NHL teammates to Olympic rivals, dream rosters await
The return of NHL players brings back extra excitement to the Olympic tournament.
It is a decision that breathes even more life into one of the Games’ most intoxicating subplots: teammates, so accustomed to leaning on each other through the grind of the NHL season, suddenly skating in opposition.
From the first six rosters already announced, several NHL teammates will find themselves on opposite sides of the faceoff at Milano Cortina 2026.
Toronto Maple Leafs stars Auston Matthews and William Nylander will trade their blue-and-white jerseys for the colours of the USA and Sweden. Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, normally linemates in the Oilers’ high-powered offence, will instead lead Canada and Germany in pursuit of gold. In Florida, Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart will swap passes for body checks as USA and Canada rivals, while their Panthers teammate Aleksander Barkov leads defending champions Finland.
And while the Olympic Games have the potential to turn teammates into rivals, they can also feature superstar line combinations rarely, if ever, seen in professional play.
Imagine Connor McDavid centring a line with Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon for Canada, with Cale Makar on defence and Reinhart at the wing.
Well, imagine no more.
Canada named all of them in its first six-player roster, and fans got a glimpse of such a “dream team” in action earlier this year at the 4 Nations Face-Off, an NHL-run competition that drew global attention. There, Canada’s star-studded group defeated the United States’ own impressive line-up, a result that only adds higher expectations ahead of their potential Olympic rematch.
McDavid himself made no secret of how much he values this opportunity at the 2024 NHL All-Star Media Day. “Extremely badly want to play in the Olympics … All these guys that haven’t had a chance to represent their country at a best-on-best, I think it’s something that we’re all hungry to do.”
Jake Oettinger, goaltender for the Dallas Stars, has also circled Milano Cortina 2026 as one of the biggest goals of his career. “Other than winning the Stanley Cup, that’s my No. 1 goal,” he told Sportsnet of starting for Team USA in Italy next year.
As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Winter Games, athletes’ participation at Milano Cortina 2026 depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at the Games.