Watch as Hockey Canada announces the men’s Olympic hockey team
CBC
Click on the video above today at 12 p.m. ET as Hockey Canada will reveal the roster of the men’s Olympic hockey team.
This is the first time since 2014 that NHL players will be returning to the Olympics since the Sochi Games.
The first six players were announced in June.
They include two-time Olympic champion Sidney Crosby — who scored the golden goal in 2010 at Vancouver and helped Canada repeat four years later in Sochi — along with fellow forwards Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Brayden Point and Sam Reinhart. Cale Makar was the lone defenceman on the early list.
Canada has captured three gold medals since NHL players were first allowed to compete at the 1998 Nagano Games in Japan, winning in 2002, 2010 and 2014.
The 12-country tournament begins Feb. 11. The teams will feature a 25-player roster with Canada set to play its first game against the Czech Republic on Feb. 12.
“We’re not selecting an all-star team,” Canadian GM Doug Armstrong said in an interview with CBC Sports earlier this month. “We’re selecting a team, and on a team, you have to have every aspect covered. That’s five-on-five, four-on-five, six-on-five. Every area needs to be done, and we want to make sure we give [head coach] Jon Cooper the appropriate tools in his toolbox to be ready to play in any situation.”
Canada and the U.S. gave a glimpse of what to expect in Italy last season, where the Canadians produced a spine-tingling victory at the 4 Nations Face-Off on McDavid's dramatic overtime winner.
"You can feel the energy of coming off 4 Nations," Crosby, the 38-year-old captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins, said at Canada's summer orientation camp in Calgary. "That was huge, and I think everyone got a taste of international hockey and what the Olympics is going to look like.
"A lot of different emotions, but just excited, motivated and grateful for the opportunity to be at it again."
Armstrong and Cooper will have some interesting choices as decision day looms.
Among them is second-year star Macklin Celebrini.
Drafted No. 1 overall at the 2024 draft by the San Jose Sharks, Celebrini has already established himself as one of the game’s best players as he sits third in the NHL points race behind McDavid and MacKinnon.
While it's been rare at past Olympics for a 19-year-old to even get a look, the Hockey Canada brain trust will be hard-pressed to ignore what the centre with offensive flair and an outstanding 200-foot game has done this season.
Almost four years ago at the inaugural competition for mixed team aerials at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, three Canadians took home bronze medals.
Skate Canada’s move as the first sports federation to announce it will no longer hold national- and international-level events in Alberta due to the province’s legislation on transgender people's participation in sports did not come as a surprise to some who know the organization well.
Steven Rajewsky realized Savannah Sutherland belonged at the world level when he watched her become the youngest-ever Canadian to reach an Olympic track final and perform well against the best female hurdlers.
Kids banged on the glass and cheered every drill and shot the pros made inside Scotiabank Centre, hoping to catch a player’s eye and maybe even a puck.
Unlikely partnership forges potential Paralympic medal threats in alpine skier Eriksson, guide Smith
Just five years ago, the idea of Kalle Eriksson competing for Canada at the Paralympics would have been unthinkable.
Hilary Knight scored twice, including an empty-netter, to lead the United States to a 4-1 win over Canada in a women's hockey Rivalry Series game Saturday.
When a teenaged Chloe Primerano made her debut on the Canadian women’s hockey team last season, Jocelyne Larocque was often the steady force beside her on the blue line.
The Vancouver Canucks announced Friday that they have traded captain Quinn Hughes to the Minnesota Wild.
Canada's Kevin Drury battled his way to a gold medal that left him in tears at a World Cup ski cross event on Friday in Val Thorens, France.
Soccer fans have accused FIFA of a "monumental betrayal" after latest prices for World Cup tickets began to circulate on Thursday.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is “disappointed” that the main arena slated to host ice hockey at February’s Olympics isn’t yet completed with less than two months to go before the Games are scheduled to be played.
A two-year suspension from competitive swimming has forced Penny Oleksiak to answer questions about drug use, train by herself in public pools and defend her legacy as Canada’s most decorated female Olympian.
Hockey, one of the premier events at the Winter Olympics and one that is welcoming NHL players back for the first time in more than a decade, will take place on ice shorter than NHL-regulation size.