LB-Hockey

At long last, we’ve got NHLers heading back to the Olympics. With that of course come the endless debates for who should or shouldn’t make their nations’ rosters, and boy are there some controversial decisions this year. So let’s dive right into the most hotly debated Finns, Swedes, Americans, and Canadians to figure out if they deserved a spot in these stacked lineups.

Finland

Starting with what might be the most optimized roster already, Finland will attempt to overcome the absence of their superstar and likely captain Aleksander Barkov. It’s difficult to pinpoint any glaring omissions outside of the forward corps.

Urho Vaakanainen is the only defenceman at the NHL level to be omitted from the back end. He isn’t a regular for the Rangers, and the Finns already have defensively oriented stopgaps like Matinpalo deep in the lineup. Mikko Lehtonen, the lone European league inclusion, instead retains his position from the last Olympics where he shone. If anything, the final D slot comes between Urho and Henri Jokiharju. To me it’s close, but the latter brings a little more puck skills, a right shot, and a higher ceiling, giving him the edge. Similarly, Joonas Korpisalo is the biggest name left out in nets, but the last three seasons have shown he shouldn’t be included above any of their three goalies.

The one change I would make is to include Matias Maccelli. He might not be in pre-2024 form, but he remains one of Finland’s best passers, especially in a bottom 6 flush with defensive and balanced toolkits. Even on one of those more defensively-oriented lines, he should be able to perform adequately as his two-way game has improved nicely over the last year.

Swapping out someone like Erik Haula, whose production has been fine (due to a ballooned role on a weak Nashville roster) but has struggled away from the penalty kill would be my choice. You wouldn’t lose out on his specific type of value due to the aforementioned bulk of shutdown forwards like Joel Armia and Joel Kiviranta in the bottom 6. The team already has plenty of PK options throughout the lineup whether it’s higher up thanks to Aho, Lehkonen, Lundell, and Teravainen or lower such as Luostarinen and the Joels.

You could make a case for Jesperi Kotkaniemi in place of Kiviranta, but Kivi brings a pronounced specialty with his defensive play that could be more situationally useful as opposed to Kotka’s spread-out and muted toolkit. The same goes for Aatu Räty and Ville Koivunen, though both could likely turn into depth pieces for the 2030 team.

🇫🇮 VERDICT:

IN: Matias Maccelli (F)
OUT: Erik Haula (F)

Sweden

With Finland’s number one rival the situation is, ironically enough, mirrored. Most of the chatter surrounds the load of options on defence, so let’s do a quick check-in at the other positions before diving into that. Linus Ullmark headed into the season as a near-lock for the team, but on-ice struggles and an indefinite personal leave of absence took him out of the pool.

Starting with the highest profile exclusion in my mind, William Eklund absolutely deserves to be on this roster. As the first big piece in San Jose’s exciting rebuild crop, Eklund has developed into an incredibly useful young forward. While logging tough minutes for the Sharks, he has generated tons of chances thanks to his passing skills and zone entry work. Importantly for his potential role in this team’s bottom 6, he has incorporated various more physically-intensive aspects to his game and become a useful option in the defensive zone (especially when it comes to reliably generating clean breakouts).

And while he might be a better shooter, I would take out Rickard Rakell to free up a spot, as much of his value comes from the powerplay where Sweden has better options (on top of Eklund shining here as well).

Pontus Holmberg was the forward least expected to make the roster going into this season, but he has had a strong 2025-26 campaign. However, leaving out Mikael Backlund instead feels like a head-scratcher. Sure Holmberg’s suppression ability has been near top-of-the-league this year, but so has Backlund. The Flames centre also does a lot more work to break the puck out of his zone and in puck pursuit to shadow or disrupt opposing players.

Our comparison atlas perfectly visualizes this as Backlund’s skills radar completely envelopes Holmberg’s. Evidently, Backlund’s estimated Standings Points Contributed have stayed above Holmberg’s every season, as pictured by the line plot at the bottom of the dashboard.

While the Swedes have enough penalty killers, this would inject another lower in the lineup and allow some of the other options higher up (Bratt, Kempe, Pettersson) to catch their breath when the team is down a man without a greater fear of conceding.

Although I initially thought this would be all my changes at forward, I’ve decided to make one more while writing. Elias Lindholm can produce at a respectable level, win face-offs, and provide some value on both special teams. Aside from that, his impact at even strength has suffered, becoming a fairly passive perimeter player in all three zones. Someone like Marcus Johansson, who is on a similar 60-something point pace this season and has been above-average in the neutral & defensive zones over the last three years, stands out as a better swiss army knife if needed.

