Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

St. Louis hungry to play for Team Canada after 2010 exclusion

Martin St. Louis

Martin St. Louis #26 of the Tampa Bay Lightning skates against the New York Islanders at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on April 6, 2013 in Uniondale, New York. The Islanders defeated the Lightning 4-2. (April 5, 2013 - Source: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images North America)

When Steve Yzerman had finished assembling Team Canada for the 2010 Winter Olympics, forward Martin St. Louis was one of the most noteworthy players to be kept off the team. He admitted that watching them go on to win the gold without him was tough, even if he was happy with what they accomplished.

When Yzerman took over as the Tampa Bay Lightning general manager shortly after the Vancouver Games, he talked with St. Louis about what happened.

“I’m not upset,” St. Louis told the NHL.com. “I told him I’ll always be disappointed no matter what he tells me, but they are put in a position to make tough decisions and he had to make the decisions he had to make. Obviously, he made the right ones because they won the gold medal.”

This time around though, St. Louis hopes that picking him will be the right choice. He won the 2013 Art Ross Trophy and at the age of 38, this will almost certainly be his last chance to participate in the Olympics.

“If I have a chance to play for my country at this stage of my career, I’ll do whatever they want,” St. Louis said. “My kids are 10, eight and five and they will remember this event. I take pride in that. My kids are part of everything I do now and what I get to experience, they get to experience, too.”

St. Louis is one of the 25 forwards that was invited to Team Canada’s orientation camp. While being on that list is only a first step, it does put him in very good company.

“As a player, you want to play at the highest level you can,” he said. “I was left off the team in 2010 and I told myself I’d push myself as hard as I could and make it hard for them to not include me in 2014.”

He still has to get off to a good start in the 2013-14 campaign, but it’s hard to not like what he’s done since his exclusion in 2010.