this team truly falls apart though, as Lance Pitlick gets the nod as the only American d-man to top 200 games for the franchise. Joe Corvo actually benefits from the rules here, as his mediocre at best career is ignored in favour of his contributions to the team during their 2006-07 Stanley Cup Finals season.
The United States’ best hope here lies in nets, as Craig Anderson represents the best goaltender the Sens have had and has on numerous occasions carried mediocre or bad teams to better records with Ottawa. In the Olympics, sometimes a hot goaltender is all that’s needed, and Anderson’s as good a bet as any.