Bruce Arthur is a columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur.
When it comes to Canada's men's Olympic hockey team, certain names are written in pen, or perhaps carved in stone. Barring injury or catastrophe, some players were on the team the moment the NHL decided that, yes, it was finally going back to the Games.
And then there are the players who become backroom arguments and barroom arguments, the walking what-ifs, and because Canada is Canada there are always a few of those. On the last day of 2025, Hockey Canada announced its roster for Milan 2026, and the automatic slots were almost a formality until you remembered true best-on-best hockey hasn't happened in 12 years.
Sidney Crosby, at age 38, is finally returning to the Olympics, and that's a wonder. Connor McDavid had to wait until he was 28, and Nathan Mackinnon until he was 30, to get the chance. That is a shame.
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MacKinnon's teammate Cale Makar was another automatic -- he's Canada's defining defenceman at age 27, on the towering Avalanche team that has two regulation losses in 38 games going into New Year's Eve -- and Makar's defence partner Devin Toews comes attached for good measure. (Though, according to the Denver Post's Corey Masisak, Toews' wife is expecting their fourth child in February and he won't leave her until that baby is born. So he may not be a lock.)
Hockey in Canada is often an exercise in luxury, but more, in trust. Up front, Mitch Marner, Brayden Point, Sam Reinhart, Brandon Hagel and Brad Marchand were all on Canada's gold-winning 4 Nations team, which forms the core of the Olympic squad. The eight-man defence corps -- Makar, Toews, Josh Morrissey, Shea Theodore, Travis Sanheim, Colton Parayko, the 36-year-old Drew Doughty and Thomas Harley -- remained the same. Armstrong loves big defencemen: He compared Parayko and Sanheim to playing against a car wash, or swimming in seaweed. On someone like Harley, who is having a tough year, your mileage may vary.
And with two extra roster spots for the Games, there was turnover. Canada dropped forwards Seth Jarvis, Travis Konecny and, in at least a minor shock, Sam Bennett; in their place were Tom Wilson -- who can fill Bennett's role as the guy Canada can only love when he's on your team -- Nick Suzuki, Bo Horvat, and the one real concession to youth: 19-year-old Sharks sophomore Macklin Celebrini, who is third in the NHL in scoring and might be a fit in Canada's top six.
Canada has the NHL's top three scorers and nine of the top 25, and left three more at home. We're stacked.
Of course there are snubs. Connor Bedard was tied for third in the NHL in scoring before he suffered a shoulder injury, but Canada GM Doug Armstrong said that while "his name was right there until the last second," the injury wasn't what made the difference. Similarly, Islanders rookie defenceman Matthew Schaefer would have had to overcome Hockey Canada's natural conservatism and its defining bias: Who can you trust in the most pressure-packed games? It's a tough gig.
"I was shocked at how quickly (Schaefer) worked his way into our conversations, and that's a credit to him," Armstrong said.
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Heck, Mark Scheifele couldn't crack this roster, either, and he's been around. And that brings us to the goaltenders and Jordan Binnington, who is setting what might be a Canadian record in, But He's Got A Track Record. The only place he's been even close to elite since the start of 2024 was at the 4 Nations Face-Off, which isn't nothing. Binnington has won a Stanley Cup in a Game 7, but might currently be the second-best goalie on his own team. Armstrong is St. Louis's GM, and he said he didn't push for his own guy. "I laboured over it more than the rest of the coaches and management did, which is surprising," he said.
It's the biggest roster question, and it's not close: Washington's Logan Thompson and L.A.'s Darcy Kuemper have been elite goalies, but what would it take for Canada to trust someone else? That's why Anthony Cirelli, whose NHL head coach is Canada's head coach, is on this roster. Trust.
"What we've tried to do is build the best team," Armstrong said. "We have to do our job to get an opportunity to play teams from other brackets, so we're not building this team to beat any one team. We want to build a roster that can compete against anybody."
All that said, the United States will add Quinn Hughes to its 4 Nations holdovers, and the Americans still have the reigning Hart Trophy winner, Connor Hellebuyck, in goal, even if he's not in top form at this moment.
Every detail, every decision, every bounce of the puck will be a chance for a nation to second-guess the whole thing, and that's fair, in a way. As a hockey nation we still produce the most special players and we have the most storied modern hockey history, so every Team Canada is a what if. Until they win.