How Canadians and Americans on the Olympic roster bubble approach this season
The NHL delivered a delicious best-on-best hockey appetizer last winter with the 4 Nations Face-Off, a hyper-competitive event showcasing incredible speed, skill and intensity. Next up, the main course, the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, featuring 12 countries packed with NHL talent.
For the NHLers hailing from most of the Olympic hockey nations, there isn’t a great deal of suspense around making or not making the teams. Seven German players skated in the NHL last season, and we’ll likely see all seven at the 2026 Winter Games. But the narrative differs for Canadian and American players, who make up approximately 70 percent of active NHLers, per QuantHockey. Extremely talented and accomplished players have constantly missed out on making best-on-best teams for those two powerhouses in the past, but since there was no true best-on-best between the 2014 Olympics and the 2025 4 Nations, last winter was the first time many elite players of this generation experienced the sting of being left on the bubble.
How will those players approach the 2025-26 NHL season? Last week at the NHL Player Media Tour, a small group of reporters, myself included, spoke with a collection of high-end NHLers who didn’t make Canada and USA at the 4 Nations and hope to change their fates.
What’s the right approach to living on the Olympic bubble? As I learned last week, there are multiple mental strategies.
The Revenge Tour strategy
For some players, being snubbed from an elite international team provides perfect fuel for elite performance, a.k.a the “chip on the shoulder” mentality. That was true for several NHLers last season: USA’s Tage Thompson and Clayton Keller and Canada’s Nick Suzuki torched the league from February through April, and they kept their international teams front of mind while doing so.
“Your priority is your season team and that being the Sabres, trying to help them make playoffs and doing what I can to help us win, but at the same time I did feel like I should have been on the 4 Nation team, and that gave me a bit of a chip on the shoulder the second half of the season and into summer training,” said Buffalo Sabres center Thompson, who buried 18 goals in 28 games after the tournament. “Just kind of adds one more thing on your plate that you’re playing for.”
“Obviously it sucks – it’s a team that you want to be a part of, and any chance you can represent your country on the biggest stage is the best feeling ever and the reason you play the game,” said Utah Mammoth left winger Keller, who went off for 30 points in 26 games post-tourney. “I have a lot of friends on that team as well. And yeah, it definitely motivated me for sure. And I wasn’t going to just let it harp on me and have a bad rest of my season. It did the opposite for me. I took the time to rest a little bit, skate a decent amount during the break and came out flying for most of the second half and did everything I [could] to push our team to the playoff spot, coming up a little short. It’s definitely something that’s on my mind but something I’m not stressing over.”
“There was probably a lot of guys in my shoes that thought they could have been on the roster,” said Montreal Canadiens center Suzuki, whose 37 points post-break placed him fourth in the NHL. “That’s a tough thing about Canada. There’s a lot of us that had that experience. Who knows what the Olympic roster is going to look like? It’s definitely on my mind a lot this summer in training and preparing for the season. I know I need to have a good start to be in consideration.”
The Team First strategy
St. Louis Blues center Robert Thomas led all NHLers in scoring after the 4 Nations break with 40 points in 26 games. As a brainy two-way center in the vein of Suzuki, Thomas was a strong candidate to make Canada from the start, hardly overlooked given Blues GM Doug Armstrong runs the Canada operation. But an early-season ankle fracture cost Thomas a month and meant his sample size was small when Canada finalized its roster in early December. With a pool as deep as Canada’s, that small disadvantage made the difference.
Yet while Thomas finished the year in mission mode, his mentality was less about making a statement through his individual performance. It was more about what he helped his team accomplish: in the Blues’ case, it was a torrid late-season run that propelled them into the playoffs on a tiebreaker.
“I could be wrong on this, but I feel like most people look for people doing well, like teams doing well, winners,” Thomas said. “And so I think that’s how you focus on it. Get your team off to a really good start, win a lot of games and put yourself in a good spot in the standings. And I think that should speak enough on your impact for the game. So that’s the way I’m trying to look at it. And hopefully if [the Blues] can accomplish that, then I get a chance at the Olympics.”
The Last Dance strategy
Given the fierce competition for spots on Canada and USA, the odds of a greybeard reversing time after not making the 4 Nations squad are slim. But they aren’t zero in the mind of players like Patrick Kane, who did, notably, receive an invite to Team USA’s summer camp. Particularly for the Americans, who so often have played for the gold but fallen short in the best-on-best era, adding an all-time clutch player to the dressing room isn’t the worst idea. But if Kane is to make it, he believes it will come down to how he’s playing rather than how he played as a younger man. Hall of Fame career aside: can he maintain the elevated play he showed with the Detroit Red Wings late last season after they switched coaches from Derek Lalonde to Todd McLellan?
“It would be a great opportunity,” Kane said. “I’ve said all along I don’t want to be chosen just for what I’ve done in the past. I’d love to be a guy that gets off to a great start, gets picked for the team and can help in any way possible once you get there.”
The Kid strategy
Some of the Bubble players have the upside and all-around skill to become international mainstays later in their careers – but aren’t necessarily ready to gel with a veteran-laden team for a mid-season tournament right now and have uphill climbs based on lack of seniority. Remember: rookie Sidney Crosby didn’t make the 2006 Canadian Olympic team. Sophomore Steven Stamkos didn’t play for Canada in 2010. So the young guns tend to keep their expectations realistic, try to improve their play and leave the rest up to fate.
“I’m gonna have to play really good hockey at the start of the year and really earn my way onto that team, but I probably shouldn’t really focus on that,” said Toronto Maple Leafs left winger and American Matthew Knies, 22. “Obviously you want make it and be there and play for your country. But I think just playing my best hockey and focusing on the team now is going to give me the best success.”
“To be honest, not really on my mind,” said Chicago Blackhawks center and Canadian Connor Bedard, 20. “I would do anything to go and I would love to be there, but I’ve got to have a good start. So I’m just focused on Chicago and going into camp, having a good start.”
In the end, the bubble candidates could play perfect hockey between now and the roster submission deadline of Dec. 31, but as Thompson puts it: there’s only so much of the selection process they can control.
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POST SPONSORED BY bet365
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