Theo Fleury, who almost certainly will be skating for Canada in the Salt Lake Games, snickered yesterday morning when asked if he cared to weigh in with an opinion on the Great White North’s Great Debate: Who should be in nets for the Olympic team, Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Curtis Joseph or even Sean Burke?

“We’ll see how it stands after the game,” Fleury, tongue planted deep against his cheek, said some eight hours before the Rangers went up against Roy and the Avalanche at the Garden. “We might know more then.”

What everyone would indeed know after the match was whether Roy – now the commanding frontrunner in the race for Wayne Gretzky’s nomination – had been able to tie the modern NHL record of four consecutive shutouts established by Montreal netminder Bill Durnan in February of the 1948-49 season. Roy entered the match with a scoreless streak of 183:53 after blanking the Wild, Islanders and Devils, respectively in the last three matches, last scored upon by Calgary on Nov. 10.

“Obviously Patrick’s a great goalie, he’s won four Cups, and he’s at the top of his game,” said Fleury. “But we’re not looking at it that we have to beat him. The way we’re going, the level our confidence is at, we’re looking at it like he has to beat us.”

Fleury was a teammate of Roy’s in the 1999 playoffs after having gone to the Avalanche from Calgary prior to the deadline. He also had played with Roy on Canada’s 1998 Olympic Team in Nagano that came home empty after losing the semifinal game, 2-1, in a shootout to Dominik Hasek and the eventual gold-medal champion Czech Republic, and then the bronze-medal game, 3-2, to Finland.

Talk about the Olympics dominates north of the border, often to the extent that is appears the season is no more than a scene-setter for what in reality is a glorified exhibition tournament. Every player on the bubble is relentlessly analyzed. Every injury is measured in the context of availability for the Games.

“It’s an obsession, it’s a religion up there,” said Fleury. “And there’s even more focus on it this time because of what happened in Nagano.”

Fleury, who was invited to participate in Canada’s four-day evaluation camp outside Calgary in early September, insisted yesterday that he considered making the Olympic roster secondary to helping the Rangers win games.

“They’ll name the team on Dec. 22, and hopefully I’ll be on it; of course I want to play, but that’s all in the back of my mind, now,” he said. “And then, if I am on the team, it will stay in the back of my mind until after our last game before the break in Dallas on Feb. 13. We’re just going way too well now for me to be thinking about anything other than our team.”

Fleury, however, did let one item slip.

“Eric [Lindros] and I are working on Yorkie to become a Canadian citizen,” he said, referring to the American winger, Mike York. “That way we can bring the FLY Line to Salt Lake.”