New York Islanders forward Bo Horvat is still very much a possibility to make Team Canada for the 2026 Winter Olympics, per NHL insider Elliotte Friedman.

Yes, Horvat is currently out injured with a lower-body injury, but remains day-to-day with a timetable of around 1–3 weeks. Sure, there’s a situation in which the Islanders allow their top goal-scorer to take more time as a precaution, but at this moment in time, he should be back sooner rather than later, well before Feb. 2, the start of the Olympics.

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Given the star-studded projected lineup for Team Canada, Horvat’s role, if he makes it, will likely be as a fourth-line forward. The good news is that it’s a role that the 30-year-old can shine in.

While Horvat sits third in goals among Canadians with 19 — Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon has 26, while Boston Bruins forward Morgan Geekie has 22 — he’s won 57.8% of his face-offs and has been a dominant force on the Islanders’ penalty kill, which sits fifth-best in the NHL at 84%.

His 6-foot-1, 225-pound frame allows him to bring a physical presence in all three zones.

Now, who is Horvat fighting with for a spot?

It looks like two of Horvat, Winnipeg Jets center Mark Scheifele, and Montreal Canadiens center Nick Suzuki will make the team, with one of the three serving as Canada’s fifth centerman.

Here are the stat lines for each:

Horvat: 32 GP, 19 G, 12 A, 31 P, 5 PPG, 111 SOG, 20:27 ATOI, 57.8 FO%, 14 B, 19 H

Scheifele: 31 GP, 16 G, 24 A, 40 P, 3 PPG, 67 SOG, 20:15 ATOI, 48.0 FO%, 12 B, 9 H

Suzuki: 32 GP, 9 G, 28 A, 37 P, 6 PPG, 68 SOG, 20:44 ATOI, 49.5 FO%, 28 B, 25 H

Who would you choose for the potential final two spots?

Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche stated that he will not allow someone to go play for their country.

Now, for some Islanders fans, they would rather not see Horvat play in the Olympics. Aside from his current injury, the Islanders could ill-afford to see Horvat go to Italy, given the risk of another injury affecting his availability for the second half of the NHL season. 

However, if you put yourselves in Horvat's shoes -- skates rather -- at age 30, this is likely Horvat's last chance to represent his country and honor that shouldn't be denied if offered.

Men's Hockey at the 2026 Winter Olympics begins Feb. 11. 

The Buffalo Sabres are looking to get better in hopes of finally be a playoff team again. When looking at their current roster, it is clear that they could use another top-six forward. 

Due to this, the Sabres have two interesting players from the Buffalo Sabres that they should consider pursuing. Let's discuss each of them now.

Bryan Rust 

Rust would have the potential to be a home run of an addition for the Sabres if acquired. After setting career highs with 31 goals and 65 points in 71 games last season, the 33-year-old winger has posted 11 goals and 27 points in 29 games so far this season. With numbers like these, he would give Buffalo's offense a major boost if brought in.

Another very appealing factor about Rust is that he has an affordable $5.125 million cap hit until the end of the 2027-28 season and zero trade protection. With this, Buffalo should make a big push for him. 

Rickard Rakell 

Rakell is another notable Penguins forward who could make a lot of sense for the Sabres to bring in. He has had a nice start to the season for Pittsburgh, recording three goals and nine points in 11 games. This is after he set career highs with 35 goals and 70 points in 81 games in 2024-25. With this, he would be a nice pickup for the Sabres if acquired, especially when noting that he can play multiple forward positions.

Rakell is signed until the end of the 2027-28 and has a $5 million cap hit, so he would be more than a rental for the Sabres if acquired. However, he also has an eight-team no-trade list, so he has some trade protection. 

The Pittsburgh Penguins are struggling big time. With their 5-4 overtime loss to the Utah Mammoth on Dec. 14, the Penguins have now lost their fifth straight game. Their loss to the Mammoth was also the second game in a row where they blew a multi-goal lead in the third period, so things are just not going well for Pittsburgh right now.

If the Penguins continue to struggle like this as the season carries on, they could very well end up being sellers this season. If this ends up being the case, these five players should be watched as trade candidates. 

Rickard Rakell 

Rakell was a popular name in the rumor mill this summer, and he would likely be a popular target if the Penguins end up selling. Teams looking for a top-six winger would love to land a player like Rakell.

Bryan Rust

Rust is another Penguins top-six winger who was among the NHL's top trade candidates this summer. If the Penguins end up dropping in the standings, the 33-year-old winger could be a very big trade chip for them to dangle. 

Erik Karlsson 

Questions about Karlsson's future in Pittsburgh have come up for quite some time. While his contract could be hard for the Penguins to move, teams looking for more offense from the point could target him, especially if Pittsburgh is willing to retain some of his salary. 

Anthony Mantha 

If the Penguins find themselves out of a playoff spot, Mantha could be a player they look to move. Mantha is a pending UFA having a solid season, so he could generate interest from playoff clubs as a potential rental. 

