ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
Multiple Authors
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — In the wake of the United States launching a military strike on Venezuela to capture its president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Jan. 3, executives throughout Major League Baseball mostly coalesced around one plan: get their Venezuelan players to the U.S. as quickly as possible.
Those early arrivals quelled a lot of teams’ fears about the players’ safety and, ultimately, their ability to report on time for spring training, which began in camps throughout Florida and Arizona this week. Most of those who stayed behind have since been able to secure visas without navigating tougher-than-usual logistical hurdles, according to several front office executives and agents who spoke to ESPN this week.
“As soon as the Maduro thing happened, teams were like, ‘Let’s get guys here sooner rather than later,'” said one agent who represents several Venezuelan-born players. “So, a lot of guys have just been here for a while.”
Venezuelan players who are not citizens or residents — and thus don’t possess U.S. passports — must secure P-1A visas to travel to the U.S. and play out their baseball seasons. Because the U.S. embassy in Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas has been closed since 2019, Venezuelan players travel to Colombia or the Dominican Republic to secure their visas before flying to the U.S.
Two agents told ESPN their clients have had to endure exceedingly long waits while getting their visas processed in Colombia, with one in particular spending more than three weeks in limbo before finally being able to travel to Arizona for spring training. With the U.S. making a concerted effort to crack down on immigration, others have pointed to longer-than-usual delays to obtain visas and green cards for players from both Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, countries that made up 61.5% of players on Opening Day rosters in 2025.
In an attempt to soften the blow, teams started their process much earlier than usual.
“I’ve never dealt with a team in December trying to process visas, especially for a guy who’s never been in trouble,” one agent told ESPN. “Just based on that, things are different.”
Full-squad workouts for the 30 major league teams will begin either Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. A lot of players still need to report to camp. Among the pitchers and catchers, though, there have been only a handful of late arrivals, as is annually the case. Only two reported ones, Atlanta Braves reliever Robert Suarez and Chicago Cubs catcher Moises Ballesteros, hail from Venezuela.
“We were proactive in having our [Venezuelan] players come out early,” Angels general manager Perry Minasian said, echoing the sentiments of many of his peers.
Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio was playing winter ball in Venezuela when the U.S. launched a military operation in his home country. He wanted to stay and finish out the season, but Brewers personnel urged him to come to the U.S.
“They’re under a lot of pressure,” Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said. “They want to play for their country, and locally there’s pressure. I understand that. But we have to make sure they’re safe.”
In June of last year, President Donald Trump signed a travel ban against 12 countries — Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen — in a move he described as “protecting the national security and national interest of the United States and its people.” There were also partial restrictions and limitations on entry for nationals of seven countries, including Venezuela.
But the order contained an exemption for “any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup, Olympics or other major sporting events as determined by the Secretary of State.” A league official said the U.S. Department of State has been cooperating in getting MLB players from Venezuela into the U.S. for spring training.
The U.S. embassy is expected to eventually reopen in Caracas and commercial airlines are scheduled to resume direct flights from Venezuela to the U.S. after a seven-year hiatus, giving agents to Venezuelan players hope that the process of getting them to their teams will be made easier in the near future.
This year, though, many of them are simply relieved a potential crisis was averted.
The Trump administration just eliminated the landmark finding that has underpinned federal regulations on planet-heating pollution since 2009.
For nearly the past two decades, the “endangerment finding” has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to craft rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Rather than repealing those rules individually, the Trump administration can undermine them all at once by attacking the endangerment finding.
Today, the EPA finalized its plans to overturn the endangerment finding as part of its attempts to overhaul tailpipe pollution standards. The move could also affect efforts to curb carbon emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities that drive more extreme weather and other climate disasters. And since the US pumps out more of the carbon pollution causing climate change than any other country in the world other than China, the impact would be felt worldwide.
