Canada ‘focused’ on capturing gold medal again with NHL players back at Olympics

MILAN — Gold or bust.

That’s it for Team Canada at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. That’s all it is.

Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and company are here for one reason only: to win Canada’s third consecutive gold medal in Olympics involving NHL players and its fourth gold in six such Games.

They’ve been here preparing since Sunday for a journey that begins in earnest against Team Czechia at Santagiulia Arena on Thursday (10:40 a.m. ET; Peacock, USA, ICI Tele, CBC Gem, RDS2, CBC).

It’s the first of three preliminary round games Canada will play, the other two against Team Switzerland on Friday and Team France on Sunday, before moving into the single elimination portion of the tournament.

“We’re focused,” captain Sidney Crosby said. “We respect everyone. I think our biggest thing is just trying to focus on our own game. We know that everyone’s not going to be perfect in Game 1, but at the same time we have to start to form our identity, and we have to understand what that looks like.”

Every championship team has an identity.

In 2014, the last time NHL players participated in the Olympics, Canada was a team built to suffocate its opponents, to stifle offense, to win low-scoring, low-event games with goalie Carey Price cleaning up any of the debris that might have come his way.

It was not close.

Canada won three games by shutout and outscored its opponents 17-3 in six games.

It built its identity through each period, each game.

This time is no different, but what will Team Canada’s identity be?

“I hate sitting here and saying going in, ‘This is the way we’re going to play or this is the way it’s going to go,'” coach Jon Cooper said. “It’s been said the ‘Canadian way.’ Well, what is the Canadian way? I always think the Canadian way is the winning way and that’s how it works.

“But this group of players, to wear their heart on their sleeve, this team will push. You want to have a team that can beat somebody many different ways. Do we have the skill? We do. Do we have the speed? I believe we do. Do we have the goaltending? I believe we have that. If push comes to shove, can we push back? I really think we can do that. So, for us to be an intimidating team both physically and skill-wise, that would be an identity for us.”

Well, that’s how this team was built.

In all likelihood Canada will have McDavid, Crosby and MacKinnon centering three different lines to start the game against Czechia.