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Roy is a bit wary of the extended mid-season break, but wishes luck to the guys that are playing.
Goalie Semyon Varlamov (Russia), forwards Matt Duchene (Canada), Paul Stastny (USA) and Gabriel Landeskog (Sweden) will represent their respective countries over the next week.
"I'm very proud of my players," head coach Patrick Roy said. He played for Canada in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan but failed to win
a medal after getting ousted in a shootout in a semi-final game against the Czech Republic.
"I wish good luck to the players that are going to Olympics. Hopefully our guys are going to have a good ten days off and be ready to work when we come back," he continued.
He isn't the only coach that is concerned.
Randy Carlyle doesn’t have fond memories of the aftermath of the 2010 Olympics.
Sure, as a native of Sudbury, Ont., Carlyle was happy Canada won the gold medal. But as coach of the Anaheim Ducks, he was less than thrilled with how things went after the Olympic break.
“We had seven players go to the Olympics and we had [Ryan] Getzlaf, [Corey] Perry and Scott Niedermayer come back and they didn’t have any emotion left when they got back,” Carlyle said last month in Toronto. “They participated in winning a gold medal, and it was difficult to get those guys back to the level that we needed them at that time, and it’s understandable.
“All those things are tough things when they come back to your group after participating in that type of event because it’s two or three weeks of high emotion, and the last thing on their mind is where they came from. They’re playing for their country.