• The average age of the U.S. roster is 26.5.
• The team has only three returning Olympians (Drury, Rafalski, Langenbrunner).
• Defenceman Ryan Suter is the son of Bob Suter who played on the 1980 gold medal team.
• The team has two #1 NHL Draft selections Patrick Kane (2007), Erik Johnson (2006).

• Team Canada includes 12 players aged 25 or younger, and 15 who are first-time Olympians.
• Chris Pronger is the lone veteran who played for Canada’s 1998 Olympic team. He will play in his fourth consecutive Olympics. (Martin Brodeur was on the ’98 roster but didn’t play.)
• Four members of the 2010 roster helped Canada win its first gold in 50 years at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, USA. They are Martin Brodeur, Jarome Iginla, Scott Niedermayer, and Chris Pronger.
• Seven players are returnees from the Turin roster. They include: Martin Brodeur, Dany Heatley, Jarome Iginla, Roberto Luongo, Rick Nash, Chris Pronger, and Joe Thornton.
• All selected players except Patrice Bergeron were on Canada’s summer orientation camp roster.

• The Czech Republic won the historic 1998 Olympic hockey tournament in Nagano. That was the first time the NHL took a break for the biggest winter sport event. Twelve year later, one player from ’98 remains on the Czech team: Jaromir Jagr.
• It will be Jagr’s fourth Olympic Games. Tomas Kaberle, Pavel Kubina, Petr Cajanek and Patrik Elias will appear in their third Olympics.
• Nine returning players were on the team that won bronze in Turin 2006. Twelve represented the Czech Republic in the 2009 World Championship.
• Most players on the team (16) come from the NHL. Five are from Russia, and two from the Czech Extraliga, including league scoring leader Roman Cervenka.

• Forwards Jere Lehtinen (1994, 1998, 2002, 2006) and Teemu Selänne (1992, 1998, 2002, 2006) will play in their fifth Olympic Winter Games. It’ll be the fourth time for Kimmo Timonen, Saku Koivu and Ville Peltonen.
• Peltonen has played the most international games (243) and scored the most goals (78) for Finland.
• The team looks quite different from the 2009 IIHF World Championship squad. Only six players on the Vancouver 2010 roster played in that tournament.
• Fourteen players from Turin 2006 will get another shot at winning the first Olympic gold for Finland. Four  years ago, they settled for silver with a painful loss to Sweden in the final.
• Finnish coach Jukka Jalonen had plenty of choices for his Olympic roster. He chose to go with 18 NHLers, four players from the Russian KHL, and one from Sweden.

• Germany’s roster features seven players from North America (6 NHL, 1 AHL), while the other 16 players come from the German league.
• Only two NHL players were not included, but are on the reserve list: Jochen Hecht and Christoph Schubert.
• Sven Felski has the  most international experience with 140 national team games, including the 2006 Olympics and nine World Championships.
• Seven players on the preliminary roster represented Germany in Turin 2006, while 10 played in the 2009 World Championship.

• Switzerland is relying on a young defence corps. Four defencemen are 24 years of age or younger and have a combined experience of three World Championships.
• Switzerland is the only country that has players from the 2010 World U20 Championship on its Olympic roster, with blueliners Roman Josi and Luca Sbisa.
• Sixteen of the 23 players play in the Swiss National League A, followed by the NHL (2), AHL (2), Russia (1), Sweden (1) and the WHL (1).
• Two Canadian-born players are not part of the team. Paul DiPietro and Ryan Gardner were not included, but there’s a new Canadian-born player. Hnat Domenichelli is the only roster player that is not Swiss-trained.
• Eighteen players were on the team that represented Switzerland at the 2009 Worlds on home ice in Berne, while 10 players participated in the 2006 Olympics.

