Follow Winter Olympic SportsPersonalize Your Feed
If you stop Connor McDavid on Canada’s top power play, you’ll also have to face Nathan MacKinnon.
Shut down both of them, the number-one and two scorers in the NHL this season, and you might be ready to celebrate. But wait! Here comes Sidney Crosby and Sam Reinhart.
There are so many options up front that Mitch Marner and Macklin Celebrini have been relegated to the second power play unit.
Two games into the Olympic tournament, it’s clear that Canada’s forward group is the deepest in the tournament, maybe the deepest it’s been in decades.
Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid each had a goal and two assists, as Canada downed Switzerland 5-1 at Milano Cortina 2026.
Eight different players have scored over the first two games, including Friday’s 5-1 win over Switzerland.
Canada’s final preliminary-round game against France is set for Sunday at 10:40 a.m. ET. You can watch all the action on CBC and CBC Gem.
The Canadian attack starts with Crosby, the veteran who’s been to the top of the Olympic podium, twice.
It continues with McDavid, the best talent to come out of this country since “The Kid” from Nova Scotia. He’s leads the tournament in scoring with six points in two games.
There’s MacKinnon, the super-intense forward who grew up idolizing Crosby and now joins his friend and training partner at the Games.
And then there’s the teenager. Celebrini played his way on to this team with his maturity and poise. A standout second season with the San Jose Sharks helped, too.
All four scored against the Swiss, in addition to a marker from defenceman Thomas Harley.
“You see some of the best players in the world, some of the best players ever, probably,” Swiss captain Roman Josi said about the Canadian team. “They move the puck well and you get your head full when you play against them.”
But that doesn’t mean the team was satisfied with its performance.
“Just because you’re up on the scoreboard doesn’t mean you’re playing well,” Canadian head coach Jon Cooper said.
The captain saw room for improvement, too.
“They’re fast,” Crosby said. “I thought early on we probably were guilty of turning the puck over a little bit, and they generated some good chances because of it.”
Thompson comes up big
Goaltender Logan Thompson made 24 saves in the win, yielding only one goal to Swiss forward Pius Suter after he lost track of the puck.
The Swiss were a tougher, heavier opponent than the Czechs, and Thompson admitted to feeling some jitters in the first period of his first Olympic start.
But he was pristine through the final 40 minutes of the game. In the second, he stopped Philipp Kurashev in alone after the Canadians turned over the puck at the offensive blue line.
“The Swiss gave us everything we could handle,” McDavid said. “They’re a really, really good team, and we knew that was going to be the case.
“We found a way to get an early couple of goals, but for the most part, they were probably the better team early on. [Thompson] gave us a chance again, and kind of let us get going.”
Canada started the game with some balance across its four lines, built around McDavid, MacKinnon, Crosby and Bo Horvat down the middle.
Midway through Friday’s game, though, Cooper moved MacKinnon to the wing of the top line, alongside Celebrini and McDavid.
It didn’t take long for that line to make something happen.
In the third period, Celebrini forced a turnover along the boards and quickly dished it to McDavid. He took it to the net, and Akira Schmid made the save, but MacKinnon tapped in the rebound.
Friends of Canadian Olympic men’s hockey team player Seth Jarvis tell The National about the moment they were given tickets to see them play in Milan.
The game was paused in the third period after a scary injury to Swiss forward, Kevin Fiala. He had to be stretchered off the ice by medical staff after getting tangled up along the boards with Canadian Tom Wilson.
Both teams came on to the ice to salute Fiala as he was taken off.
“I want that guy on my team back home big time,” Canadian defenceman Drew Doughty, Fiala’s teammate on the Los Angeles Kings, said. “Yeah, that’s not something I wanted, obviously, to happen. I’m going to go find him right now and see how he’s doing.”
Bigger challenges coming
Canada has looked unstoppable against its first two opponents, outscoring them 10-1.
Many saw goaltending as a weakness on this team. That’s been on point over two games, too.
But there are bigger fish ahead.
After the preliminary round, teams are re-seeded. The top four receive byes to the quarterfinals. The rest will battle it out through a qualification round to clinch the final spots in the quarters.
Once Canada gets into the elimination rounds, anything can happen. The team still hasn’t seen the defensively-sound Finns or the talented Swedes or even Leon Draisaitl-led Germany.
And, of course, there are the Americans.
“We came here for one reason, and right now we’ve put ourselves in a great position,” Cooper said. “If we don’t have to play in the qualification game, that’s great. Rest is a weapon for us.
“If we do, so be it, we just want to get better with each game. Whoever our opponent is, that’s who we’re focusing on.”
Source link
