Partly cloudy skies. Low 18F. Winds light and variable..
Partly cloudy skies. Low 18F. Winds light and variable.
Updated: February 4, 2026 @ 5:30 pm
The United States’ Brady Tkachuk cross-checks Canada’s Devon Toews during the 4 Nations Face-Off championship hockey game last year in Boston. The 4 Nations tournament was the first best-on-best hockey competition since 2016, and the upcoming Winter Olympics will be the first to have NHL players compete since 2014.
Sports Editor Kyle Leverone is a recent graduate of Northwestern University and a native of the Northern Virginia area. Prior to joining the News&Guide, he covered sports in Pittsburgh and Chicago and freelances for USA Basketball.
The United States’ Brady Tkachuk cross-checks Canada’s Devon Toews during the 4 Nations Face-Off championship hockey game last year in Boston. The 4 Nations tournament was the first best-on-best hockey competition since 2016, and the upcoming Winter Olympics will be the first to have NHL players compete since 2014.
For the first time in more than a decade, there will be best-on-best men’s hockey in the Winter Olympics.
For 12 years — since the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — National Hockey League players were not permitted to participate in the quadrennial Games because they occurred during the league’s regular season. Instead, the United States has played the last two Olympics with minor league players and athletes from other European leagues, which paused their regular seasons.
In the 2018 Winter Games, the Olympic Athletes from Russia defeated Germany, and in 2022 Finland beat the Russians. Canada and the United States were most impacted by the NHL’s decision to not allow its players to play in the Olympics because both nations rosters’ were made up, almost exclusively, of NHL players.
Two years ago, though, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the NHL reached an agreement to allow a break in the regular season — as it had done between 1998 and 2014 — and for NHL players to return to the athletic world’s grandest stage.
And although Canada will arrive in Milan as the favorite to win gold, the United States has never been in a better position to challenge its neighbors to the north.
“The competition is going to be unbelievable, and I couldn’t be more excited,” said Utah Mammoth captain and Team USA forward Clayton Keller last month. “You want to play against the best players in the world, and that’s ultimately why the NHL players wanted to be there so badly is to have the best on best.”
The first example of best-on-best competition is the 1972 Summit Series between the Soviet National Team and a Canadian professional team. The series lasted eight games, and it sparked global interest. In 1976, the inaugural Canada Cup became the first international hockey championship to allow nations to field their top players. Teams from Canada, the Soviet Union, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Finland and West Germany competed. Canada won.
From 1976 to 1991, the Canada Cup was held five times and was ultimately replaced by the World Cup of Hockey in 1996. The United States won the inaugural tournament — its last best-on-best tournament title — and Canada won the other two World Cups that were held in 2004 and 2016.
By the time of the second World Cup, though, NHLers were admitted into the Olympics.
Before 1988, NHL players weren’t even eligible to participate in the Winter Olympics, as the International Olympic Committee allowed only amateur athletes to compete. The IIHF hosted these other competitions in the summer as the only feasibly best-on-best tournaments. In 1988 the IOC finally granted permission to professional athletes to compete in its Winter Games, but it took 10 years before the NHL agreed to pause its regular season and let its players compete, as well.
In the five Winter Olympics between 1998 and 2014, Canada won three gold medals, and Sweden and the Czech Republic won one each.
The last time the American men’s hockey team won gold at the Winter Olympics, its medal round victory over the Soviet Union was such a shocking outcome, sports broadcaster Al Michaels posed — and then answered — this question to the world: “Do you believe in miracles?”
“Yes!” he shouted into his microphone inside the Lake Placid Olympic Center in 1980. The famed upset became known as the “Miracle on Ice.”
If the United States won gold in the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 22, it would still be a surprise but much less so than 46 years ago.
