"I n a few days, when the Canadian men's hockey Olympic team laces up their skates for their first game at the Milan-Cortina Games, there'll be someone missing: Quebec players. The province has traditionally supplied an average of four Quebec-born players per squad since the National Hockey League began allowing teams to send players to Olympic rosters. In 2010, at the Vancouver Olympics, when Canada won gold, all three goalies were Quebecers: Martin Brodeur, Marc-André Fleury, and Roberto Luongo."
"In a historic first, since 1952, Canada's twenty-five-man hockey delegation won't have anyone from la belle province, where the game was born, where kids are raised to bask in the memory of Les Glorieux, and where the Montréal Canadiens' legacy of twenty-four Stanley Cups (the most in the NHL) acts as a unifying force, transcending language and politics. While the news reverberated across the country, in Quebec it was treated as a national tragedy, prompting hard questions about the province's ability to produce elite talent."
Canada's Olympic men's hockey team includes no Quebec-born players for the first time since 1952. Quebec historically supplied an average of four players per Olympic squad and provided all three goalies on the 2010 gold-medal team. The province is widely seen as hockey's birthplace in Canada, with the Montréal Canadiens' 24 Stanley Cups central to provincial identity. The roster omission prompted alarm in Quebec and accusations that Hockey Québec failed at talent development. Contributing factors include falling hockey participation as soccer and basketball grow, rising costs limiting access for families, shortages of refrigerated outdoor rinks, and abuse and hazing scandals.
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