4 Nations Roster Remix: 2015 Canada team 

The top NHL players from Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States will go head-to-head at the 4 Nations Face-Off, a best-on-best tournament that will be held from Feb. 12-20 in Montreal and Boston.

Though this is the first tournament of its kind to feature these four countries, NHL.com and NHL.com International have put together what the rosters and line combinations for each country would have looked like in the past, going backwards in five-year intervals. The rosters will follow the same format as the current 4 Nations teams: 13 forwards, seven defensemen and three goalies.

The stories will run each Friday and Sunday through Feb. 9.

Today, NHL.com staff writer Mike Zeisberger reveals what his Team Canada roster would've looked like in 2015.

Forwards (13)

Claude Giroux — Sidney Crosby — Patrice Bergeron

Matt Duchene — John Tavares — Steven Stamkos

Joe Thornton — Ryan Getzlaf — Corey Perry

Rick Nash — Jonathan Toews — Jeff Carter

Jamie Benn

The pedigree of Canada’s forward group would definitely be hard to match. 10 of the 13 forwards listed here were members of the gold-medal winning team at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the only exceptions being Giroux, Thornton and Stamkos, who’d been injured at the time. Team Canada management had always favored line mates who had familiarity with each other, and there’s plenty of that here. Crosby and Bergeron had played together at the Games one year earlier and shown instant chemistry, much in the same way they’d clicked one decade earlier for Canada at the 2005 IIHF U-20 World Junior championships. Tavares and Stamkos had been minor hockey teammates in the Toronto area and had skated with each other in the offseason. The dynamic duo of Perry and Getzlaf had helped the Anaheim Ducks win a Stanley Cup together in 2007 and now were joined by San Jose Sharks forward Thornton on a line that featured both hustle and muscle. With all this talent up front, it would be Benn, the Dallas Stars forward, who would go on to win the 2015 Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s points leader with 87 (35 goals, 52 assists).

Defensemen (7)

Duncan Keith — Shea Weber

Drew Doughty — Kris Letang

Brent Burns — Alex Pietrangelo

P.K. Subban

Keith, Weber, Doughty, Pietrangelo and Subban were all on the gold medal team in Sochi. In fact, Keith, Weber and Doughty were members of the double gold club, having been part of Team Canada at the 2010 Vancouver games. Subban, considered a defensive liability at times in his career, was a career-high plus-21 for the Montreal Canadiens in 2014-15 while chipping in with 60 points (15 goals, 45 assists) at the other end of the ice. As usual, Canada has a glut of right-handed shots so, like in the past, there’s no hesitation to play some defensemen on their wrong sides. One player not on the list who deserves consideration is Brent Seabrook, Keith’s teammate with the Chicago Blackhawks who would help his team win its third Stanley Cup championship in six years in 2015.

Goalies (3)

Carey Price

Marc-Andre Fleury

Corey Crawford

Price’s stats as Canada’s starter in Sochi bordered the absurd, allowing just three goals in five games for a 0.59 goals-against average and two shutouts. No question who Canada’s No. 1 is in this exercise. Crawford was overshadowed by bigger names in Chicago like Toews, Keith and American Patrick Kane but to me he never received the accolades he deserved. He backstopped the Blackhawks to Stanley Cup wins in 2013 and 2015. His regular-season goals-against average in those Cup years: 1.94 in 2012-13, 2.27 in 2014-15.