Expect Canada’s superstars to play bigger minutes in the playoffs

Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team started the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy about as well as you could hope, going 3-0-0-0 in the preliminary round and clinching first place for the medal round with a plus-17 goal differential.

One thing that’s stood out for the Canadians is how low the average ice time has been for their top players. Connor McDavid is averaging less than 17 minutes; Nathan MacKinnon and Macklin Celebrini are averaging just over 16 minutes, and Sidney Crosby is at 15:09 through three games. While each of those four players have been fairly productive, Canada hasn’t needed to rely on them too much in order to win

As Canada prepares for their quarterfinal matchup on Wednesday against one of Czechia or Denmark, some are wondering if head coach Jon Cooper will make an effort to give the likes of McDavid, MacKinnon and the team’s other top stars more ice time.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss how Cooper could deploy Canada’s top stars and who could stand out as we enter the medal round portion of the tournament.

Carter Hutton: When you look at Canada, how many minutes has Connor McDavid played in a game? Not a lot. They really haven’t had to press on the gas. Now is when you’re going to start seeing the big guns get big minutes.

McDavid has averaged around 16 to 17 minutes in the first three games, and that’s not a lot. He can press that a lot more. You have that value of going: McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and whoever, and if you have to go nuclear, you can bring up Macklin Celebrini and see the big dog play a lot of minutes with potentially only three games left.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…