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Eight days out from the official opening of the Winter Olympics in northern Italy, and just six days from the start of preliminary competition, you can feel the anticipation starting to build here in Canada. High on the list of things people are wondering: How many medals will Canada win? And who will win them?
To help answer these questions, we once again brought in our friends from Shoreview Sports Analytics to crunch the numbers. Much like they did for our Olympic curling and hockey previews, except on a much larger scale, the guys at Shoreview built a statistical model to predict the outcome of every single event at the Olympics.
Without getting too deep into the math weeds, this process involved determining the skill level of every athlete or team based on their performances over the past few years, and then simulating each event 10,000 times to project where everyone is most likely to finish.
As with any kind of statistical modelling, this is a mix of art and science. How much, for example, do you adjust for injuries? How far back should you go for past results? Is it better to put more weight on consistency? Or reward the hot hand? These are all tricky questions.
A lot of work went into calibrating all these factors and more. But it’s important to remember that even the best models don’t have all the answers. There will be surprises — both good and bad. But I think these predictions give us a pretty good idea of what to expect from Canada’s athletes.
Alright, enough with the preamble. Here are Shoreview’s projected medal standings. They’re sorted by gold, which is the official method used by the Olympics.
And here are the projected Canadian medallists:
Now let’s talk about some of the more interesting takeaways from these predictions, including some additional context.
27 medals for Canada. Is that good?
Yes. In fact, it would be the second-most medals the country has ever won at the Winter Olympics, trailing only the 28 it racked up in 2018 in South Korea.
Now, there are obviously many more medal opportunities for everyone these days as the Olympics keeps adding new sports and/or events. But Canada is keeping pace with the other top countries in terms of total medals. If its projected fourth-place finish in that category holds up, this will mark the seventh consecutive Winter Olympics where Canada ends up either third or fourth in the total count.
Canada won 26 medals at the most recent Winter Games, in 2022 in Beijing. But it managed just four golds there (along with eight silvers and a whopping 14 bronze), resulting in an 11th-place finish in the official standings. So, in that sense, meeting the projection of 10 golds and an official fourth-place finish this time would be a huge improvement.
This would also mark just the third time Canada has reached double-digit golds at the Winter Olympics. It won 11 in 2018 and 14 in 2010 in Vancouver — the only time Canada has finished first in the official standings.
Hockey: Good news and bad
With NHL players returning to the Games for the first time since 2014, Canada is projected to win its third consecutive Olympic men’s “best on best” tournament. This would make captain Sidney Crosby and defenceman Drew Doughty, who both played on the 2010 and ’14 teams, the first non-Soviet players to win three Olympic men’s titles. It would also please the many Canadian sports fans who prize the men’s hockey gold above all else at these Games.
However, as we noted in our Olympic hockey preview, this tournament could be tighter than it seems. Despite being the favourite, Canada’s projected chance of winning gold is only about 37 per cent. And the Shoreview model, surprisingly, has Sweden next at 24.6 per cent — ahead of the United States (21.5 per cent), which is widely expected to square off with Canada in the final after their intense clashes at last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off.
On the women’s side, it’s disappointing to see Canada projected to lose its Olympic title to the archrival United States. But the Americans are deserving favourites after winning the world championship last year and then sweeping Canada in this fall’s four-game Rivalry Series by a combined score of 24-7.
A curling resurgence?
Though Canada did win the inaugural Olympic mixed doubles title in 2018, it has not won gold in traditional four-player curling since 2014 and has a grand total of one bronze medal to show for the four combined men’s and women’s tournaments since then. So, anxious Canadian fans will be happy to see back-to-back world champion Rachel Homan’s women’s team predicted to snap the gold-medal drought while Brad Jacobs (the Olympic men’s champ in 2014) takes silver and the mixed doubles duo of Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant get the mixed doubles bronze.
This would give Gallant two medals in Italy as he also throws second stones for Jacobs’ team, while Homan would redeem herself after missing the playoffs in the women’s event in 2018 and in mixed doubles in 2022.
