Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

Dion Phaneuf has been developing a reputation as a player who no longer lives up to expectations.

The good news for Flames fans is their snubbed defensive trio might actually use it as motivation.

I'm going to hazard a guess and predict that as a group, Calgary Flames defencemen Robyn Regehr, Dion Phaneuf and Jay Bouwmeester will not be sending Steve Yzerman and Hockey Canada a Happy New Year wish anytime soon.

Calgary's "big three" whiffed on being invited to be a part of Yzerman's Team Canada contingent for the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver.

There has to be some shock, a great deal of disappointment and maybe even some anger and confusion in all of that, but there is also one essential truth, a truth Calgary's trio of stars needs to take to heart: they were deemed not good enough to play on the best team Yzerman and company could put together.

Ouch, that stings.

Personally, I have no problem with their not being on the team over the Chicago Blackhawks tandem of Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith, Nashville's Shea Weber, the Kings' Drew Doughty, San Jose's Dan Boyle, Philadelphia's Chris Pronger and Anaheim's Scott Niedermayer. You can quibble over certain intangibles and maybe argue that there's not quite enough physical force back there, but overall it's darn near impossible to point a finger at any one of the above and say that should give way to one of Calgary's best.

And if you look at it coldly, Regehr, Phaneauf and Bouwmeester have only themselves to blame.

Yzerman didn't play any favourites. He didn't take the Bobby Clarke approach at Nagano and just pick players he liked or thought would make a good All-Star team. He didn't go the Wayne Gretzky route and remain loyal in 2006 to those who had excelled in 2002. Instead, Yzerman picked players who over the course of their recent past and especially over the first half of this season showed him they could play at a level deserving of the honour.

Can any of Calgary's trio honestly say he did that?

Now before you go off and say this is another one of those Jim Kelley-bashes-the-Flames stories (and I will admit to having the Flames as one of the most overrated teams of the decade), examine the facts.

In recent years the Flames counted on Phaneuf and Regehr to pull them through in clutch games. Did they do that? In a word: no. Calgary's performance (or lack thereof) in recent playoff seasons is a team-wide, maybe even systemic problem, but Phaneuf and Regehr were thought to be capable of lifting a team beyond its record and they simply didn't do it. I'll give Bouwmeester a bit of a pass in that regard given that he was with a largely no-account team during his formative years in Florida. But he too had the chance to impress this season and, given the Flames' play for much of December, joined Phaneuf and Regehr in not getting it done.

The trio largely and seemingly always gets a pass for those failings both from the Calgary hockey operations department and many of the fans, but Yzerman didn't have the luxury of drafting players whose perceived reputations might someday produce some real results. He needed players who could and would do everything asked of them and in all three zones on the ice.

That was the criteria coach Mike Babcock established on the first day of the Canadian camp and if you look hard at what the Flames have done in the games that matter most, those three weren't exactly the shining lights in an otherwise difficult period.

In truth, he told them so.

"The thing is, we're not going to make a decision," Babcock said early on in the process. "The players will as they'll decide by how they play (leading up to the Dec. 30 deadline).

"It happens every year," he continued. "What we do is come out here and start watching and watch and watch and (the players) slowly pick the team. They weed themselves out. They decide who's going to play in special roles. That's what happens every year and it's amazing. In my 21-22 years of being a head coach at all levels, it happens the same way -- whether in junior, college, the American Hockey League or the NHL. They know who the best are and they'll figure it out for themselves."

Calgary's big three never seemed to grasp that.

Phaneuf has been living on reputation for the better part of a season and a half now and is quietly establishing a new reputation, one of a player who no longer lives up to expectations. He can be a big hitter when the spirit moves him and he has the talent to lift the players around him, but he hasn't become the pure defensive-zone defenceman that he needs to be and Yzerman didn't have time or need to wait.

Regehr plays hard and you can make an argument he would have been a much needed physical force in his own end, but he has built a reputation as someone who doesn't always take orders well, especially from a coach like, umm, Mike Keenan, and that surely hurt his prospects. Keenan can get under anyone's skin and Regehr defenders can argue with merit that his problems with Iron Mike were pretty much a one-off, but it was a given that Babcock wanted players who would check their egos at the door and do anything and everything they were told to do anywhere on the 200 feet of ice. Add that to the offensive upside most of the other Magnificent Seven can bring and the truth is out there. He's good, but not good enough, especially in the way Babcock established his "team first and always" approach.

Bouwmeester may well have been closest of the three given that he was a late edition (due to injury) the last time around and that he has the size and speed that are essential at this level. But when the final decisions were being made, he played poorly, so poorly that it's fair to say he played himself out of contention and made way for Doughty, who's been both impressive and consistent and has played like a player desperate to make the squad instead of one who expected to do so.

If you're a Flames fan, this is humbling and you might even see it as disappointing, but there is a silver lining.

If these three are as good as they and their legion of supporters think they are, the snub could well become motivation of the highest order.

For far too long there's been a sense in Calgary that this team and the majority of the players on it are better than the results they've posted through a succession of coaches, the majority of whom didn't deserve to be fired or replaced.

Yzerman, Babcock, Kevin Lowe, Ken Holland, Doug Armstrong and the rest of the rock-solid hockey people who make up the Team Canada directional effort have not only driven home the opinion that the Flames aren't what Flames fans and even the Flames players think they are , but that doesn't mean they can't be what the Flames need.

For what happens next, both in terms of replacements for injured players and for the fortunes of the Flames who continue their up-and-down, in-and-out ways, is still important.

There may yet be a berth to be won, but more importantly for Flames fans there may yet be a chance that these three take the snub and used it for motivation. There's every chance that these players, players whose pride has obviously been publicly -- very publicly -- hurt, can muster the will to prove Yzerman and company wrong.

If that happens, the Flames will be a much better team, maybe even one that lives up to its already overstated reputation. Especially when the really meaningful games begin.