Stuart Skinner 

The recently acquired Skinner could also be a trade chip for the Penguins if they view youngsters Arturs Silovs and Sergei Murashov as big parts of their future. Skinner is a pending UFA and could generate some interest from teams looking for goalie help if he bounces back after being traded to Pittsburgh. 

After losing a game they should have won against the New York Rangers on Saturday night, the Montreal Canadiens had a chance for redemption as they hosted the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday night at the Bell Centre. Martin St-Louis kept his cards close to his chest all day, not revealing who would be in the net after Jacob Fowler played the last two games until less than an hour before the game.

Interestingly, he chose to give the start to Jakub Dobes, who had watched the last two games from the press gallery. At the same time, Samuel Montembeault served as backup, just like he has in the previous six games, his last start dating back to December 2 against the Ottawa Senators.

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Dobes Gives A Clinic

Martin St-Louis’ intentions with his goaltenders are not very clear right now. Montembeault has struggled since the start of the season; Dobes cooled off after a hot start; and Fowler showed he could play in the big leagues when he took on the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday. Will Montreal decide to keep three goaltenders? Or will they send one down to the Laval Rocket?

If they chose the latter option, Fowler and Dobes would be the most likely candidates since they do not need to clear waivers to go down, but the Czech rookie netminder did his very best in the first frame to show St-Louis that he belongs with the Canadiens.

Speaking about his netminder, the coach said:

I think it gave him a lot of confidence to get through those two minutes; it gave the team a lot of confidence as well. I know his character, I’m not surprised. It doesn’t tell me much because I’m not surprised.

- St-Louis on Dobes' performance

He’s not as positionally sound as Fowler, and the way he tends net ends up being more exciting at times, which is not ideal, but he put on a goaltending clinic when the visitors got a two-minute five-on-three power play early on.

He stopped Zach Hyman from in close after a perfect lateral push, frustrated Leon Draisaitl on a one-timer from the dot and even denied Connor McDavid, who had managed to make his way in alone towards him. All that in a two-minute window that could have buried the Canadiens, considering Edmonton has got the third-best power play in the league with a 31.3% success rate.

Doby 🙌#GoHabsGopic.twitter.com/1ktPVEATwd

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) December 15, 2025

That’s the kind of performance that not only keeps a team in the game but should inspire it as well. He kept it up in the second frame as well, where he killed three of the Oilers’ opportunities with perfectly timed poked checks and showed nerves of steel handling the puck outside of his crease.

Asked what Dobes’ performance meant going forward, the bench boss said:

I don’t know what it means moving forward, but I thought Dobes was very good tonight, you know. Tomorrow’s off, sure we’ll talk about a few things as a staff, but I think we just came off playing some good hockey for three games, with some pockets of stuff that make you scratch your head sometimes, but at the end of the day we went and got five out of six points, that’s a good long weekend for us. We’ll assess the things you’re talking about. It’s a good question; I just don’t have all the answers.

- St-Louis on what the future holds for his goaltenders

Capitalizing On Opportunities

Montreal managed to get the lead in the second frame thanks to an Ivan Demidov power play goal. The Russian rookie had drawn the penalty himself, and he finally did what the whole fanbase had been shouting at him to do: he shot the puck. Lo and behold, it went in. After 40 minutes of play, he had two shots and a missed one; he looked like he was making a conscious effort to shoot more.

Asked if he had spoken to him about the need to shoot more, the coach explained:

No, I’ve said it before, good players like that, you’ve got to be mindful not to overcoach them. I can guarantee that they come back to the bench, and they know, as a player, I came back to the bench and told myself I should have shot there. If every time you’re told “you should have shot”, “you should have passed there”, eventually you’ll always be hesitant because you’ll always wonder what the coach would like you to do in every situation. You have to trust their instinct; you don’t want to take that away from them.

- St-Louis on trusting Demidov's instincts

The Canadiens’ second goal came from an excellent McDavid setup, or rather, a turnover straight in the slot to Joey Veleno. The Quebecer started the game on the fourth line with Owen Beck and Brendan Gallagher. Still, he was skating alongside Jake Evans and Josh Anderson on that play, and Anderson’s pressure on the Oilers captain caused that turnover. Veleno wasted no time firing it past Calvin Pickard to make the score 2-0.

Une rondelle qui avait des yeux 🎯

That shot though#GoHabsGopic.twitter.com/HG8Ehds34w

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) December 15, 2025

That was a great example of the Canadiens capitalizing on their opportunities, but that’s something they didn’t do enough of in this game. After 40 minutes, they had four breakaways, and none of them resulted in a goal. Pickard stopped Anderson, Suzuki twice, and Alexandre Texier as well to keep his team in the game. Had it not been for Dobes’ solid performance up to that point, though, those missed opportunities would have really hurt.

