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Hockey Canada releases Olympic orientation camp roster; insurance to keep them off ice?

The NHL will be sending its players to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. On Monday, Hockey Canada announced their 47-player list of players who will be invited to Calgary at the end of August for orientation camp.

Here are Team Canada's camp invitees:

Goalies: Corey Crawford, Braden Holtby, Roberto Luongo, Carey Price, Mike Smith

Defensemen: Karl Alzer, Jay Bouwmeester, Dan Boyle, Drew Doughty, Mike Green, Dan Hamhuis, Travis Hamonic, Duncan Keith, Kris Letang, Marc Methot, Dion Phaneuf, Alex Pietrangelo, Brent Seabrook, Marc Staal, P.K. Subban, Marc-Edouard Vlasic, Shea Weber

Forwards: Patrice Bergeron, Jeff Carter, Logan Couture, Sidney Crosby, Matt Duchene, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Getzlaf, Claude Giroux, Taylor Hall, Chris Kunitz, Andrew Ladd, Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Rick Nash, James Neal, Corey Perry, Mike Richards, Patrick Sharp, Eric Staal, Jordan Staal,Martin St. Louis, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares, Joe Thornton, Jonathan Toews

Chicago (5), Pittsburgh/San Jose (4) and Boston/Los Angeles/Washington (3) lead the the way with the number of players heading to camp. And, according to Hockey Canada, Crawford is the only player on the list to not have represented them internationally at any level. That's what a strong regular season and Stanley Cup ring will do for you.

As usual, there's enough talent that Canada could send two strong sides to Sochi. Of course, this also means some tough cuts need to be made, like not including Jamie Benn, Jason Spezza, Evander Kane or Francois Beauchemin in their preliminary list. Those players can be added later as replacements, if need be.

While the U.S. and Canadian players will be in Washington, D.C. and Calgary, respectively, for camp next month, insurance issues may keep them all off the ice.

From the Canadian Press:

"Insurance is a big issue," Nicholson said in an interview Friday. "We got some quotes yesterday that it would be over a million dollars to skate. So if it's that type of dollars, it'd be very difficult for us to do that. But we're just starting to look into that now with the agreement being done."

While the agreement to send NHL players to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, takes care of insurance during the tournament, individual federations are responsible for insuring contracts for orientation camps.

USA Hockey has already said its players will not skate at their camp.

The provisional rosters for all 12 competing nations will be due to the IIHF by Dec. 31, which will be made up of 22 skaters and 3 goaltenders. Official rosters for the tournament will be announced the day before things kick off on Feb. 11, 2014.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy

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