Five Takeaways from the NHL's Return to the Olympics
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It was the perfect ending to what turned out to be an unforgettable tournament, and the best possible advertisement for what NHL-caliber best-on-best hockey can look like on the Olympic stage. Here are five takeaways from Milano-Cortina.
1. The NHL Needs to Make This a Priority
Twelve years. That's how long it had been since NHL players competed at the Olympics, between a labor dispute in 2018 and COVID wiping out 2022. Players begged to come back the entire time. The Four Nations Face-Off last year was a good appetizer. Milano-Cortina was the main course.
And it delivered. The hockey was fast, physical, and played with an intensity you just don't get in the regular season. Every shift felt like it meant something. The best players in the world showed up and played like it — because they actually cared about winning.
The ratings tell the story. The Four Nations finale was the most-watched NHL broadcast ever at 9.3 million U.S. viewers. Sunday's gold medal game drew an average of 20.7 million viewers, NBC's second most-watched hockey broadcast in history behind only the 2010 gold medal game, which had the advantage of a primetime slot. A morning slot. 20.7 million people.
As the U.S. men’s ice hockey team made history on the ice, so did the game's viewership totals.
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) February 25, 2026
The historic matchup drew 20.7M viewers, making it the second-most-watched hockey game in NBC Sports history.
The league talks about growing the game constantly. Here's the thing — nothing grows the game like the Olympics. The NHL knows this. The players know this. It's time to stop treating Olympic participation like a negotiating chip and start treating it like the obligation it is.
2. USA Hockey Finally Has a Blueprint
For most of the last three decades, the story of American hockey at best-on-best tournaments has been the same: close, but not quite. Sometimes the talent was there but the roster wasn't built right around it. Other times the team concept was strong but the star power needed to beat Canada just wasn't. Milano-Cortina was the first time both things were true at the same time — a genuinely elite roster that was also built to play as a team — and it's no coincidence that it ended with a gold medal.
The person most responsible for that isn't Jack Hughes. It's Bill Guerin.
Guerin has been unapologetically himself throughout his tenure as USA Hockey GM, and this roster was molded entirely in his image. Gritty, defensively responsible, and filled with guys who bought into a collective identity from day one. He's never been interested in building a team that looks good on paper — he wants a team that's hard to play against, that competes for 60 minutes, and that believes it can win in any situation. That personality is stamped all over the 2026 squad.
He took real criticism for leaving Jason Robertson and Cole Caufield at home in favor of J.T. Miller and Vincent Trocheck. But that decision was pure Guerin. Robertson and Caufield are more gifted offensively, and no one disputes that. Guerin just didn't care. He wasn't building a power play — he was building a team that could make it a one-goal game in the third period and back itself to win. Sunday proved him right.
A big reason that chemistry came so naturally is where most of these players came from. Seventeen of the 25 players in Milan came through the U.S. National Development Program in Ann Arbor, all between 2010 and 2020. These guys grew up playing together, competing against each other, and pushing each other long before they ever put on an Olympic jersey. That shared history doesn't show up in the box score, but it showed up everywhere else in Milano-Cortina.
This core isn't going anywhere, and the players coming up behind them are just as promising. The U.S. talent pipeline is still running at full speed. For the first time in a long time, USA Hockey doesn't just have the players — they have a proven formula for how to put them together and win. That combination of elite talent and a genuine blueprint for best-on-best success is something American hockey has never really had before. It does now.
3. Canada Is Still Canada
The U.S. has the gold, and they earned every bit of it. But the takes are already getting out of hand, so let's be clear about what actually happened here.
Canada built what many were calling the most talented roster in hockey history. They dominated long stretches of the gold medal game. And they lost because Connor Hellebuyck saved 4.8 goals above expected in a single game — a performance that belongs in a different conversation entirely. That's not a referendum on Canadian hockey. That's one generational goaltender having the game of his life at the worst possible moment for the other team.
Congrats to the US team on Olympic gold🥇.
— Mike Kelly (@MikeKellyNHL) February 22, 2026
Canadians played a game to be proud of - Connor Hellebuyck was incredible... pic.twitter.com/d9UStCUPX3
The real story coming out of Canada's tournament is Macklin Celebrini, and it should terrify the rest of the world. The 19-year-old led the tournament in goals, finished second in points behind only Connor McDavid, and averaged over 23 minutes a game in the medal round. He didn't look like a teenager playing in his first Olympics. He looked like a guy who expected to be there. Canada has found their next one, and he's already here.
There are lessons to be learned from this tournament for Canada — about goaltending depth, about not taking any opponent lightly, about what it takes to win a two-week tournament rather than just dominate one. But none of those lessons change the underlying reality. Canada is still the only country on earth that consistently produces generational talents. The pipeline that built this roster is already building the next one. McDavid, Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, and Celebrini will likely all be back in 2030, hungrier than ever, with a roster full of elite talent and something to prove. They will always be the team everyone else has to beat.
That said...
4. The Rest of the World Is Closing In
Canada and the United States were on a collision course for the gold medal game from the moment the bracket was set. But neither path was clean. Canada needed back-to-back third-period comebacks to beat Czechia and Finland, while the Americans narrowly escaped a quarterfinal showdown with a dangerous Sweden team. The bracket played out as expected, but it was far messier than it looked on paper — and that messiness is telling.
The chart above says it plainly. Canada's share of NHL draft picks has dropped from nearly 70% in the 1960s to around 40% today, as the United States and European nations have built genuine development infrastructure. Finland and Sweden are perennial medal threats at every level. Czechia just medaled at four straight World Juniors championships and proved in Milano-Cortina they can hang with anyone. Slovakia reached the last two Olympic semifinals with a young core led by Juraj Slafkovský and Šimon Nemec that is only going to get better.
And then there are the programs that used to be automatic wins. Germany and Denmark are organized, well-coached, and no longer intimidated by anyone. Latvia keeps showing up and making things uncomfortable for teams that aren't paying attention. Best-on-best hockey used to be about figuring out which powerhouse would win. Now it's about surviving long enough to get to the final. That's a better tournament for everyone watching.
5. The 3-on-3 Overtime Problem Isn't Going Away
Let's end on the one thing that genuinely bothered me about this tournament, because it's worth saying clearly: 3-on-3 overtime has no business deciding Olympic gold medals.
The IIHF had logistical reasons for the format — three games a day in one venue, the men's final on the same day as the closing ceremonies, not enough ice time for full overtime periods. Fine. Those are real constraints. But when your logistics are compromising the legitimacy of a gold medal game, you have a scheduling problem, not an overtime problem.
Canada actually experienced both sides of this problem in the same tournament. Against Czechia in the semifinals, the 3-on-3 format bailed them out after Czechia had played a disciplined, well-structured 60 minutes. The wide-open ice neutralized everything that made Czechia dangerous and handed the momentum back to the more skilled team. Against the Americans in the final, it worked the opposite way — Canada was the better team at 5-on-5 for long stretches, and simply surviving to overtime felt like a lifeline for the U.S. The same format that saved them in one game may have cost them the gold medal in the next.
Did those games end the right way? Maybe. But the outcomes were shaped as much by the overtime format as by anything that happened in regulation, and that's a real problem when you're handing out gold medals.
IIHF President Luc Tardif confirmed this week that 3-on-3 is staying through 2030. It's the wrong call, and at some point a gold medal is going to be decided in a way that's so clearly disconnected from the game that was played that it'll be impossible to defend. Hopefully it doesn't take that moment to force a change.
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