A buddy of mine and I did a mock list of the 2026 Canadian Olympic team. I will say one thing, when Canada had 50-60% of the NHLers instead of, say, 40-45% they do in 2024 the names rolled off of your tongue a little easier. But we still put together a pretty good team for Canada in 2026:
Hyman-McDavid-Marner
Byfield-MacKinnon-Point
Reinhart-Bedard-Stamkos
Marchand-Crosby-Stone
Suzuki/Barzal
Toews-Makar
Theodore-Pietrangelo
Rielly-Bouchard
Dobson-Power
Hill
Jarry
Binnington/Skinner
(Hart, we'll see how things work out for him)
The names aren't really up for debate so much, we all do this on other threads, but it is just a bit of a base for you to see. Things can change, Lafreniere could really bust out, as could another draftee from 2020-'23 like Fantilli or so other names. To be honest there are a lot coming up the pipe right now where we are in a bit of a transition seeing some of the old guard leaving. It is hard to imagine some of them Olympians today, but in 2 years I think so.
But we both sort of felt that perhaps 10, 15, 20 years ago the names would have come easier for us to think about. You look at the defense of the 2002 team and it is incredible. 2010 had a wicked defense, 2014 did, 2016 did. Players like Letang never got on these teams. Even in net when Roy backed out in 2002 we had Brodeur, Joseph and Belfour. No problems there. Also there were legit guys like Burke, Potvin, Luongo, Theodore, Turco and even Osgood who could have easily been a legit 3rd stringer.
Now, with all of that being said, once we started comparing the Canadian roster to the ones of other countries there was a lot more optimism. Sweden, Czech and Finland all have plenty of holes in their rosters and don't have the star power or depth of Canada. Russia I personally hope is back to playing as it is not the same without them, but as usual their defense is suspect at best, and I was surprised that their forwards weren't as dangerous of a group as I thought they might be. As for goaltending, no contest for them. They beat any other country hands down with this. Vasi, Shesterkin and Bobrovsky are better than any of our best. But the team in front of them wouldn't be able to handle Canada's firepower.
That leaves the U.S. team, and a team that I will admit is closing the gap. The Americans' goalies trump ours. But our forwards are deeper and definitely have more high end to them. Imagine having McDavid, MacKinnon, Bedard and even Crosby as the lines you can roll down the middle. Imagine not finding room for Scheifele (although he could make it), Marchand (perhaps) and others. Marchand could be too old by then and not able to keep up, but there are plenty coming down the pipe that are replacing him. Even the defense, I think we have the best defense out of anyone, even the U.S. I think it relies heavily on Makar for instance and we don't have another guy like him, but who does? I like Quinn Hughes on the U.S. but I still take Makar.
Bottom line what I am saying is we as Canadians get this feeling that things are over for us. I don't know why, but we always do. And yet every other country would kill to have that roster and would freak out to be playing against that group of forwards and mobile defense on the back end. All of our goalies are good capable goalies, maybe not Vezina winners, but there won't be a shortage of at least good goalies to choose from. That's all we need.
The 2023 draft was Canadian-laden, the 2024 draft especially in the 1st round is at least half Canadians, and the 2020-'23 drafts have been loaded with talent that will be on these teams. Players we aren't thinking about yet too.
So do we get paranoid in Canada over this stuff too much? Not that we can't improve our program or anything but do we worry about it too much? I can already name for sure at least 10 players on that Canadian team destined for the Hall of Fame.
