There are only 72 players born in the 1980s (born 12/31/89) left that have appeared in a minimum of 1 NHL game this season.
A player born in the 80s will be at a minimum aged 36 come 12/31/2025, so other than a rare exception here or there (Crosby maybe) the tournament should feature almost all players born 90s/00s.
Interesting to look at World Junior results in that time (starting with 2010 when the 1990 births were 19 year olds) for somewhat of a proxy of what it may look like to try and handicap.
15 tournaments
Canada: 5 Gold, 4 Silver, 1 Bronze, 2 Fourth, 3 Pre-Semi Exits
United States: 4 Gold, 1 Silver, 4 Bronze, 0 Fourth, 5 Pre-Semi Exits
Finland: 3 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze, 3 Fourth, 7 Pre-Semi Exits
Russia: 1 Gold, 4 Silver, 4 Bronze, 1 Fourth, 2 Pre-Semi Exits, 3 Did Not Participate
Sweden: 1 Gold, 4 Silver, 3 Bronze, 5 Fourth, 2 Pre-Semi Exits
Czechia: 0 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze, 2 Fourth, 11 Pre-Semi Exits
Slovakia: 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 1 Bronze, 0 Fourth, 14 Pre-Semi Exits
Switzerland: 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze, 2 Fourth, 13 Pre-Semi Exits
No other country has made the Semis (in that time or ever).
Some considerations - based on the CHL-Transfer Agreement, Canada loses by far the most junior-aged players to the NHL, the US players often have good familiarity together from the USNDTP, European countries have national teams that will play together a lot during the course of a season as well in progressing age groups. Canadians probably have the least familiarity together, but there is a "Program of Excellence" to bring players under the national team umbrella starting at U17 so they rarely start totally from scratch. And on the other side of it, Canada also hosts a lot. That being said, I think this is a decent proxy for how you can view countries in terms of likelihood of success for a best on best 2026 olympics, which will heavily consist of players that played on one or more of the junior national teams over the years.
Smaller hockey countries (Germany and Switzerland come to mind) have a better shot when it comes to non-age restricted senior teams of pulling off an upset. While it's hard for them to produce 14 good players per age group that you need to have success at junior level, producing 1-2 per year scattered across 15 different age groups that can hang in there with anyone is less demanding of an ask. You only need 23 players, not 200, with the top half of your roster having a disproportionate impact (and you can just hope your 4th line/third pair types can get by enough to survive their shifts against the all-star caliber teams).
