Yeah but the scope of consideration is clearly confined to athletes. E.g., whether the 12th man on a basketball team is considered an Olympian if they never play (they used to not get medals but they do now); the case of would-be athletes whose countries boycott the games, or athletes who attended the games as alternates in case of injury.
There’s really no case to be made that anyone connected with the games would consider “support staff” to be olympians.. even head coaches don’t get medals (hence tikhonov famously swiping Khudobin’s medal)
IMO the only realistic possibilities in this scenario are that the guy
A. was an alternate, or “practice only player” who was never rostered for any of the actual Olympic Games
B. played with Team Canada in some “friendly” competition, exhibition, scrimmage in the run up to the Games
C. Was on the team but subsequently changed his name
Or
D. Is making it all up
It’s worth noting that the article mentions it’s not uncommon for an obituary to note that someone was an Olympian, but that there is no other evidence of their having competed. Presumably most of those people fell into category “A”