Moving to the blue line Sweden has loads of talent, which makes the Oliver Ekman-Larsson pick irksome. His production has seen a nice bounce back this year, but much of that can be attributed to a high finishing blip and an opportunity for easier offensive minutes due to the lack of other options in Toronto’s underwhelming defensive group. The reality is, those minutes will go to guys like Dahlin and Karlsson in Milan, and sacrificing any semblance of a fallback game for those point totals on OEL’s part makes me consider other options.

Mattias Ekholm is the most experienced name left off this D-corps, and he probably deserves better: he is still tracking for a 35-40 point season and is, at worst, above-average on the other side of the puck. As nice as the Rasmus Andersson resurgence and Philip Broberg breakouts have been, I still prefer Ekholm’s more complete toolkit and general consistency, having been reliably one of the top 5-6 Swedish defencemen for the last number of years.

In that case, it comes down to Andersson and Broberg for the last spot. This coaching staff was clearly planning on deploying off-side defencemen often and being comfortable with it since they only brought two RDs on the initial roster (Karlsson & Andersson), so this doesn’t play a deciding factor in my final decision. But with Brodin already present as a defensive sub, I’m leaning towards keeping Andersson because of his hot hand, dual-threat offensive potential, and near-identical two-way transition impact. You can’t go wrong with either though.

🇸🇪 VERDICT:

IN: William Eklund (F), Mikael Backlund (F), Marcus Johansson (F), Mattias Ekholm (D), Simon Edvinsson (D)
OUT: Rickard Rakell (F), Pontus Holmberg (F), Elias Lindholm (F), Oliver Ekman-Larsson (D), Philip Broberg (D)

USA

Ok, where do we start here? Team USA’s decision-making easily sparked the most debates due to a couple stars being left at home. Starting with a Star in more than one sense of the word, Jason Robertson is having his best season since 2023.

He’s also involved and efficient in the defensive zone, having posted some solid suppression metrics over the past number of years and posing as a reliable option to start clean breakout sequences. Overall, he most certainly shouldn’t be categorized as a “soft” or “one-dimensional” player, just one that may need some speedier linemates. And on a team with Jack Hughes, Eichel, Larkin, etc, there are plenty of line combinations that would allow it.

Unfortunately, between the inclusion of DeBrincat and still having Kyle Connor ready to move up if they wanted, this barely keeps Cole Caufield on the outside looking in. I do believe he’s right there, but the margin is small enough that Brock Nelson’s optimized toolkit utility between his penalty killing success, defensive talent, and underrated offence keeps him ahead for that 4C role.

I have had a lot of internal debate about how I would tinker with USA’s defence, but one thing has always been certain: I’m bringing Adam Fox. It’s baffling to me that he didn’t crack the team despite having Rangers GM Chris Drury, head coach Mike Sullivan, and assistant coach David Quinn as part of the selection committee. The case against Fox is simple: he’s a smaller dman without blazing speed and who chased after a rimmed pass on Canada’s golden goal at the 4-Nations. Each of these are poor arguments in my mind.

1) Fox’s size has never stopped him from being an excellent defender at the NHL level. Every season since 2020, his rush and cycle defence scores have been in the top 25% of defencemen and usually figure in the top 10%. Even in front of the net, despite some closer-to-average numbers the last couple years, New York has allowed very few chances near the crease when Fox is on the ice this season (some of the lowest for any defender in fact).

2) His feet haven’t prevented him from being an impactful transition player. When pressured, Fox has shown himself to be very capable at breaking pucks out of the zone and stopping opposing players from entering it. Once again, he’s been especially skilled on that front in 2025-26, placing at the 94th percentile for successful transition contests as a dman.

3) Throughout last year’s 4-Nations, Adam Fox posted strong possession numbers in each of the round robin games. It was only in the final game that his pair sank below 60% expected goal share. And even then, Fox-Hanifin’s xG share was higher in all four games than Slavin-Faber. Meanwhile, Slavin-Fox performed well in limited minutes while Hanifin and Faber suffered away from their common partners. Even during his most magnified “mistake”, Fox chasing after Makar’s rim to Marner on the golden goal was not egregious and would’ve been entirely forgotten about, had Auston Matthews not left McDavid alone in the slot to double up on pressuring Marner.

This is all without mentioning how much Fox tilts the ice offensively for his team. If I were in charge, he would be starting the tournament next to Slavin on USA’s second pair. As a corresponding move, I would be dropping Seth Jones whose defence is a tad overrated (but offence is underrated).

Now this last spot is what I wrestled over longest. I wasn’t the biggest Faber fan heading into the year, but have really liked his game now that he’s gotten an upgraded partner, first with Brodin and then Hughes. The defence has taken a big step, he plays the right side, and can be a contingency partner for Quinn, so I’m deciding to keep him on the team. This leaves Noah Hanifin as the next man on the chopping block, where it’s a fight between him, Jackson LaCombe, and Lane Hutson.