• Fifteen out of 23 players come from Dinamo Riga, the Latvian team in the Russian KHL. The remaining eight players come from teams in the NHL (2), AHL (2), Germany (2), and Russian KHL (2).
• Head coach Olegs Znaroks, who was the assistant coach in Turin 2006, decided to go without the third Latvian NHL player, Los Angeles Kings winger Raitis Ivanans. He has represented his native country only once (in the 2008 World Championship).
• Sandis Ozolins has made a comeback at age 37 to play for Dinamo Riga, but he’s not on the roster for a third Olympic appearance. Ozolins is the skater that gets the most ice time with Dinamo, and also the top-scoring defenceman.
• Apart from 1936, Latvia has only participated twice in the Olympics in the post-Soviet era: in Salt Lake City 2002 and Turin 2006. For five players, it will be their third Olympics: goalkeepers Edgars Masalskis and Sergejs Naumovs; defencemen Karlis Skrastins and Rodrigo Lavins; and forward Aleksandrs Nizivijs. Thirteen players on this team also played in Turin.
• Nineteen players were on the team that reached the quarterfinals in the 2009 World Championship. Only one player has no World Championship experience: 22-year-old Dinamo forward Gints Meija.

• Defenceman Tommy Jakobsen is the only player with Olympic experience. The 39-year-old played in Norway’s last Olympic hockey tournament on home ice in Lillehammer 1994 as well as in Albertville 1992.
• Head coach Roy Johansen was also part of the 1992 Olympic team. He also participated in 1984 and 1988.
• Twenty-one players on this roster were on Norway’s team at the 2009 World Championship. There is one big absentee: veteran defenceman Anders Myrvold. This former NHLer (Colorado, Boston, New York Islanders, and Detroit) was not put on the list for Vancouver 2010.
• The Swedish Elitserien continues to be the most popular destination for the best Norwegian players. Eleven players come from Swedish top-league teams, followed by the Norwegian league (6) and the German DEL (3). Norway will use one player from each of the following: the NHL, the KHL, and Finland.

• 21 players come from two leagues: 13 from the NHL and 8 from the KHL. One player comes from a Swiss club. Zigmund Palffy is the only player from the Slovak Extraliga.
• Only two NHL players were not added to the roster: Marek Svatos and Boris Valabik.
• Miroslav Satan and Lubomir Visnovsky will play their fourth Olympic Games in Vancouver. For Lubos Bartecko, Pavol Demitra, Marian Hossa and Jozef Stümpel, it will be the third Olympics.
• Defenceman Martin Strbak has played the most games for the national team (146), while Miroslav Satan has scored the most goals (70).
• Chicago forward Tomas Kopecky has never played for the men’s national team before. The last time he represented Slovakia was in the 2002 World U20 Championship.
• Eight players on the roster won the 2002 World Championship in Sweden: Rastislav Stana,  Richard Lintner, Martin Strbak, Lubomir Visnovsky, Lubos Bartecko, Zigmund Palffy, and Josef Stümpel.

• Nicklas Lidström and Daniel Alfredsson are on the roster to play their fourth Olympic Winter Games.
• Sweden is the nation with most European players in the NHL. 19 players from the preliminary rosters come from the NHL, three from the Swedish Elitserien, one from the Russian KHL.
• When Sweden announced the roster on December 27, four of the key players were injured: Kronwall, Alfredsson, Forsberg and Zetterberg.
• 13 players from the provisional roster won the gold in Turin 2006.

• All players are picked from the two arguably best leagues in the world with 14 NHL players and 9 KHL players.
• Sergei Gonchar will play his fourth Olympics. It will be the third Olympic Games for three six players (Bryzgalov, Markov, Afinogenov, Datsyuk, Fedorov, Kovalchuk).
• Salavat Yulayev Ufa has most players on the team with Dmitri Kalinin, Viktor Kozlov, Alexander Radulov and Sergei Zinoviev. Also the coaching tandem, Vyacheslav Bykov and Igor Zakharkin, comes from Salavat.
• Eight players have won both the 2008 and 2009 World Championships: Grebeshkov, Kalinin, Korneyev, Nikulin, Kovalchuk, Morozov, Radulov, Zinoviev.

• Mikhail Zakharov is the newest coach from all Olympic hockey teams. He was hired in November to succeed Glen Hanlon, and had his first exhibition games with Belarus in mid-December.
• Belarus will be one of the few teams to have brothers on the team with Andrei and Sergei Kostitsyn, who also play together at the Montreal Canadiens.
• Veterans Andrei Mezin and Ruslan Salei are the only players to represent Belarus in all three Olympic Winter Games participations (1998, 2002, 2010).
• Seven players come from the same club, Dynamo Minsk, the Belarusian entry in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League.

