Canada trying too hard to add specialists to roster with Anthony Cirelli selection

Team Canada unveiled the 25-player men’s hockey roster for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games on Wednesday, with some significant tweaks from the team that won the 4 Nations Face-Off in February.  

On Wednesday’s Olympic roster reaction episode of Daily Faceoff Live, host Tyler Yaremchuk was joined by Daily Faceoff managing editor and senior writer, Matt Larkin, and they broke down whether the team added too many specialists, like Anthony Cirelli and Bo Horvat, to find success in Italy. 

Yaremchuk: I was a little surprised that Anthony Cirelli ended up making this team. I know he does a lot of things well in his own end, and he’s a penalty killer, but you have lots of centers in this lineup, and you have lots of guys who can kill penalties in this lineup. What do you make of my surprises, Cirelli and Bo Horvat?

Larkin: I agree with Cirelli. It’s almost like if you go back to Nagano 1998, the Rob Zamuner incident, when Canada went with a specialist, when there were just so many highly skilled players to choose from who could kill penalties if pushed into those roles. With Cirelli, that’s the criticism I have. I don’t know if you need a specialist when you have so many skilled players available. I do feel for Seth Jarvis, he deserved to be on this team and it seems like the injury was a tiebreaker there, and that’s understandable, but he’s such a good two-way player. I personally would not have Cirelli on the team I might have gone with. 

People might think of Connor Bedard. I might have leaned toward Mark Scheifele because he’s such an accurate shooter. If you just need a pure goal scorer, he’s one of the most accurate shooters of all time, or at least this century. 

I know he’s high on almost every snub list. Still, I had him off my team pretty much every time because of just what I’ve been hearing about Hockey Canada, not loving the fact that he did not show up for his team at the IIHF World Championship two years in a row when he was asked. You can say it’s because of the injury, but I don’t think that’s the reason. I think that Canada had him on the outside looking in, and the injury just made it easier to make that call. 

Bo Horvat, though, it’s an interesting one for me. I didn’t have him on my team at any point, but as I look closer upon hearing the news, I kind of like it. He brings goal-scoring ability, he can be a two-way player, he can play on your fourth line, and he’s excellent on face-offs, which is pretty handy. In my projection, I’d have Cirelli out of the lineup, and I’d have Nick Suzuki in the third line. So overall, I think Canada got most of this group right. I probably would not have brought Cirelli, but in hindsight, I think I was wrong on Horvat.

You can catch the rest of the Olympic-heavy episode here…