SALT LAKE CITY -- And so it begins.

Fifteen months after Wayne Gretzky was chosen to run Canada's men's Olympic hockey team and nine weeks after the final player selections were made, Team Canada will -- finally, blessedly -- take to the ice today to play Sweden in its first game of the 2002 Winter Games.

From the moment Gretzky and Co. made their first semi-controversial decision -- not putting goaltender Patrick Roy's name on the original list of eight Canadian Olympians -- the selection process has been endlessly dissected, criticized, analyzed and debated.

The difficulty with any subject that is so heavily scrutinized is that the discussion tends to focus on peripheral issues.

Does Canada need the Boston Bruins' rising star, Joe Thornton? And wouldn't he have been a better choice than Theo Fleury? Or Ryan Smyth? Or Simon Gagné?

In the end, it essentially boils down to this:

Canada will be in a position to win the gold medal if its best players are its best players. This is one of those trite but true facts about hockey at the highest levels, and it nicely sums up Canada's task at hand.

The last time around, in 1998, the first time the National Hockey League's best pros were admitted to the Olympics, two of Canada's best players, Joe Sakic and Paul Kariya, were missing because of injury.

This year, they represent two-thirds of the No. 1 line, which will also feature the Pittsburgh Penguins' Mario Lemieux, who was two years into his retirement the previous time the Olympics were played and didn't even watch the games on television.

Scoring goals was problematic for Canada in Nagano, partly because management selected so many players -- Trevor Linden, Keith Primeau, Rob Zamuner, Rod Brind'Amour, Shayne Corson -- known primarily for leadership and two-way play. When the tournament finished, no player had scored more than two goals in the six games Canada played. That inability to produce offence on demand was especially critical in the semi-final loss to the Czech Republic, which eliminated Canada from medal contention.

Barring any in-tournament injuries to Sakic, Kariya and Lemieux, the void that existed in Nagano will be filled here.

Kariya and Lemieux have both had extensive absences from international play. Lemieux last dressed for Canada during the memorable 1987 Canada Cup final against the Soviet Union in which he scored the winning goal.

Injuries, illness and an unwillingness to participate in the 1996 World Cup kept Lemieux from representing Canada internationally for the past 15 years. Some years, he had good reasons for saying no and other times, his explanations were puzzling. But now? Today? His commitment appears unwavering, his desire for a gold medal acute.

Whatever indifference Lemieux may have had toward international hockey in the past appears to have dissipated amid a rabid eagerness for the task at hand. He was unusually candid in his comments the first day, noting the pressure of the Olympics was something he and his teammates would embrace.

And if anyone didn't?

"Then maybe they should stay home and watch it on television," he sniffed.

It looks as though Lemieux has calculated that the chance of winning a Stanley Cup again in small-market, underfunded Pittsburgh is remote.

On the other hand, he can see that winning three games in five days with a team as gifted as Canada is doable -- and a gold medal in Olympic hockey would put a nice punctuation mark on a Hall Of Fame career.

"He could be the best player in the game," goaltender Curtis Joseph said of Lemieux. "He's still dominating and he's going to play with some good players, world-class players."

Unlike Lemieux, Kariya was devoted to playing for Canada in the early part of his career, postponing the decision to turn professional with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks so he could play in the 1994 Olympics in Lillihammer.

His last appearance on behalf of Canada came at the 1996 world hockey championship. Kariya played hurt overseas that year, aggravating a groin strain that eventually turned into a serious abdominal injury.

Not only did he fail to recover in time for the World Cup that fall, he also missed the first 13 games of the regular season. Two years later, in what should have been a career-defining tournament in his ancestral home, Kariya missed the Nagano Games while recovering from a concussion.

Kariya was involved in a memorable shootout the last time he played in the Olympics and coach Pat Quinn had an interesting comment on the possibility that this year's tournament could come down to that again.

"My first aim is, not even to get there," Quinn said. "I want to win it straight up, in 60 minutes of regulation time, on Sunday afternoon.

"I've already seen it."

In his mind's eye, is what Quinn meant. Lemieux, flanking Quinn at his news conference, noted that Canada's players were all professionals and understood what was at stake here.

"We have a lot of confidence in ourselves and in each other," Lemieux said, "and we think that's going to show in the next 10 days. We have a real good chance to win the gold medal for the first time in 50 years. That's a thing that will be special for all Canadians, who have been waiting for this a long time."

Thankfully, the wait is almost over.
eduhatschek@globeandmail.ca