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eduhatschek@globeandmail.com

A great believer in leaving no stone unturned in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Mike Babcock has spent the past six months touching base with his various predecessors as coach of Canada's men's hockey team.

When Babcock approached Pat Quinn, who was at the helm in both 2002 and 2006, he wondered specifically about scrutiny and expectation. Surprisingly, Quinn told Babcock the most pressure he ever felt coaching internationally came in Ottawa just more than a year ago, when he was behind the bench for the 2009 world junior team in Canada.

To Babcock, the operative words were the last two - in Canada. Coaching a team in Canada will heighten every aspect of the experience, which can be both a good and a bad thing.

"It's just fear of losing, of not measuring up and not doing the job," said Quinn, who now coaches the NHL's Edmonton Oilers.

"I did the exact same things as he's doing. I scanned all the reports from 1998. I talked to Bobby Clarke and to all the guys that had been to Japan. They had said the biggest thing you have to deal with is the fear.

"The message I wanted to give Mike was the same one - to be aware of the fear because it can be overwhelming if you don't deal with it in a proper way. And I'm sure our guys will, but they'll feel it, no doubt about it. It's going to be there and you have to deal with it and that's what good professionals do."

The Dallas Stars' Marc Crawford was the first Canadian to coach in the NHL's Olympic era; he was behind the bench in 1998, two years after winning the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche. It was all new back then - an Olympic tournament in a foreign venue, on the big ice, markedly different from what Babcock and Canada face 12 years later.

Looking back, Crawford said he would like to have had a better feel for "just how well prepared" the other countries were.

"Where we grow up," Crawford said, "we understand the value of a seven-game series and how you have to battle your way through and almost survive a playoff series, and how hard the road is to win a Stanley Cup. The Olympics were so foreign to all of us, how much pressure-packed the tournament format was. I thought the other teams were better prepared in the crossover games and in the elimination games for the pressure of how to deal with a bad period, and certainly how to deal with overtime and the extended play. We'd been told, but being told and experiencing it first-hand are two different things."

Crawford also advised that Canada's team have a plan for that inevitable moment when the breaks go against them, or the team has an unexpected lapse.

"And I think they do," Crawford said. "But how do we deal with it when something like that happens? How do we forge ahead? What do I say between periods? How am I going to maintain calm? How am I going to utilize my timeout?

"If you look at the year we lost, the Czechs got through their 10-minute lapse. We stormed them at the end and in the overtime and they got through it. It was because their goalie was outstanding, but they didn't crack either."

Quinn's assistant with the Oilers, Tom Renney, handled Canada's 1994 silver-medal team in Lillehammer, Norway, and he too has answered Babcock's queries about the experience. Sixteen years ago, Renney had a team cobbled together from past and future NHLers, but only one real star in waiting - Paul Kariya. The Vancouver Games, pitting best-on-best, features a different dynamic.

"As much as you can have a game plan and plot everything out in the most minute of details, I think at the end of the day, you have to give the horse the bit," Renney said. "You've got all these guys ready to go and then you've got to let them play to their strengths, of which there are many.

"Don't stifle them. Let them play and make the other teams adjust to them. When you get the kind of horses Canada has, you just open the gate."

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STOCK UP / SIDNEY CROSBY

Crosby had the best statistical month of any Canadian Olympian in January, scoring 11 goals, which kept him among the league leaders and left him with a chance to match his career best of 39 before the Olympic break. Crosby's six-point night against the New York Islanders was also the single most productive outing of the season for any NHL player. About the only issue left to settle is who gets to play right wing on his line - Jarome Iginla or Patrice Bergeron, a former world junior linemate.

STOCK DOWN / PATRICE BERGERON

The only player to make the team after not attending the August orientation camp, Bergeron broke his thumb soon after he was named to the 23-man Canadian men's roster. Although he's back playing for the Boston Bruins again, he began by limiting his appearances in the faceoff circle, waiting for the thumb to get stronger. Bergeron was added to the Canadian team largely because of his faceoff ability as a right-handed shot. The hope is that between now and the start of the Games, his productivity returns to pre-Christmas levels, when he was one of the NHL's top players on the draw.