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Golden opportunity: Calgary-area skaters shooting for spots on Team Canada for 2018 Olympics

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Mat Robinson can remember squirming on the gymnasium floor at John G. Diefenbaker High as he and his schoolmates watched one of Canada’s key games at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where Mario, Iggy and a star-studded cast ended a lengthy gold-medal drought for the Great White North in men’s hockey.

A dozen years later, albeit on upgraded furniture, he recalls being even more uncomfortable as Crosby & Co. tried to eliminate an underdog in quarterfinal action at the 2014 Sochi Games.

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“That nailbiter against Latvia that year, that was a very stressful watch for me,” Robinson said, reminiscing about a 2-1 squeaker that was tied with seven minutes remaining.

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Understandable, since he was tuning in from Latvia, then his home-base as he patrolled the blue-line for Riga Dynamo, his first stop in the Kontinental Hockey League.

“I was the guy wearing the Canada jersey in front of the TV for the last one,” Robinson said. “I’ve always loved

Mat Robinson during his Calgary North Star career.
Mat Robinson during his Calgary North Star career. R & G PHOTO

watching the Olympics — it’s an amazing event — and I’ve always been cheering for Canada, that’s for sure.”

The 31-year-old Robinson will surely be sporting his national colours again in February, except that he might also be wearing his skates, shoulder pads and the rest of his gear.

The Calgary-raised rearguard is on Hockey Canada’s (longish) short-list for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the first time since 1994 that National Hockey League stars won’t be available to represent their countries at the five-ring circus.

Instead, Team Canada will be compiled mostly of guys playing professionally in Europe.

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Perhaps a guy like Robinson, a graduate of the Calgary Northstars AAA program, later a standout for the NCAA’s University of Alaska-Anchorage Seawolves and now a workhorse for CSKA Moscow of the KHL.

Brandon Kozun at the end of his Hitmen days.
Brandon Kozun at the end of his Hitmen days. Photo by DARREN MAKOWICHUK /Postmedia

Perhaps a guy like Brandon Kozun, who filled the net for his hometown Hitmen in the Western Hockey League, represented Canada at the world juniors in 2010, was briefly a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs and now toils on the right wing for the KHL’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.

Perhaps a guy like Mason Raymond of Cochrane, who still counts against the Calgary Flames’ salary cap — the final year of his contract was bought out in the summer of 2016 — but is now employed by SC Bern in Switzerland’s National A League.

Canada’s watch-list was revealed, at least in part, at a pair of events in August, with Kozun and Raymond on the roster for the Sochi Hockey Open and Robinson suiting up at the Tournament of Nikolai Puchkov.

Auditions will continue with a hat-trick of upcoming showcases — the Karjala Cup in Helsinki, the Channel One Cup in Moscow and the Spengler Cup, an annual holiday tradition in Davos, Switzerland. Hockey Canada’s roster choices for those tournaments should provide a hint on who has an inside track on an invite to the 2018 Winter Games.

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Kozun, who has managed only four markers and 11 points in 21 dates this fall after finishing ninth in the KHL’s scoring race last season, will be anxious to find his offensive groove before then.

Robinson, who has one goal, seven assists and leads CSKA Moscow with a plus-12 rating through 16 outings, will hope that Canada’s brass have been impressed with what they’ve seen.

Raymond’s big-stage experience — nearly a decade in the NHL and a trip to the Stanley Cup final in 2011 — might give the 31-year-old speedster an edge over some of the other options on the wing.

“Just being in the mix and being mentioned is obviously a huge honour. It’s something that, at this point of my career, never would I have thought would have happened,” said the 27-year-old Kozun, who logged 20 games with the Maple Leafs during the 2014-15 campaign and is now in his third season overseas. “To have that door open or that window open and the ability to have that chance to be an Olympian, for any person, no matter whether it’s the A squad or it’s the B squad, it’s something that you should be proud of.”

Echoed Raymond, with 251 points in 546 career contests at the big-league level: “Pulling that jersey over your head is surreal, and the opportunity to potentially call yourself an Olympian is a dream.”

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The puck drops in less than four months in Pyeongchang, with Team Canada set to open their pool play with a Feb. 15 showdown against Switzerland.

If the NHL was once again breaking to allow their biggest stars to skate at the Olympics, there would already be coast-to-coast speculation about the Canadian roster.

There would be banter about the ideal sidekicks for superstar centres Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid and Jonathan Toews.

There would be debate about whether two-time gold medallists Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry — key pieces of the victorious group in Vancouver in 2010 and again in Sochi four years later — can boogie well enough to be impactful on the big ice.

Here in Calgary, fans would be wondering if Flames captain Mark Giordano might be considered.

Instead, it’s been oh-so-quiet.

That won’t last, even if many of Canada’s candidates make Rob Zamuner seem like a big name.

“It’s still going to be really good hockey. And the fact that this is Canada’s team and it’s the Olympics, such a large event, I expect people to watch and to be excited still,” said Robinson, whose professional path has included stints in the AHL, ECHL, Norway, Sweden and now five straight seasons in the KHL. “For instance, you may watch a lot of sports during the Olympics that you’re not too familiar with or athletes you don’t even know in certain sports because you still cheer for them, you still get excited to watch.

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“All of a sudden, you’re watching the Olympics and you’re an expert on diving or something like that, you know what I mean? It’s like, ‘Oh, we’ll cheer for that person, of course, because they’re Canadian.’ We’re not going to be household names, but we’re still Canadian and we’re still fighting for gold and it’s still Canada’s sport and we’re going to want to win. I think Canadians will get behind that and be excited.”

Kozun, the Western Hockey League’s scoring champion in 2009-10, echoed that thought.

“It’s one thing that I hope this whole process proves to a lot of people in Canada — and I think it will — is that this is going to be good hockey,” he stressed. “I know that a lot of people are upset about the NHL not going, and I understand that. But if they think is going to be beer leagues, this is not beer leagues. These are very good players who have reputations of accomplishing good things and playing in the NHL and winning Stanley Cups and doing well with their teams individually.”

Perhaps, for some of them, their greatest achievement is still to come.

On, let’s say, Feb. 24 at Gangneung Hockey Centre.

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“There could be a guy on that team who scores an overtime winner to win a gold medal, and it’s not going to Sidney Crosby and it’s not going to be Connor McDavid,” Kozun said. “It’s going to be a guy who plays maybe in Russia or maybe in Switzerland. But there could be someone who becomes a household name in five minutes.”

Indeed, any medal game that includes Team Canada will be must-see TV in basements and bars from Victoria to Val-d’Or, Moose Jaw to Moncton.

If you’ve ever been around an NHL locker-room during a high-stakes international tournament, you know that the best of the best will be keeping tabs, too.

This time, Crosby could the guy on his couch, rooting for a lesser-known such as Calgary’s Mat Robinson.

“That’s definitely different to think about — to think of him watching me and cheering for me,” Robinson said. “I’ve done it many times for him. I’m sure he would be excited just to see Canada win, whether he’s involved or not.”

wgilbertson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/WesGilbertson

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