NHL
2026 Olympic
Hockey
A hot mic caught a chirp meant for Leon Draisaitl worthy of a Kubrick stare. Gregory Shamus / Getty Images
Welcome to the NHL weekend rankings, in which we don’t have an NHL to talk about.
You may have noticed that the league is on hold while some tournament is played over in Italy. It feels like it’s kind of a big deal. People seem to be enjoying it.
OK, so let’s go with the flow. It’s like the old cliché goes: When in Rome, or at least in the same country as Rome, do as every other hockey writer in the world is doing and serve up some Olympic hockey takes.
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This week, we’ll take the rough format of the Weekend Rankings you know and love and/or tolerate, and use them for some men’s Olympic hockey observations. We’ll get to the good and bad, but let’s start with a few stragglers I’m still working on.
5. The round-robin format – Mirtle called it “terrible” and laid out what he thinks is a better way to do it, and he makes a solid case. Some readers pushed back in the comments, and I get where they’re coming from, too. Ultimately, I don’t think I’ll be able to authoritatively say whether this was the right format or not until I find out whether my team won.
4. Goal differential being so important – On the one hand, having differential play such a key role in the round-robin seeding means that every minute of every game mattered, even when the end result was already determined. In theory, that’s good. And sometimes it is; the third period of Sunday’s Canada-France mismatch still felt important, because every goal could have made a difference.
On the other hand, sometimes that means an underdog team like Italy gets smoked 11-0, which doesn’t feel right. So put me down as undecided, even as I’m not sure there’s any other way to do things.
3. James Duthie and Elliotte Friedman on the same panel – They’re both great, and both are doing great work as always, but this is a weird watch for us Canadians. My hockey fan brain gets confused every time I see it. Seeing Duthie on an otherwise Sportsnet panel is like when you were a little kid and you’d see your teacher at the grocery store. You’re not supposed to be here, you live at the other place.
2. Jordan Binnington – A shutout in the opener, followed by a performance against France that was just shaky enough to make a Canadian fan worry and/or give everyone else some hope. He wasn’t so bad that Jon Cooper is going to bail on him, but also not quite good enough to make the whole “What if he’s bad now?” concerns go away. As somebody who makes their living in the narrative mines, I thank you for your dedicated service, Jordan. Dude is out here handing red meat to the take merchants like it’s a big juicy rebound in the slot.
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1. This all being over this time next week – It’s weird, right? We waited forever for this tournament, spent years filling out projected rosters, debated all the snubs and late replacements, and enjoyed a fun round robin. And now we get a few more days, and it’s done. The gold medal game is Sunday morning. This is going to be a wild week, with what will basically be 11 different Game 7 showdowns. Strap in.
Five teams, players or storylines that have looked good so far in Milan.
If you missed it, the Friday and Monday rankings combined for a special rank-fest last week, as we each took our shot at all 12 Team Canadas and Team USAs from the NHL’s Olympics era.
5. The rink – Hey, remember when this was going to be a big story, and maybe even the reason that we wouldn’t be able to play the tournament at all? One week in, and the ice has been fine, and those missing four feet of surface have barely been noticeable. (Until your team loses, in which case it was the rink’s fault.)
4. The crowds – With apologies to Team Italy, this is essentially a neutral site tournament. That’s not ideal from a purely NHL marketing perspective, because you get the time zone factor. It also means you won’t ever get a truly rabid crowd like we had on that memorable Saturday night in Montreal during the 4 Nations Face-Off. But the flip side is that you’ve got all these unique fan bases mixing and matching, and every game brings a different combo. It’s been great fun. Also, I want this flag.
3. Quinn Hughes ghost memes – If you know, you know. And apparently, a whole lot of people who may have never even heard of Hughes now know. Between this and confused fans trying to figure out what the deal is with the Tkachuk brothers, Team USA is building a brand new audience for the sport, and we’re here for it.
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2. The round robin using a 3-2-1-0 format – Unlike the other format stuff up above, this feels like a pretty clear upgrade over what we’re used to. We’ll get into this more later this week, but for now I have a request. If you don’t like the 3-2-1-0 points system, and you don’t want to see it in the NHL … why? What’s your argument against the format? Please let me know in the comments.
1. Juraj Slafkovský – Guys, I’m starting to think the Canadiens picked the right guy.
Slafkovský is one of the few NHLers who isn’t making his Olympic debut, since he was part of Team Slovakia in 2022. He looked great then, which was a big part of his move up to the top of the draft boards. And he’s doing it again now. As Arpon has pointed out, this isn’t new — he’s been doing this in Montreal for a while. But even so, it’s cool to see somebody introduce themselves as a legit star on the biggest stage.
Not ranked: That short-lived(?) McDavid/MacKinnon/Celebrini line – Some are calling it the Mc/Mac/Mack line, and yeah, we might need to convene a special session of Nickname Court to rule on that one.
It didn’t last long because Jon Cooper is still a coach at heart, and coaches love to spread their offense around and also hate fun. But hoo boy, was this ever a fun unit, featuring the two best forwards in the world plus Macklin Celebrini, who’s moving toward joining that conversation with every shift. Shades of Mike Keenan in 1987, finally giving in and putting prime Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux together in what turned out to be pretty much the most unstoppable line in hockey history. And it’s proof-of-concept for a “break glass in case of emergency” tactic that Jon Cooper could turn to over the next few days.
