Canada announced their 45 man roster that will be playing exhibition games against KHL teams. It does not include any AHL players at this point, but it gives us a fairly good idea of what Canada's roster might look like for the Olympics this winter. These are the best players that I see on the roster (basically all the players I have heard of):

Goalies: Ben Scrivens, Justin Peters, Kevin Poulin

Defensemen: Kevin Klein, Cam Barker, Stefan Elliott, Marc-Andre Gragnani, Carlo Colaiacovo, Karl Stollery, Shawn Lalonde

Forwards: Derek Roy, Mason Raymond, Gilbert Brule, Andrew Ebbett, Rob Klinkhammer, Daniel Paille, Max Talbot, Linden Vey, Ryan Garbutt, Taylor Beck, Brandon McMillan, Andrew Gordon

This is a solid group of players in my opinion (some of them might even still be able to play in the NHL). It would probably be the best team at the Olympics if Russia didn't exist. When I look at some of the players that Russia has at their disposal (Kovalchuk, Nichushkin, Grigorenko, Tryamkin, Nesterov and possibly Sergei Mozyakin) I feel that Canada will have a tough task on their hands.

Russia, it's going to be a bunch of pros against NHL rejects.

Players like Kovalchuk and Gusev will be suiting up for the Russians, and there most likely won't be a single big-name player that plays for a country other than Russia.

Jonas Hiller for SWISS

He's a familiar name, but he's still garbage where as Kovalchuk and Gusev were wanted to come play in the NHL this season.

It'll entirely come down to which NHL players pursue/are granted permission to come. If there are none, then the edge goes to Russia. But not by an overwhelming margin; there are good players in other countries.

If nothing else, it should be a moderately more competitive tournament.

Russia.

They should bring in young talent from the CHL. (Ex: Brett Howden)

When Russia wins (baring something crazy happening), is it even going to matter, the best players in the world are going to be sitting on their thumbs in the US and Canada. I do agree, we should just have have the kids go play. I am interested to see what USA kind of hoping they just pull kids from college and send them.