Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman sends the Team Canada Olympic team a warning
Photo credit: NHL.com
The 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics are poised to be epic, as the NHL players return to the lineup, and Steve Yzerman has sent a warning to Team Canada in regard to the player selection and expectations.
Former Team Canada General Manager Steve Yzerman made himself available to speak to The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun today about the upcoming Olympics, in Italy.
The setting will be Milano-Cortina, and NHL players will be suiting up for their respective countries for the first time since 2012
The Former Team Canada General Manager Steve Yzerman Expands on His Thoughts
.Yzerman, who was once the builder behind the 2010 and 2014 Team Canada rosters, shares his wisdom with us when it comes to roster selection and expectations from Canadian fans (hint: it's gold or bust).
«The two pressure points are when you announce the team and then once the tournament starts,» Hall of Fame player and Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman told The Athletic early last week. «As it should be for Canada, anything less than the gold medal is not a successful tournament. You watch all these World Juniors, and (when it's) single-game elimination, anything can happen, as we saw in 1998 (Nagano Olympics), when I played. We were playing really well and lost in a shootout.
He details the expectations a GM will have set for him by the fans everywhere:
«Any team that's picked - you pick a team, I pick a team, Army (Armstrong) picks a team - it's going to be a good team because Canada has so many good players. Hopefully you win, and if you don't win, you didn't pick the right team.»
The next Team Canada front office will have quite a burden placed upon their shoulders when it comes to roster selection, as NHL players will be sprinkled throughout each country's lineup.
As Canada is the progenitor of the sport of hockey, fans expect nothing less than a win, and with their defeat of Team USA (and Dylan Larkin) in the Four Nations Face-Off, we should expect a continuance of dominance against the US, if we're thinking like our Canadian friends do.
The 2026 Olympics will prove to be break it or make it for Canada, as we should see players like Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, and Connor McDavid take the ice in Italy.
But what remains to be seen will be the surrounding cast, which matters the most.
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