Five teams, players or storylines that might wish the league had skipped the Olympics yet again.
Look, I want to make fun of Team USA as much as anyone, and I’m extra happy to do it if it’s a goalie. But after two days of making fun of Jeremy Swayman for that long-distance goal against Denmark, can we all admit that it clearly deflects off of Matt Boldy? It’s subtle, but that’s enough when a goalie has already started his reaction. I’m not even saying Swayman shouldn’t have stopped it anyway, but the Tommy Salo comparisons can probably stop.
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Oh man, I’m out here defending goalies like I’m store-brand Jesse Granger, this is the worst. Let’s move on.
5. Team Sweden – Losing to Finland stings, especially since it was really the only classic rivalry game we got from the round robin. Worse, it cost them top spot in Group B and a shot at a first-round bye, meaning they’ll have to play an elimination game tomorrow while other contenders are resting, and should also have a tougher path through the rest of the playoff round that would include facing the United States in the quarters.
Does that add up to disaster? Maybe, but we don’t know yet, which is why I’m only putting them here. They wouldn’t be the first team to start slow-ish at this sort of tournament and then take care of business once the games are one-and-done. But at the very least, they’ve made the mission tougher.
4. Any NHL forward who doesn’t have a point yet – You’re a bum, Tomas Hertl. You too, Nino Niederreiter, Seth Jarvis and Alex Wennberg. And you, J.T. Miller and Kyle Connor. And sure why not, even you, Alexandre Texier. Why did you even bother going? Waste of time if you ask me. Could have stayed home and got a few errands run.
(Also, congratulations in advance to each of these players for the career game they’re about to have in the elimination round.)
3. Leon Draisaitl getting called a “bridesmaid” – That one came yesterday, caught on a hot mic courtesy of Matthew Tkachuk, and was an obvious dig at Draisaitl’s Oilers losing to Tkachuk’s Panthers in back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. And honestly, it’s got to be a pretty effective putdown, especially given the source. Draisaitl already goes through life looking like one of the most miserable people on the planet on a good day, so I can only imagine how much he appreciated that one.
(Polite Canadian in me: Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it…)
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Also, can you imagine getting accused of never winning the big one by an American hockey player? That’s like Mats Zuccarello calling you “shorty.” Just devastating for everyone involved.
(Polite Canadian in me: Sorry.)
2. There are shootouts in the elimination round – Every game except for the gold medal finale can end in a shootout. Just wanted to remind you of that and ruin your whole day.
1. Kevin Fiala – Injuries are unavoidable in hockey, at least when the intensity ramps up, so it was almost guaranteed that we’d see at least one star get hurt. That’s just part of the deal when the NHL sends its players over this sort of tournament. Still, it’s one thing to know it’s probably coming, and another to see it all play out.
Aside from the obvious impact on Fiala himself, the injury is a brutal one for the Kings. They just pulled off a blockbuster trade to bolster their forward ranks for the stretch run, and now they lose a key piece of their attack for the season, and maybe beyond. Just awful stuff all around.
Not ranked: Tom Wilson fighting – I’ll be honest, I didn’t think it would happen, if only because Wilson would have so many people warning him to be on his best behavior. But sure enough, when yesterday’s matchup between Canada and France threatened to get ugly after a high hit on MacKinnon by defenseman Pierre Crinon, Wilson switched into old-school enforcer mode.
At first, that just meant some vaguely threatening interactions with a few French players, including captain Pierre-Édouard Bellemare. That almost felt more like an attempt to settle things down than anything else. But then Wilson got a shift on the ice with Crinon, and an attempt at message-sending turned into a very brief scrap.
Both players got majors, so we can technically call this a fight, although it certainly won’t go on Wilson’s highlight reel in that regard. We all know about the 4 Nations’ infamous three fights in nine seconds, but you could have fit about nine Wilson/Crinon tilts in that time. Still, as the first official fight at the Olympics since 1998, the pairing at least made a bit of history.
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And sure, some fans will roll their eyes at the whole thing. Some may view it even worse, feeling like the act of dropping the gloves is beneath this sort of international event. Other fans will say it’s still hockey, and this sort of thing happens, especially when the elbows come up. The fact that it’s Wilson, a guy most NHL fans already have strong opinions on one way or another, plays a role, too.
At the end of the day, nobody got hurt and there are no further automatic penalties, so barring a surprise suspension, everyone moves on. And now we wait and see whether this was the appetizer for something more, especially with the potential of a Canada-U.S. gold medal game looming, or just a trivia question you’ll get wrong in ten years.
Either way, at least the men’s hockey tournament got to have a little bit of bad blood. Can’t let those curling hotheads have all the fun.
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Sean McIndoe has been a senior NHL writer with The Athletic since 2018. He launched Down Goes Brown in 2008 and has been writing about hockey ever since, with stops including Grantland, Sportsnet and Vice Sports. His book, “The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL,” is available in book stores now. Follow Sean on Twitter @DownGoesBrown
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