With how strong America’s defencemen are in those aspects, and Hutson’s success playing either side this season, there are plenty of partners who can help shore up his weaknesses. Whether he needs stable retrieval+breakout help (McAvoy), a rush defence stalwart (Slavin), or some of both (Sanderson), this roster has it in spades.

He doesn’t need to start on the roster, but is a great option to inject offence if the team is either lacking it or happens upon an injury to one of their top blue line puck-movers. Goals can be so hard to generate in the later stages of these tournaments, and Hutson could be the perfect ace up their sleeves to push past that. It does mean leaving LaCombe at home which sucks, but he should be an absolute force for 2030.

🇺🇸 VERDICT:

IN: Jason Robertson (F), Alex DeBrincat (F), Adam Fox (D), Lane Hutson (D)
OUT: Vincent Trocheck (F), JT Miller (F), Seth Jones (D), Noah Hanifin (D)

Canada

The 4-Nations champions were so close to not holding that title. Each game was a close battle: an overtime win over Sweden, a loss to the States, an almost brutal collapse against Finland, and another overtime win this time over the USA was just enough. But the margins were so thin that Canada cannot simply just “run it back”. Nothing major needs to be made, but there are still a few changes I would recommend.

Jordan Binnington will be my first and only goalie swap of the tournament. I know this is a controversial decision for some, as he did play a huge part in winning the 4-Nations with his overtime performance. However, people tend to forget the feeling towards his position as the Canadian starter heading into that final given his middling performance throughout the prior games.

Those finale heroics are also such a tiny speck amongst a sea of poor play in recent years. Looking at this season in particular, Binnington ranks last across the entire goalie pool in our model, having cost the Blues 1.7 standings points relative to a replacement-level option. He has also lost the starting job on his own team to a different Canadian goaltender in Joel Hofer. Even looking at previous seasons, he has only profiled like a true #1 once since 2021, and that was two years ago in 2023-24.

I understand that he can be a “big game goalie”, but by shoehorning a struggling player into this role over a thriving alternative (Logan Thompson for example), you are stripping the opportunity for this new option to even prove themselves as a “big game” guy. The floor for Binnington is even scarier considering he has the second-most choked games of all goalies in 2025-26 with 6. You can read more about how that’s calculated here, but essentially a choke is whenever a goalie has a Goals Saved Above Expected lower than his margin of defeat, thus costing his team the game

At a position with so much volatility and on such a strong roster that kinda just needs “good enough” goaltending, I would rather take a more consistent piece who has proven that they can put up strong performances more often than others day in and day out. As a result, I’m running with Thompson as the starter and Kuemper as the backup to start the tournament. MacKenzie Blackwood has shown he can thrive on a stacked team the last couple of seasons, so he makes his way in as the #3.

Canada also just barely got enough scoring given how the pieces fell at last year’s 4-Nations, so I would look to retool their forward selection a bit. First, Connor Bedard should be on the team. He offers one of the highest-ceiling scoring potentials in the league and has been firing on all cylinders this season with a 47-goal 114-point pace. He may lack a checking or defensive dimension at the moment, but that’s why you give him linemates that can cover those weaknesses and leverage his strengths. A trio of Bedard-Suzuki-Reinhart would bring a balanced blend of high-skill offence, checking proficiency, and a strong defensive track record.

Staying with the youth movement, Seth Jarvis is the perfect swiss army knife for a team like this. Need one of the best penalty killers in the league? A demon of a shutdown threat who can grind out tough minutes against the opposition’s best? A clutch scorer with 40-goal 70-point potential? The Hurricanes forward brings all of those and is an absolute DAWG with all-three-zones impact, puck skills, and personality to spare. Bring him to Milan.

With all these fantastic wingers who can wield their physical gravity to meaningfully tilt the ice (Hagel, Reinhart, Jarvis, Stone, Marchand) and penalty-killing two-way forwards (all the previously mentioned guys plus Suzuki & Marner), the need for an Anthony Cirelli or Tom Wilson becomes a little redundant. The tighter IIHF reffing and rulebook hinder Wilson’s case here, while Cirelli’s dip in puck-moving impact and shutdown metrics reduces his utility, especially compared to the wealth of other options listed above.

My final debate at forward comes down to Bo Horvat and Mark Scheifele. Despite his porous defensive impact, Scheifele remains the better player of the two while Horvat trades off some higher-end skill for closer-to-average defensive ability. The Islanders centre’s goalscoring shouldn’t be discounted here, but Scheifele’s offence is so good you simply cannot ignore it.

