By the time the management group for the Canadian men’s national hockey team emerges from marathon meetings on Tuesday, as much as 80 per cent of the roster going to Italy next February should be written in pen.
Six players were named to the men’s Olympic team in June: Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Connor McDavid, Brayden Point and Sam Reinhart.
Since then, the management group has been whittling down a longer list of players under contention to wear the maple leaf at the first Olympics to feature NHLers since 2014.
That management group, led by general manager Doug Armstrong, will meet beginning on Sunday. Canada will play its first Olympic men’s hockey game against the Czech Republic on Feb. 12.
“We’re not selecting an all-star team,” Armstrong said in an interview with CBC Sports on Wednesday.
“We’re selecting a team, and on a team, you have to have every aspect covered. That’s five-on-five, four-on-five, six-on-five. Every area needs to be done, and we want to make sure we give [head coach] Jon Cooper the appropriate tools in his toolbox to be ready to play in any situation.”
One curveball that has come their way in recent days is news that the new Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena under construction in Milan will have a smaller than expected ice surface.
The ice could be three or four feet smaller than an NHL-sized surface, Canadian assistant coach Peter DeBoer said on Sportsnet’s Real Kyper and Bourne radio show earlier this week.
“It won’t affect how we choose the roster, but it will be interesting,” Armstrong said on Wednesday. “We’ll have to get out the old VHS tapes and look at the Aud and the old Boston Gardens to see how to play in that smaller barn.”
The GM said they know the dimensions of the ice inside the 16,000-seat arena, but not specifics around which areas of the ice will be smaller.
The organizing committee for the Milano Cortina Olympics has said for months that there is no backup plan should the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, where both men’s and women’s hockey games will be held, not be ready in time.
Construction on the privately-developed arena began late, and it won’t be ready for testing until January.
“There are daily updates in the sense that our team is there working every day,” Andrea Francisi, the chief games operations officer for Milano Cortina, told The Associated Press last week. “The companies which are involved with the building of the facility have sped up their work significantly.”
Armstrong isn’t worried about whether the arena will be ready in time, pointing to construction delays ahead of the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
His mentality? Block out as much white noise as possible, and control what you can control.
The management group started with a long list of players this past summer, including some who attended a Hockey Canada Olympic orientation camp in Calgary.
The first month of the season was about giving all the players on that list an opportunity to be seen.
Since trimming that list down at meetings in November, the group has stopped looking for players.
“We allowed players to find us,” Armstrong said.
Two of the players who’ve made the loudest cases for inclusion on the roster have been young forwards Macklin Celebrini (San Jose Sharks) and Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks).
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Neither made the Canadian team that won the 4 Nations Face-Off under significant national pressure, but both have made a statement at the beginning of this season. Celebrini and Bedard were second and third in NHL points heading into Wednesday night’s NHL action.
Other young standouts have included Dallas Stars forward Wyatt Johnston and Matthew Schaefer, the rookie defender who was drafted first overall to the New York Islanders earlier this year.
“Those players are doing all they can do,” Armstrong said. “They’re playing outstanding hockey. They’re leading their teams. They’re playing in all the different situations necessary, and they’re making our job difficult. That’s really what we want is difficult decisions.”
Celebrini turned heads at the world championship in the spring, when he earned an opportunity alongside Crosby.
Armstrong sees similarities between the long-time captain and the young forward from North Vancouver. He watched a young Crosby be able to integrate himself effortlessly into a group of older, more mature players.
“He has a great humbleness to him, but he’s also not afraid to play when the puck drops,” Armstrong said about Celebrini. “Showing respect in the room but not showing respect on the ice, meaning he has to compete against these guys. He wants that job and they want to not give him that job.”
Celebrini joined Crosby and Wayne Gretzky this fall as the only teenagers to score 30 points in the first 20 games of an NHL season.
Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Sam Montembeault were the only three goaltenders invited to Hockey Canada’s Olympic orientation camp in August.
But behind the scenes, there were many more goaltenders in the mix for spots, something Armstrong communicated to some who didn’t get the invite to Calgary.
So far this season, the best Canadian goaltenders in the NHL have been Colorado’s Scott Wedgewood and Washington’s Logan Thompson.
Armstrong said the competition for a spot in Team Canada’s net remains “fluid.”
“We’ve seen players like Wedgewood that have come basically out of left field this year, a good NHL goaltender for a long time but he’s playing at a level that’s new to him right now for an extended period of time on the best team in the NHL in Colorado,” the GM said.
At the marathon meetings that begin on Sunday, the management group will debate each name individually as they start to put the pieces of the puzzle together. They’ll mix and match and move players around, debating how they could help the players around them.
Once they leave on Tuesday with a chunk of the team formed, the focus will turn to filling holes on the roster, plus dealing with any injuries that arise during a compressed NHL season.
Skill is important, and there’s plenty of that in what Armstrong estimates is the deepest group of forwards Canada has produced in a while.
But with most of the game won in front of each team’s net, size and the ability to play in the most difficult areas of the ice are just as important.
In a process with plenty of question marks, there’s at least one certainty. That’s Crosby, who’s proven what he can do on the Olympic stage.
“He’s certainly on the Mount Rushmore for Canada,” Armstrong said.
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Last month, Crosby told CBC Olympics host Ariel Helwani that he hopes 2026 isn’t his final Olympics.
“But if it is, I hope that I can make the most of this great opportunity,” the Pittsburgh Penguins captain said. “But who knows? I want to play as long as I can.”
That’s a possibility Armstrong wouldn’t bet against.
“His preparation is second to none,” he said. “His attention to detail is second to none. His work ethic, his practice habits. He’s exceptional. He’s one of the best players ever to play our game.”
