Gold Certified?

For the first time since 2014, the world’s best players will appear in hockey’s most important tournament. Tomorrow, Canada will play its first game of the 2026 Milan Olympics versus Czechia. When captain Sidney Crosby last appeared in this tournament twelve years ago, his team played one of the most stifling brands of hockey ever devised – one so impenetrable it made the tournament anticlimactic. This style should clash with Canada’s current edition. While coach John Cooper’s team is rightly considered a betting favourite over the United States, any difference is minimal.

Canada’s initial tournament lines were on open display at the team’s first practice in Milan. Among the most notable selections was putting Tom Wilson on Canada’s first line with Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini. The Washington Capitals forward was one of the most debated players prior to his official selection. A lumberjack in look and style, Wilson has evolved into an offensively reliable player whose production has balanced the aggression that’s produced various controversies throughout his career.

That Wilson is playing with McDavid and Celebrini – a second year phenom who’s somehow exceeded expectations, despite being drafted first overall in 2024 – suggests how coach John Cooper thinks he can complement Canada’s best player, but more interestingly, what is expected of Connor McDavid. At the 4 Nations Face-Off last year, despite some brilliant flashes and the overtime, tournament-clinching goal McDavid scored to beat the United States, he appeared to struggle with line mates unaccustomed to his speed and style of play. While Cooper’s choices this year have a deliberate structure – Celebrini’s skating, skill and intelligence won’t be out of step with the game’s fastest player, and Wilson will provide a level of physicality and forechecking that will make this line so hard to contain – the coach appears to be making a statement, one centred, unsurprisingly, around the team’s most talented player.  

Canada's top line will be a dictatorship, as both Wilson and Celebrini were chosen to ensure McDavid can do whatever he wishes. However exceptional Celebrini may be, he is still only nineteen and has neither the clout nor strength of ego to call his own shots on the national team. While it would be unfair to suggest Wilson is a not a great player in his own mold, he will be resigned to playing a complimentary role (one that may extend to guard-dog duties for the Oilers captain). As a result, there is perhaps less pressure on either to justify their place by playing outside of themselves. Lower on the hierarchy, each can serve a supporting, but doubtlessly effective role in facilitating McDavid’s offense. In this placement, it is not hard to envision both flourishing, and particularly Celebrini, whose game may reach a higher level when surrounded by superior talent.

In practices leading up to tomorrow’s game, only this first line has remained intact. Nathan Mackinnon will centre Canada’s second unit, Sidney Crosby its third. This provides Canada a substantial advantage, both because of pedigree and skill anchoring its forwards, and the resulting, unrelenting pressure they’ll create. And while McDavid is always the primary focus, MacKinnon could prove himself the tournament’s most impactful player. His NHL production this year has been exceptional, and whenever stakes are raised MacKinnon moves like a charging buffalo.

If a team was judged on its three structural components (forwards, defense and goaltending), offense is Canada’s greatest advantage. While the Americans have some outstanding forwards, they lack the outliers and depth that makes Canada so dangerous. But this is where Canada’s advantage ends. The Americans have a deeper defense group and stronger goaltending (the gulf here is substantial), and the lack of weakness across these three components suggest the US may have the most complete team.

Should both countries meet in a decisive game, who wins will be decided by which of these advantages assert themselves. Canada’s forwards are supreme but the US isn’t far behind; while the Americans have the tournament’s top defensive corps, Canada has a solid group and unquestionably the position’s best player in Cale Makar, who will play half of every game and control play from the defensive side. The US has better goalies, but last year Canada’s Jordan Binnington revived his reputation with an outstanding performance in the 4 Nations final. He has been poor this year in St. Louis and the logical choice may be for either Darcy Kuemper or Logan Thompson to start, so who will be in net for Canada when the games matter?

The focus here has been on only two teams, if only because of their best-in-class rosters, combustible recent history and newly rocky geopolitical relationship, but the European teams are interesting. Sweden may be the tournament’s third best team, despite a close result in the first game against Italy. Czechia has a terrific top line but appears to lack depth, while the Finns, who are without Aleksander Barkov but always difficult in international play, still have Mikko Rantanen and Meiro Heskeinan. Finland lost its first game versus Slovakia in a result that brought instant juice to the tournament, but will likely rebound. (It shouldn’t be overlooked that ‘best-on-best’ loses its potency whenever Russia isn’t there.)

But the United States remains a fixation for Canadian hockey fans, in no small part because of the aggressive swagger of its top players and legitimate threat this team represents. These factors made for such a dramatic confrontation at the 4 Nations – prior to the American dream of a home-soil win being crushed by hockey’s best player. And this same formula from last February, where physicality and swift transitional play were necessary supports to speed and talent, will prevail in Milan. The wrongheaded template that’s doomed Canada at the World Junior level – where in a departure from the country’s hockey identity, its best players have looked passive, waiting from the perimeter for space to open so they could execute a skill, rather than make the practical play – won’t be an issue for an experienced group this sure of itself.

Canada’s advantages are enough, but gold is no guarantee. Having won before doesn’t mean you’ll win again, and hall of fame credentials are only useful insofar as the capacities which produced them surface in the medal round. This will not be another 4 Nations, but a tournament, in the eyes of many Canadian hockey fans, only being played between two.