2 years to Italy: An early look at Canada's potential Olympic women's hockey roster

It may feel like the Canadian women's Olympic hockey team won gold in Beijing only yesterday.

But only two years remain before Canada goes for gold again, this time in Milan-Cortina, Italy.

Halfway through the Olympic cycle, one major thing has changed: the creation of the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). 

The PWHL will change not just the way the Canadian team is selected, but who is on the final roster that goes to Italy in 2026.

Canadian GM Gina Kingsbury and her staff now have a best-on-best league to use as an evaluation tool. Players can play their way on or off Canada's radar with their performance in the PWHL.

It means this might be the most difficult Canadian roster to project, with the PWHL only a little more than a month old.

A dominant Canadian team wrote a perfect ending to the latest chapter in one of the best rivalries in all of sport, defeating the Americans for gold.

Since then, an overhaul to the American roster has created a younger team that's looked faster than Canada at points over the last year. The Americans won the last world championship. Could two losses in a row at worlds force Canada to make changes? 

Here's an early projection of the 2026 Canadian Olympic roster:

Marie-Philip Poulin

Sarah Fillier

Fillier emerged as a star for Canada at worlds in 2021, playing on a line with Natalie Spooner and Mélodie Daoust. She followed it up with 11 points in seven games at her first Olympics a few months later at only 21. She's been Canada's top scorer at the last two world championships.

You can write her name in pen because she's a key part of Team Canada's future. Fillier is wrapping up her NCAA career with Princeton University and is a candidate to go first overall in the next PWHL draft.

Brianne Jenner