It’s no surprise to anyone, but Hockey Canada confirmed this Friday that Claude Julien will lead the Maple Leaf delegation to the Beijing Olympics.
Posted at 12:28 p.m.
At the end of November, the federation announced that it had entrusted the former head coach of the Montreal Canadiens with the reins of the teams that would participate in the Spengler Cup in Switzerland and the Channel One Cup in Russia.
It was then openly mentioned: these two competitions, one of which was finally canceled, would serve as a selection camp if the NHL gave up sending its players to Beijing. This scenario finally materialized.
The composition of the Canadian Olympic team should be revealed in the coming days. As at the 2018 Games, in PyeongChang, the roster is expected to be made up of players playing in professional leagues in Europe, if not in the minor ranks on our side of the Atlantic.
This will be a second Olympic experience for Claude Julien, he who won gold in an assistant role to Mike Babcock in 2014 at the Sochi Games.
To back him up, Hockey Canada has named Nolan Baumgartner, Jeremy Colliton and Tyler Dietrich. Colliton spent three years as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks before losing his job last November. Baumgartner was an assistant with the Vancouver Canucks and was also fired earlier this season, his fifth on the West Coast. Dietrich, for his part, has been a video coach for the Canadian team in the majority of international events over the past five years.