Olympic Gold Medal – Men’s Ice Hockey: Team USA
Olympic Gold Medal – Women’s Ice Hockey: Team USA
World Junior Hockey Championship Winner: Team Sweden
The three biggest “best-on-best” hockey events over the last three months have all gone the way of Team USA. This has sparked a conversation across the hockey landscape: Has Canadian hockey lost its way?
We in Canada are not new to these types of conversations. They have popped up before. When the U.S. beat Canada in the 1996 World Cup, you started to hear grumbling. And when Canada did not medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics (the first time NHL players were permitted to play in the Olympics), that grumbling reached a fever pitch. Symposiums were held. There was a lot of soul-searching. The entire development model changed. There was more emphasis put on skill development at the youth hockey level, and the “Canadian game” began to move away from the backyard-brawler style that defined much of the 1980s and 1990s towards one that values speed and skill.
So, with Canada missing out on the top of the podium at all three of these big, international “best-on-best” events recently, does Canadian hockey need to pivot again?
Some are certainly calling for that, but we at SkateGuard would argue that what’s needed this time around is more of a tweak.
Why are we arguing for a more measured approach? The reasoning mainly revolves around the fact that we still think Canadian hockey is doing a lot of things right.
Let’s go in chronological order here, starting with the World Juniors. Yes, Canada bowed out in the semifinals against Czechia. Yes, there were some people saying that the Czechs “out-Canada’d Canada,” implying that they used a tough, grinding style to shut down a highly skilled Canadian team. But let’s call it what it was. Canada dominated the tournament. They won their group in round-robin play, had the best goal differential in the tournament, had seven of the top 17 scorers in the tournament, including the top three—Michael Hage, Gavin McKenna and Zayne Parekh—and another, Porter Martone, who led the tournament in goals.
We almost wrote a piece addressing the media response to the World Juniors alone. There was a lot of overreaction at the time. Yes, Canada has not won the tournament since 2023 and only has this year’s bronze medal to show since then. But as we outlined above, Canada dominated the tournament. And this may be the most critical point: they dominated with the list of Top 10 U20 (i.e., World Junior eligible) scorers in the NHL looking like this (as of April 7, 2026):
Of the eight Canadians on this list, only Misa and Parekh were made available for the World Juniors. The other six remained in the NHL. The only American on this list, Cole Hutson, was in Minnesota for the tournament. Even if only the top three (Celebrini, Sennecke and Schaefer) were available, every other country likely would have had to start kicking field goals to keep up.
The second of the three high-profile international tournaments was women’s ice hockey at the Winter Olympics in Italy. Silver medal. One shot away from gold. Not too bad.
If any fault could be laid on the women’s side, you could certainly nitpick roster selection if you wanted. The average age of the team was 29.4 years (keeping in mind that biologically/physically, women peak before men do). But this era of the women’s team had won three of the last four Olympic gold medals, and won silver in the other. You can understand if they wanted to run it back with predominantly that same group one more time.
The logical next question would be “OK, what does the next generation look like?” Let’s have a look at what the top of the top U-25 scorers list in the PWHL looks like:
Looks pretty darn Canadian-heavy, if you ask me.
Finally, let’s address the men’s Olympic hockey tournament in Italy:
- Top two scorers: Canadian (McDavid, Celebrini).
- Celebrini led the tournament in goals.
- Canada outshot the U.S. 42-28 in the gold-medal game and lost in overtime.
- Inserting one’s own analysis is always a risky proposition, but we at SkateGuard have watched a lot of hockey in our lives, and Canada dominated the game.
Again, hockey in Canada is not perfect. For one thing, playing it is far too expensive for too many families. There are still issues at the grassroots level of commercialization at far too young an age. But the development model in Canada is still second to none around the world. The country turns out fabulous talent. Canada should be proud of how its best are representing the country on an international stage. And we believe that will remain the case for as far as we can see out into the future.
