Men's Olympic Hockey Preview - Belarus

Over the next two weeks, countries will be releasing their Men's Olympic Hockey Rosters. Its always an exciting endevour, finally finding out who is on each team after months of speculation. The list of when each team will be releasing their roster can be found here.

I'll be using these occasions not only to relay the final rosters, but to also provide a bit of a preview of how I think each country will fair. First to announce their roster is:

Belarus

Olympic Appearances: 1998, 2002

Best Finish: 4th (2002)

Total Medals Won:0

Pool: Sweden, Finland, Germany

Belarus has long been considered one of the 'weaker sisters' of international hockey, but that hasn't stopped them from leaving their impact on the Games. Everyone (especially Tommy Salo) remembers the HUGE upset of Sweden in Salt Lake City, that pushed them through the quarterfinals. Belarus was quickly thumped by Canada 7-1 in the semi's, but boy was it entertaining.

Entertaining...right Tommy?

As big as that was for Belarus, I don't expect them to be able to repeat that magic. Drawing Sweden, Germany and Finland in their pool, its almost a certainty that they'll fall into the qualification playoffs, needing to reel off 4 straight wins for gold.

I expect them to drop all three games in their pool, although they may give the Germans a run for their money. Once they hit the qualification pool, they're going to need another miracle upset to even get to the Quarterfinals. My money is on 0-4, and a plane ticket back to Minsk.

Anyways, onto the roster. Even as an also-ran, Belarus features a few NHLers in Grabovski (Toronto), Ruslan Salei (Colorado) and the Kostitsyn brothers (both Montreal). Andrei Mezin is probably the only other familiar name to North American hockey fans, based off his performance in 2002. He currently plays for Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the KHL.

Goaltenders

Vitali Koval

Maxim Malyutin

Andrei Mezin

Defence

Andrei Antonov

Andrei Bashko

Vladimir Denisov

Viktor Kostiuchenok

Ruslan Salei

Nikolai Stasenko

Vadim Sushko

Alexander Syrei

Oleg Antonenko

Sergei Demagin

Forwards

Mikhail Grabovski

Alexei Kaliuzhny

Konstantin Koltsov

Andrei Kostitsyn

Sergei Kostitsyn

Alexander Kulakov

Andrei Mikhalev

Andrei Stas

Alexei Ugarov

Sergei Zadelenov

One thing to watch out for is the often rocky relationship between Grabovski and the two Kostitsyn. Its never come out exactly what transpired between them while Grabs was in Montreal, but these three players seem to have a healthy hate on for each other. It will be interesting to see how (if) they get along with each other.

Regardless, expect the Belarussians to rely heavily on this trio. At the 2009 world championships Grabovski racked up an average of 27:23 of ice time a game.

The other puzzling item here is that Belarus has apparently named 10 defence, and 10 forwards (list from CTVOlympics.ca). Thats a very very odd balance, normally it would be 13 forwards and 7 defence. I wonder why Belarus has decided to roll with that many defencemen. Are they expecting to play Grabovski and the Kostitsyns so much that they only need three forward lines??

Linkback: Other Rosters