He constantly improves the flow of his team’s passing sequences and plays one of the most important playmaking roles in the league. Thanks to his hockey sense, Scheifele commands o-zone plays like few others can, all while keeping multiple options open to ensure possessions proceed uninterrupted. As a result, he is the only skater ranking at the 100th percentile for the Influence and Efficiency scores in our passing data this season (McDavid is the only other with 99%+ in both for context). Tack on the fact that he’s been one of the most consistent high-end finishers of the 2020s, and you’ve got an unequivocally dangerous dual-threat offensive powerhouse on your hands.

Leaving this level of dynamic scoring prowess at home would not be my preferred route, putting Horvat on the outs. With this being the final change at forward, it means that 4-Nations final goalscorer and reigning Conn Smythe winner Sam Bennett remains on the outside looking in. Once again, this boils down to already having plenty of strong checkers with more consistent high-end offence. One last honourable mention goes to Wyatt Johnston, who is simply a victim of the 14-forward limit, despite having done enough this year to warrant strong consideration. Although with Brayden Point’s injury right as I’m writing this, maybe there ends up being JUST enough room to include him after all. It would be a pleasure to watch him torment opposing Olympians thanks to his unique blend of skill, pace, and tenacity.

And finally, we move to the last section of this long piece: the Canadian defencemen. If I were to plant my foot down for only one excluded Canadian at any position, it’s Matthew Schaefer. We have been spoiled with first-overall picks these last three years, and despite Schaefer getting tons of praise in his first NHL half-season, he should be getting even more. His record-setting goalscoring start as a teenage defenceman jumps off the page of course, but it’s how developed the rest of his toolkit already is that most impresses me.

Looking at his full player card, his only low-score metrics are two of the least important and repeatable skills for defencemen in our model (forecheck pressure and off-puck offensive support). We talked about it a lot last summer in our article on defining physicality and its place in a skater’s development, but I cannot stress enough how difficult it is for young defencemen to become strong rush defenders given the skill and pace of NHL forwards.

Schaefer just doesn’t care about all that. He has been one of the most aggressive 1v1 defenders with top-of-the line entry denial numbers, while also preventing chances against when targeted at an above-average rate. This is all being done while holding the greatest penalty differential impact of anyone in the league by our calculations. The way he has instantly adapted to NHL contact and developed a sense of gravity that he wields like one of the league’s best is preposterous. Doing so consistently in difficult minutes immediately upon entering the league after not being able to play in a competitive hockey game for nine months due to injury just adds another layer of absurdity. Not to mention how much of an uber-dynamic puck-carrying force he’s been from the get-go.

Looking at the tiers above, Schaefer already ranks as an elite #1 defenceman and makes my starting roster with ease, which bumps out a dman for the bottom section. Speaking of Drew Doughty, he is still an excellent net-front presence and top-end rush defender, so I’ve got him ahead of Colton Parayko. The big frame grants him an imposing physical presence and booming shot (which has yet to get him a goal this year), but Doughty surpasses him in all of our defensive metrics and breakout ability.

This doesn’t guarantee Doughty’s inclusion though, since three other Canadians profile as #1 defencemen ahead of him: Evan Bouchard, Jakob Chychrun, and MacKenzie Weegar. Bouchard and Chychrun have very polarizing toolkits and lots of variability in their games, so I understand how it may be difficult to build pairs around their playing styles, especially when you have more well-rounded similarly-talented options like Morrissey, Theodore, & Schaefer.

Weegar on the other hand is built perfectly for this role, and there aren’t many out there who play like him. He’s a right-shot with an all-around balanced toolkit, excellent shutdown tools both against the rush & cycle, some of the most reliable breakouts out there, and a 20-goal season just a couple years ago. As shown above, he falls into that #1D tier ahead of 4 of Canada’s selections.

With Parayko already out, the final cut comes down to Doughty, Sanheim, or Harley. Both of the latter have shown higher potentials recently, thanks to Sanheim’s shutdown ability and Harley’s dominance over the offensive & neutral zones. Sure they haven’t been at their peak in 2025-26, but they posted strong multi-season track records heading into it and this little dip just brings them down in line with Doughty. So in the end, the Kings’ veteran barely misses out on the last spot of my Canadian roster.

🇨🇦 VERDICT:

IN: Seth Jarvis (F), Connor Bedard (F), Mark Scheifele (F), Matthew Schaefer (D), MacKenzie Weegar (D), MacKenzie Blackwood (G)
OUT: Anthony Cirelli (F), Tom Wilson (F), Bo Horvat (F), Colton Parayko (D), Drew Doughty (D), Jordan Binnington (G)

That’s all! If you made it through this entire piece, thank you so much for your interest. It means a lot. As a reminder, you can access all the visualizations used throughout this article for just $6.99 per month by subscribing to LB-Hockey here. See you all in Milan! 🇮🇹