The U.S. Team is led by one of the NHL’s top goal scorers, Auston Matthews, and scrappy brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk. In last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off — which featured only NHL players on Canadian, Finnish, Swedish and American rosters — the Tkachuks started a line brawl on the opening draw in the gold medal game against Canada. Canada won the game 3-2 in overtime, after the United States beat Canada 3-1 several days prior in the preliminary round.
One of the top strengths of the American team’s roster is goaltending. Starting in net will most likely be defending Vezina Trophy winner for the NHL’s best goalie and Hart Trophy winner for the league’s most valuable player, Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets.
For Canada, goaltending is more of a question mark. Logan Thompson, from the Washington Capitals, is currently injured, and Jordan Binnington of the St. Louis Blues possesses the fourth-worst goals against average in the NHL this season. Canada’s top option at this point is its third goalie Darcy Kuemper from the Los Angeles Kings, who has logged a pedestrian .902 save percentage this year.
The rest of its roster will present a major issue for the rest of the world.
Some of the game’s most notable names will grace Canada’s lineup card come Feb. 12 when the team faces Czechia in its first preliminary round game. Connor McDavid is the most talented player in the history of the game, and Nathan McKinnon is a former Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award winner, as the most outstanding player voted on by his peers.
On the back line, Colorado Avalanche’s Cale Makar, who won the Norris Memorial Trophy last year for being the league’s best defenseman, will lead the group. Among the newcomers on the team, Macklin Celebrini is third in the NHL in assists and fourth overall in points. Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins will add an edge to the roster, as will Washington’s Tom Wilson.
And how could one forget one of the greatest players of all time, Sydney Crosby. The Pittsburgh Penguins captain wore the “C” for Team Canada in 2010 and 2014 and scored the game-winning overtime goal in 2010 during the Vancouver Winter Olympics to win the gold medal over the United States.
The American women’s hockey team is a much more likely gold medal contender than its male counterpart.
Since the first time the Olympics included a women’s tournament in 1998 both the United States and Canada have medaled in every Winter Games. The United States won gold in the inaugural competition and won again in 2018, and Canada has won every other tournament. The only time the U.S. didn’t win silver in those years was when it earned bronze in 2006.
Two years ago, the Professional Women’s Hockey League launched as the first women’s league to pay its players salaries. Previous leagues were structured as nonprofits. Now, with eight teams — four in America, four in Canada — the PWHL is growing and expanding in new markets. The league has put a spotlight on the best players in the world, and for the first time it will take a pause, just as the NHL is doing, and will send them to the Winter Olympics.
Sun Valley, Idaho, native and four-time Olympic medalist Hilary Knight of the Seattle Torrent will return as the Team USA’s captain. America also has the PWHL’s top four points leaders in Kendall Coyne Schofield, Britta Curl-Salemme, Taylor Heise and Kelly Pannek, all of whom play for the Minnesota Frost. Heise leads the league in assists, and Coyne Schofield is second in the league in goals.
In net for the Americans, Aerin Franklin from the Boston Fleet is tied for the league lead in wins with Ann-Renne Desbiens of the Montreal Victoire and member of the Canadian team. Czechia possesses this year’s top goal scorer in Kristyna Kaltounkova of the New York Sirens.
The American women will play Czechia tomorrow in the first game of the preliminary round. They will then play Finland on Saturday, Switzerland on Monday and Canada on Tuesday. The women’s playoffs begin on Feb. 16, and the gold medal game is Feb. 19.
The men’s preliminary round starts on Wednesday, Feb. 11, and the Americans open against Latvia on Feb. 12. Team USA will face Denmark on the 14th and then Germany on the 15th. The playoff round begins on Feb. 17, and the gold medal game will be on the final day of the 2026 Winter Olympics, Feb. 22.
Contact Kyle Leverone at 307-732-7065 or sports@jhnewsandguide.com.
Sports Editor Kyle Leverone is a recent graduate of Northwestern University and a native of the Northern Virginia area. Prior to joining the News&Guide, he covered sports in Pittsburgh and Chicago and freelances for USA Basketball.
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