NHL
It’s been an incredible time for international hockey, with the 4 Nations Face-Off surpassing even the loftiest expectations for what the first best-on-best tournament in nine years would bring. Canada’s overtime win over the United States in the championship game Thursday night was the exclamation point on a thrilling tournament — and a tremendous way to lead into the 2026 Olympics in Milan next year.
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Odds are the rosters for that tournament will look very similar to the ones on display in Montreal and Boston. There will be some tinkering around the fringes, but with less than a year between the events, the cores will remain the same.
Looking ahead one more cycle, though, is a more revealing way to look at the future of both the U.S. and Canadian national teams and how the next wave of stars for both countries could fit in.
So, The Athletic’s Max Bultman and Corey Pronman took an early run at projecting the 2030 Olympic rosters for both North American powerhouses.
Because the current U.S. team is so young, there are a lot of familiar faces in this projection.
Jack Eichel, Auston Matthews, Dylan Larkin, Tage Thompson, Charlie McAvoy, Zach Werenski and Matthew Tkachuk will all be into their 30s by then, but not so old that we wouldn’t project them in the mix here. Their respective talent and track records give them a strong baseline.
So let’s focus on the new names. Logan Cooley has taken a step forward this season in Utah and should continue to rise steadily between now and 2030. By then, he’ll be 25 and should be a great fit between two very sound two-way wingers in Matt Boldy and Ryan Leonard.
Leonard takes some projecting, considering he’s not even in the NHL yet, but he’s a tough, two-way player who can score, kill penalties and play a hard-nosed game. Much of the same is true of Matthew Knies, who is already an important player in Toronto and should only get better in the next five years.
Matty Beniers, meanwhile, hasn’t quite gotten back to the offense he found in his Calder Trophy season in 2022-23, but is still trending to be an excellent defensive forward who slots into that bottom line perfectly. He should be a top penalty killer for this group and brings elements any coaching staff would love.
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It’s fair to wonder if the fourth line could use a pure playmaker, as here it’s made up of a lot of north-south, 200-foot players. But the obvious candidates we left off (such as Clayton Keller, Jason Robertson, James Hagens and Will Smith) don’t have the same penalty-kill utility and aren’t as projectable to tough matchups.
We have Cole Caufield as the 13th forward, but it’s entirely possible he could work higher into this lineup. His chemistry with Hughes, dating back to their time at the USA Hockey National Team Development Program, is certainly appealing.
On defense, it’s a very similar makeup to the current group, losing only Jaccob Slavin, Noah Hanifin and Adam Fox. Hanifin and Fox are right on that same age-32/33 bubble as some of the top forwards, but the U.S.’s young defense pipeline is promising enough that we gave the nod to Jake Sanderson (who was the first call-up in this tournament), Luke Hughes and Zeev Buium — with Lane Hutson another potential option.
There are many capable options in goal, and including Connor Hellebuyck here is highly dependent on how he ages. He’ll be 36 in early 2030. But Jake Oettinger would be a strong potential starter at age 31, and we’ll take the bet on Spencer Knight — who has quietly performed well recently — re-emerging as a top goaltender as he enters his own prime.
Team Canada sees more turnover on its roster than Team USA likely will, with a lot of their important members on the 2025 4 Nations team aging out. Their blue line sees a massive revamp, and there is no returning goaltender.
The top-six forward group is a mixture of stars of today and tomorrow. Prime-aged superstars such as Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon remain important fixtures, but we expect the next generation of Canadian stars to be led by Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Adam Fantilli.
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The third line featured some hard decisions. Dylan Guenther has been fantastic this season, but will he be the best choice in five years? Will Mitch Marner’s play fall off? There are close calls and other reasonable candidates could have been picked. Some may argue for Gavin McKenna but this is a tough team to make. McKenna won’t even be in the NHL for another 18 months, never mind being one of the top nine forwards in Canada in five years. We debated keeping Brandon Hagel in the mix and he could have subbed out one of the current fourth-liners.
This seems like a young blue line, but it won’t be in 2030. We expect Owen Power, Thomas Harley and Noah Dobson will be established long-time major minutes defensemen by that point in their careers. Matthew Schaefer will be on the younger side, but we expect him to be a two-way star in the league by then as well.
The goaltending is a major question mark. Your guess is as good as ours. Canada lacks standout goalies in the NHL currently, and there isn’t a no-doubt stud coming up the pipeline either. Some scouts are very high on Joshua Ravensbergen, but he’s only 18 and goalies take a while typically to reach the highest echelon of their development.
(Top photos of Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
