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Olympic hockey is a wild ride. What matters is how you handle adversity and improve as a team. Bob Frid / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Chris Pronger is a guest columnist for The Athletic during the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.
Both times I won a gold medal with Team Canada at the Winter Olympics, in 2002 in Salt Lake City and in 2010 in Vancouver, something went sideways in the round robin stage.
That’s what can happen at these tournaments. You don’t have to be perfect in the round robin. What matters is how you handle adversity and how you improve as a team in time for the elimination round.
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You look at the Canadian teams that won gold in 2002 and 2010, and it’s a similar story. There was a drastic improvement as the tournament moved along. Every player bought into their role and was willing to do whatever they had to do to help the team. In hockey, things are quite simple when a team starts to gel and find chemistry.
This is a short tournament. Everything is on the line, especially playing for Canada. There’s no saving grace, no best foot forward. It is gold or bust.
You are going to play to the highest level and you’re going to win at all costs because that’s what’s expected of you. Anything less is a disappointment.
By the time you arrive in the elimination round, it’s a Game 7. It’s a Game 7 every game from the quarterfinal to the semifinal to the gold medal game, and believe me, it feels like it.
There’s no pressure like representing your country at the Olympics, and after 12 years, I’m glad this next generation of NHL players is finally getting to experience it.
I was still very young and getting up to speed when I went to Nagano in 1998 for my first Olympics. I remember getting a sense of the pace of play right away when we got out there for our first practice.
I thought we were going to be feeling it out and going at a 60 percent pace, but in this setting, it’s just different. I learned quickly that there is no way guys this good and this competitive are ever going to practice at a 60 percent pace. Ever.
Right away, everybody starts looking at each other. Then one guy goes a bit harder, and another guy matches it. Then the next guy brings it. Suddenly, you’re on the ice with 25 of the best players in the world going full tilt.
When those moments start, you can feel the energy start to pick up. It really was something special, a reminder that these guys are as competitive as it gets.
For most players at this level, they’re “the guy” on their NHL team. At the Olympics, you walk into that locker room and everybody knows who the alpha is.
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Sometimes, some players are just trying to fit in. Maybe it’s their first time in this setting. That was me in 1998, just taking it in and getting a sense of the landscape and the dynamics.
I walk into that locker room, there’s a Team Canada practice jersey with the maple leaf hanging from my stall and there I am sitting there between Scott Stevens and Ray Bourque. Those are guys I grew up watching. You look right, there’s Wayne Gretzky lacing up his skates. Look left, there’s Steve Yzerman heading out to cut his stick.
There’s pressure that comes with that. There was for me.
You want to appreciate the opportunity and show respect, but you want to compete. You want to show them how good you are, prove that you belong. That’s healthy.
It’s part of the dynamic that gets everyone sitting up straight and what gets you working to play at the highest level possible.
As I remember it, the Olympics were also an opportunity to take my game to the next level and to test out where I was in my development. I remember watching how prepared Bourque and Stevens were, how they practiced, how they competed and played. It was a window into their process.
If you really pay attention to that, you get to pick apart your own process and figure out where you have to level up.
By 1998, I was on my way. I’d figured out how to prepare myself, but I used those guys as a measuring stick. It sort of affirmed that I was on the right path, both in terms of how I was preparing and also in terms of my game.
It’s a chance to check yourself against the best players in the world. For me, I remember recognizing that maybe I can be this good. We didn’t win gold that year and it was devastating, but after the Olympics, I was nominated for the Norris Trophy. I hurt my ankle the next season, but the year after, I won the Norris and the Hart Trophy. I don’t think any of that is a coincidence.
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That first Olympics validated that I was on the right path. It helped me trust my process and double down on it. Younger guys at this tournament now are going to have that experience over the next few weeks, and I hope it will be as important for them as it was for me.
Playing in the Olympics as an NHL player, it’s mostly about hockey. There is more to the experience, though.
It goes without saying that you’re there to win and you’re focused on your job. You’ve got practice and treatments and you’re banged up and sore from the NHL season. You’ve got jet lag. It’s tough to really soak up the Olympic experience and watch other events.
Still, it’s amazing. It’s about the village and it’s about meeting other competitors and Olympians, and that stuff is really neat.
You get a chance to meet other competitors and hear about their journey. For a lot of them, they get one chance. They work for four years and then they get 12 seconds, or maybe it’s a minute, depending on the event, and that’s it. That’s your shot for greatness. It’s pressure-packed.
Now I know you want me to talk about the rosters and how these teams measure up. I think it’s only natural for people to constantly question this, that or the other thing.