Another word of caution, though. Just like in men’s hockey, the competition will be fierce. As noted in our curling preview, the Shoreview model gives the Canadian women a 42.5 per cent chance of winning gold, with four-time world champion Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland (33.8 per cent) lurking as a major threat. On the men’s side, Canada has a better than 3-in-4 chance of winning a medal, but at 28.1 per cent for gold, Jacobs is clearly behind favourite Bruce Mouat of Great Britain (49.4 per cent). Mixed doubles is a lot dicier, with Peterman and Gallant basically a coin flip to reach the podium.
Piper and Paul!
One of my favourite things in these projections is seeing the longtime ice dance duo of Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier tapped for a bronze. Canada did not win a figure skating medal at the 2022 Olympics (the first time that happened since 1980) and who better to put the country back on the podium than these two? Gilles and Poirier have won a medal at four of the last five world championships — including back-to-back silvers in 2024 and ’25 and a bronze in 2023 shortly after Gilles was treated for ovarian cancer. This is their third and likely final Olympics, so it would be great to see them go out with their first medal.
Unfortunately, the pairs duo of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps is projected to miss the podium. They won Canada’s first figure skating world title in six years back in 2024 in Montreal but have been up and down since then. The model gives them about a 40 per cent shot at a medal, though, so there’s definitely still hope.
Will Dandjinou is going to be a star.
I’ve been hammering this point for months now, so it’s nice to see the projections back me up.
Dandjinou, 24, has dominated short track speed skating over the last two seasons, winning back-to-back men’s overall titles on the World Tour while capturing four gold medals and a silver at the world championships. Now he’s poised to become a household name in his first Olympics, and Shoreview projects him to win a Canadian-high four medals, including two golds. The model has him earning a medal in all three of his individual races (gold in the 1,500m; silvers in the 500 and the 1,000) along with a gold in the men’s relay.
Canada’s short-track speed skating team held a practice in Montreal less than two weeks before the Winter Olympics kick off in Italy. Considered Canada’s strongest team in decades, the athletes are processing the growing pressure to win gold at Milano Cortina 2026.
If Dandjinou wins four medals, he’d tie swimmers Summer McIntosh and Penny Oleksiak for the second-most medals every by a Canadian athlete at a single Olympic Games. Speed skater Cindy Klassen set the record of five in 2006.
Not far behind Dandjinou is Courtney Sarault, Canada’s top women’s short tracker. She’s projected for a medal of each colour: an individual gold and silver, plus a relay bronze. Throw in a men’s solo gold for Steven Dubois and a women’s silver for Kim Boutin, and Canada is projected to rack up nine medals (four of them gold) in short track — its highest output in any sport. In fact, the model has at least one Canadian reaching the podium in all but one of the nine short track events (the mixed relay), so this exciting sport will be must-see TV.
Canada’s long track speed skaters are poised for another strong Olympics too. They’re projected to win four medals, highlighted by a silver from the defending-champion women’s team pursuit trio of Ivanie Blondin, Isabelle Weidemann and Valérie Maltais
The moguls GOAT goes out on top.
Mikaël Kingsbury has suggested this will be his final Olympics, and he’ll have two shots to put a golden cap on his incredible career as the head-to-head dual moguls event makes its Olympic debut alongside the regular moguls. Kingsbury, 33, already owns an Olympic gold and two silvers, nine world championships and an all-time record 100 World Cup wins.
The Shoreview model has him taking bronze in the men’s moguls on Feb. 12, which would be a bit disappointing but not shocking, considering he’s sat out much of this season with a groin injury. But he’s projected to win gold three days later in the dual moguls, which would be a fitting Olympic farewell for the greatest moguls skier of all time.
Right up there with Kingsbury is fellow freestyle skier Megan Oldham, who’s projected for gold in the women’s big air event and bronze in the slopestyle. Canada’s seven projected medals in freestyle skiing also include a gold in ski cross for Reece Howden, the reigning World Cup champion and all-time men’s wins leader.
Canada also has the projected men’s snowboard cross winner in Éliot Grondin, who’s the reigning world champion and back-to-back World Cup title winner. This would be the 24-year-old’s third Olympic medal — he took silver in the men’s event and bronze in the mixed team in 2022.
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