Per NHL.com:

Dominik Hasek has all but ruled himself out of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, according to reports.

Hasek, 44, suffered a thigh injury during weekend play in the Czech league and will be out for at least the next three weeks. In a worst-case scenario, Hasek could miss six weeks.

“With this injury, my chance to participate in the 2010 Olympics is quite low,” Hasek was quoted as saying in the report on CTVOlympics.ca.

Hasek led the Czech Republic to the gold medal in 1998 in Nagano, Japan in the first Olympic tournament featuring NHL players. Hasek, who played to a 2.20 goals-against average and a .920 save percentage in 735 NHL games, also won a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 2008.

He retired after winning that Cup, but returned to action a year later, signing with his hometown team, HC Pardubice, in hopes of re-honing his game to be part of the Olympic picture.

In 15 games this season, he had posted a 2.54 goals against average and a .918 save percentage.

Earlier this year, the Czech Republic Ice Hockey Federation submitted a list of 60 players being considered for the Olympics. That list featured eight goalies, including Florida’s Tomas Vokoun.

From Yahoo! Sports:

With Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima playing catch in the outfield and a bright blue summer sky hovering over Fenway Park, Boston Bruins defenseman Aaron Ward(notes) stood on the infield of the major leagues’ oldest ballpark and pretended to be miffed.

“That’s how they got me down here,” he said. “They told me I was taking batting practice.”

Not exactly.

The NHL announced on Wednesday that the Bruins will play the Philadelphia Flyers at Fenway on New Year’s Day in the annual Winter Classic, an outdoor game that has become one of the league’s signature traditions since it began in 2008. Unlike previous years, when the annual outdoor game was played at Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson Stadium and Chicago’s Wrigley Field, this year’s NHL matchup will be part of a festival that will include public skating and a college hockey game.

Organizers are still working on bringing Hockey East rivals Boston College and defending NCAA champion Boston University to Fenway in the days after the Winter Classic, according to a person involved in the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal was not final.

“Boston is a perfect fit for the World Classic,” Mayor Tom Menino said, adding that the public skating will “give families and children a chance to experience the ice just like their favorite players.”

Judging from the reaction of the Bruins and Flyers who attended the announcement, it will be a thrill for them, as well. The players marveled at the field around them, posed for pictures at home plate and in front of the Green Monster and even went inside the manual scoreboard built into the famous left-field wall.

“We’re lucky we have boards here, because back home we played outside and instead of boards we’d have bales of straw and hay to keep the puck from going too far off the ice,” said Flyers defenseman Braydon Coburn(notes), who grew up playing on lakes and ponds in Saskatchewan. “This is going to be just great, especially with the scenery with the Green Monster right behind us and playing at Fenway. Playing the Boston Bruins, one of our rivals, is going to be real special.”

Ward, an admitted washout as a childhood baseball player, said he couldn’t imagine how else he would be able to stand on the field.

“I’ve been everywhere on the outskirts of this building,” he said. “If you’re from Boston, you know the weight the Red Sox have and the weight Fenway Park has.”

Flyers backup goalie Brian Boucher(notes), a native of Woonsocket, R.I., grew up as a Red Sox fan and has tickets to see them play later this month. “That makes it even more special,” he said.

Hall of Famer Cam Neely, who retired from the Bruins in 1996 and now works in the front office, remembered playing outdoors in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and wished the NHL had played an outdoor game in his days.

“I don’t think there’s a player today or past that wouldn’t have loved to play in this game,” he said.

The 2008 game in the home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills had a dusting of snow that looked great on TV but made it difficult at times to skate. When the game was played on the Chicago Cubs’ diamond last year, the ice was improved and the field was laid out across the diamond, from first to third, with the faceoff circle right around second base.

A similar layout was on display with temporary fencing on Wednesday, though the league said other configurations were still being considered.

As for the weather, everyone knows not to make any plans.

“If you are a New Englander, you have to be prepared for anything,” Ward said. “Ask me the day of (the game) and I’ll tell you how I feel about playing outdoors.”