The Olympics really put the onus on team building. You’re not just assembling an All-Star team. I hear people say, “Just put the best players on the ice and they’ll figure it out,” but trust me, that’s not always the case.
The second-guessing from fans and the media hasn’t changed. It was the same in 1998, and in 2002, and in 2006, and in 2010.
Great players will always be left off of Team Canada; that’s how it goes. What’s interesting this time is that we’re seeing great players left off of the rosters from other countries, too.
For me, that showcases the development of the game, the sport and the athletes. It’s a little bit new for American hockey fans to get worked up about “Why isn’t this guy there?” and “Why are you taking this guy?” I think that’s a sign that the USA is a real threat at this tournament.
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Another thing I get asked about a lot is Tom Wilson, and whether or not he’ll be able to adjust to how they call the game at the international level.
Yes, the international game is called differently. And because the rules differ, so does the environment. This is where I found that things sometimes got a bit interesting. There are players from other countries who become pretty brave in that Olympic setting.
There’s nothing you can really do about it with the players who play outside the NHL. One thing I did do, with my NHL opponents, is that I’d have these subtle moments where I’d remind them, “Hey, we play in three weeks, just remember that!”
I wasn’t going to retaliate at the Olympics, but I’d use that reminder to give a guy a little wake-up call. Just in case they thought they were getting a freebie.
Back in 2002, I remember, Teemu Selanne hit me from behind and split me wide open. I needed eight stitches to close the cut. He hit me with around three minutes left from behind. He jumped, dirty hit. My head went in between the glass partition and it sliced me from top to bottom across my forehead.
I had this massive cut, and I’m pissed off. I’m looking at the ref going, “What the f—?!”
I get off the ice and I’m just thinking, “OK, great. OK, this is how we’re going to f—ing do this.” They’re trying to clean my cut, but it’s bleeding, and I can’t get back out on the ice until the bleeding stops. Finally they throw some Steri-Strips on it.
So the game ends, and right at the buzzer, the puck goes in the corner, and I beeline it over to Teemu, and just told him, “Dude, we play you in 12 days. And I am going to f—ing kill you!”
I had a ton of respect for Teemu as a competitor and later as a teammate. A few years later, we won a Stanley Cup together, but that’s what’s fun about hockey and how things play out.
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We battled hard, sometimes you do intense s— on the ice and that’s what makes you great. You’re highly competitive people.
To win in this game, you have to be passionate. Teemu was like that, too. And another guy who had that passion was Steve Yzerman.
When I reflect on the Games that I played in, one of my clearest memories is from 2002. I remember at that tournament just watching Yzerman and being so impressed by the way he managed his knee injury through the whole tournament.
If you remember that season, Yzerman was playing hurt and won Gold at the Olympics. Then he went out and won the Stanley Cup that year, too. And he was basically playing on one leg the whole time.
That left a huge impression on me. It’s moments like that, just the leadership that it takes to play through an injury like that, it reminds a group that you have to seize the opportunities you get.
I was hurt a bit at the time, too, coming into that Olympics, but I’m watching Steve arrive at the rink early every single day. Just trying to recover and hold his knee together long enough to play. He was basically just living with the trainers the whole time, doing everything he could to play. Just emptying the tank.
When a guy like Stevie Y is going through all of that just to be a part of the team, it’s powerful for a group. It’s not that you’re trying to win it for him, but you’re watching that sacrifice, and it definitely raised the stakes of what we demanded of ourselves. If that’s how badly Steve wanted to make up for losing in 1998, then nobody else could give any less than everything they had.
Those are the small edges that make all the difference. At the Olympics, sometimes things come down to matchups, or connections, or chemistry, or pairings. Sometimes it’s just natural and sometimes you’ve got to bounce a couple of different guys around until you find the right combinations.
It’s all of those factors, and how they accumulate, that allow a group to peak at the right time in order to win an Olympic gold.
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Chris Pronger is a guest columnist for The Athletic, covering the men’s ice hockey tournament at the 2026 Milano–Cortina Olympic Winter Games. A Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, Pronger is a Hart and Norris Trophy-winning defenseman and Stanley Cup champion. Internationally, he is a four-time Olympian and two-time Olympic gold medalist (2002, 2010) and a member of the exclusive Triple Gold Club, making him one of the most decorated international competitors in Canadian hockey history. Following his playing career, Pronger served in leadership roles with the NHL’s Department of Player Safety and as Senior Advisor to the GM with the Florida Panthers. He is currently a broadcaster with Amazon Prime and the author of Earned: The True Cost of Greatness, a candid examination of leadership, accountability, and elite performance. Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisPronger
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