Perhaps those two saves played on the captain’s mind when he found himself on a two-on-one with Brendan Gallagher and sent him the puck to shoot.

Evans and Matheson Shine

It hasn't been an easy season so far for Evans, but tonight, tasked with containing McDavid, he did a fantastic job. The pivot spent almost 20 minutes on the ice, a record for him this season and won 50% of his draws, facing one of the league’s very best players. Before tonight’s game, McDavid had 15 points in his last five games, but tonight he could only muster an assist, and he needed multiple power-play opportunities to do so. A job well done for the center, who was rewarded with the third star of the game.

As for Mike Matheson, he has a knack for playing well against the Oilers captain, and when St-Louis was asked why that was, he replied it was all about Matheson’s speed and his ability to match with players who have the same kind of speed as McDavid. In the end, the Canadiens played one of their best games of the year and thoroughly deserved this 4-1 win over Edmonton.

The Canadiens will enjoy a day off tomorrow before taking on the Philadelphia Flyers at the Bell Centre on Tuesday night.

---

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EDMONTON — While there has been so much focus on the NHL’s reaction to the dimensions of the hockey rinks at the Winter Olympics and that the main arena isn’t scheduled for completion until just a few days before the Opening Ceremony, it’s the women’s tournament — not the men’s — that actually starts three days after the newly announced completion date.

Nine of the 28 games in the women’s tournament will be played at Santagiulia Arena, which now has a listed capacity of 14,012 (despite being reported for two years as 16,000) and is way behind schedule with the arena’s construction now scheduled to be complete Feb. 2.

The women’s tournament begins at the arena Feb. 5 with a preliminary-round game featuring Italy and France. A test event is scheduled for the ice surface on Jan. 9-11.

Quick peek at the main arena in Milan. Obviously, a lot of work needs to get done. The NHL sounded positive earlier this week at BOG meetings the work will get done in time for the Olympics. pic.twitter.com/58UXkwmDFd

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) December 12, 2025

The other 19 Olympic women’s hockey games will be played at Milano Rho Ice Hockey Arena, which has a capacity of 5,738 and is technically a temporary rink built at a convention center.

At the Rivalry Series that featured the United States and Canada and ended with a four-game sweep by the U.S. over the weekend, none of the players or coaches for the respective countries voiced concern.

“It’s just kind of noise,” said Team Canada defenseman Renata Fast, who is preparing for her third Olympics. “There’s always noise around the Olympics, no matter where the Olympics are. Each one I’ve been to, there’s been noise around it. So I know the teams and whatever group of people that go there, they’re just excited. We’re honored to represent Canada.”

Added soon-to-be four-time Olympian Kendall Coyne Schofield, “It’s something we can’t control. You know, we’re reading the same thing you’re reading, and at the end of the day, none of us here can control it.”

The NHL, and for that matter the USA Hockey men’s brass, wasn’t pleased two weeks ago when they first learned that the rinks at both arenas will be a little more than four feet shorter and a little less than a foot wider than a typical 200-by-85 NHL rink. While the changes are largely irrelevant and the league says it has no safety concerns, this still was in defiance of the Olympic agreement signed by the NHL and NHLPA as the entities sending NHLers to the Olympics for the first time in 12 years.

As for the women, they don’t care.

“We’re so used to playing on different ice surfaces,” Fast said. “Every time we go over to Europe, we’re playing on a different ice surface. There really isn’t any standardized ice surfaces around the world. It’s just the NHL used to being on NHL ice. I think we’ll be ready for whatever the conditions are, and you just adjust throughout the game.”

The IIHF said in a news release that the Santagiulia Arena ice dimensions are the same as the rink size used at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games. NHL players have not competed in the Olympics since 2014.

Both coaches echoed that rink size doesn’t matter as long as the main arena is complete. The United States and Canada play a preliminary game at Milano Santagiulia on Feb. 10, and the semifinals and bronze and gold medal games will be at the arena.

“I just don’t get caught up in it,” Canada coach Troy Ryan said. “I’m not in the construction business. I’m not there to know exactly when all the deadlines are going to be. The one thing with the IOC and Hockey Canada, everybody does such a good job of updating us. I’m not too concerned. I think it’s somewhat common that construction goes right until the final days. I’ve had the honor, I guess, of being part of two Olympics. Women’s hockey starts pretty early in these events, right at the front end of it. And a lot of times you’re going into the village, and things are just getting ironed out as you move in on day one. So it’s all part of it. A lot of these athletes have been through it — it’s what you expect. You just kind of got to learn to adapt.”

Added United States coach John Wroblewski, “I mean, I’ve been to enough IIHF events, and they’re all over the world, whether it’s Russia, Slovakia, there’s always something happening at the end that they have to tighten up. And they want the event as much as anybody, that things will go off. I’m sure it’ll be fine, and as long as there’s ice somewhere, the players will find a way to solve that equation and provide a winner.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

NHL, Olympics, Women's Hockey

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