What does Bryan McCabe have to do to get some love?

After finally being added to the Olympic roser after a spate of injuries to Canada's defenceman, team Canada's coaching staff announced he would be the seventh defenceman, behind even recent addition Jay Bouwmeester. Lets examine this situation more closely...

First, McCabe gets left off the Canadian Olympic team when the original team is announced. This was widely debated and discussed by hockey pundits everywhere, but lets step back and look at the situation again. Pat Quinn, McCabe's coach with the Leafs, is the head coach of team Canada.

Obvoiusly Quinn couldnt convince Wayne Gretzky, Kevin Lowe and Steve Tambellini that his defenceman was worthy of one of the top seven roster spots for defencemen. Of course, before his injury that caused him to miss nine games, McCabe was leading the team in points. He's still leading the team in points now, with 52 in 48 games. He's become a power play monster as well, with a accurate rocket of a shot from the point, and because penalty killers try so hard to take his shot away both he and Tomas Kaberale have 33 power play points.

But the knock on McCabe has always been the other facets of his game. Well, the big defenceman is +2 on the season while averaging more than 28 minutes of ice time per game against the other team's top players.

But this is only what he's done in the NHL this season for his own team. When you're talking about the Olympic Dream Team (that's really what it is people, Canada is to hockey what American is to basketball, after all- but no, Canada wont finish seventh) you have to look at the other candidates too. So let's do that.

It's possible to argue that Blake, Jovanovski, Foote, Regehr and even Pronger are all having sub-par seasons and dont deserve spots on the team. However, these guys have all been picked by Gretzky in the past and are all prototypical "Canadian" players. But so is McCabe.

But ok, i can understand the Leafs d-man being passed over initially, and i can live with him being on the taxi squad. But then the injuries started to hit. Jovo-cop and Niedermayer have both dropped out and are surely significant losses for the team (Niedermayer much more so than Jovo, who is having an abysmal season). So McCabe gets promoted to the team, right? No. There had to be a few days of disrespect in there first, where the names Dan Boyle, Jay Bouwmeester and even Chris Phillips were thrown around by the media. We know Gretzky and co. seriously considered Boyle, even though McCabe was ON THE TAXI SQUAD. To repeat, the squad is supposed to the reserve players who get in the game in case of injuries.

I mean, come on. Dan Boyle? Sure, it would be nice to have an Ottawa native at the games, but...would you take Boyle over McCabe in the NHL? Of course not. Chris Phillips? He's one of my favorite Sens and as tough as they get, but this is Team Canada we're talking about. So when McCabe finally got into the lineup, he must have figured to play at least some kind of role, right?

Well, when Niedermayer decided to drop out and Bouwmeester was selected, that was a bit of a headscratcher too. The Meester only has junior experience in international competition, and has barely proved himself as a top NHL d-man yet. The 22-year-old has only played 200 career games, hasnt scored a goal all season, plays less than McCabe on a team that has an even worse defence than the Leafs- hard to imagine, eh?- and is a -7 in front of fellow Canadian Olympian goalie Roberto Luongo. And yet Quinn, along with assistant coaches Ken Hitchcock and Jacques Martin, have made Meester a top six d-man and McCabe the seventh, the odd man out.

Where is the love? What does McCabe have to do to get some love? Surely its not his intangibles like grit or leadership. The Leafs lost all but one game while he was injured.

I just hope McCabe gets a shot to show what he can do in Turin. He's shown he's one of the best defenceman in the league and he deserves to prove that in international competition. Or maybe the whole thing was a plot by Quinn to not tire out his star player before a playoff run...