“It is impossible to imagine a morally defensible reason”
“It is impossible to imagine a morally defensible reason for [EPA] Administrator [Lee] Zeldin’s decision to end EPA’s responsibility for cutting the climate pollution that is endangering peoples’ health,” Dominique Browning, Moms Clean Air Force director and cofounder, said in an emailed press statement. “Zeldin’s legacy will be the suffering of our children and grandchildren.”
Now, the EPA says it’s focused on slashing regulations it sees as costly for US businesses and consumers. When the agency first proposed a repeal of the endangerment finding last year, it claimed that automakers “have suffered from significant uncertainties and massive costs related to general regulations of greenhouse gases from vehicles and trucks.”
The agency announced today that it’s throwing out “all subsequent federal GHG emission standards for all vehicles and engines of model years 2012 to 2027 and beyond” by eliminating the endangerment finding. “As EPA Administrator, I am proud to deliver the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers,” Zeldin said in the press release.
The agency now says that removing regulatory requirements for greenhouse gases will cumulatively save more than $1.3 trillion, shaving $2,400 on average off the cost of a vehicle (without sharing in the press release how it arrived at that amount). The EPA previously estimated that the repeal would save $54 billion annually, although its analysis assumes that gas prices will fall and excludes additional costsincurred by theeffects of climate change. Undoing tailpipe pollution rules by rescinding the endangerment finding could actually cost Americans $310 billion over the next 25 years — mostly at the gas pump — according to a report by nonpartisan climate policy think tank Energy Innovation.
The repeal is sure to face legal challenges from environmental groups. That could ultimately send the case to the Supreme Court, where President Donald Trump has appointed three of the justices making up the current 6-3 conservative majority. If that happens, the current justices could reverse the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision that allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act in the first place. By doing so, they’d hamstring future administrations from reinstating climate rules enabled by the endangerment finding.
Congress would have to enact legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions again at the federal level. In its announcement today, the EPA argues that the Clean Air Act does not give the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions coming from motor vehicles “for the purpose of addressing global climate change.” “A policy decision of this magnitude, which carries sweeping economic and policy consequences, lies solely with Congress,” it says.
States could also step up with their own climate pollution limits. “We can’t allow federal attacks to limit Colorado’s clean transportation ambitions,” Aaron Kressig, transportation electrification manager at the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, said in a press release. “Now is the time for state leaders to take bold action.”
Navigating a web of different state policies could lead to greater legal risks for automakers, according to Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association. “Rescinding the endangerment finding creates huge risk and uncertainty in the regulatory framework on which sustained economic growth has depended for decades,” Gore says in a press statement. “[It] pulls the rug out from companies that have invested in manufacturing next-gen vehicles across the United States.”
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MILAN — Macklin Celebrini scored Canada’s first goal in the return of the NHL to the Olympics and Jordan Binnington stopped all 26 shots he faced in a 5-0 defeat of Czechia on Thursday that showed the tournament favorite is already a well-oiled machine.
Celebrini, his country’s youngest player at 19, deflected a shot by Cale Makar past Lukas Dostal with 5.7 seconds left in the first, putting an exclamation point on a terrific, back-and-forth period. After Mitch Marner‘s saucer pass to Mark Stone for his goal and Bo Horvat‘s on a breakaway later in the second, Czechia never stood a chance.
The handful of times Binnington got tested, he was there to make the save. Before Celebrini scored, Binnington kept it 0-0 by making a left-pad stop on Michal Kempny and reaching out to smother David Kampf‘s rebound attempt.
At the other end of the ice, Dostal played well but was helpless to slow down much of the onslaught. There was nothing he could do on the Sidney Crosby to Connor McDavid to Nathan MacKinnon tic-tac-toe power-play goal in the third period.
The same trio combined for almost the same goal in opening game of the 4 Nations Face-Off a year ago. Canada won that Olympic appetizer by beating the U.S. – which opens Thursday night against Latvia – in overtime.
McDavid had three assists, including one on Nick Suzuki‘s goal that made it 5-0.
Timo Meier scores twice as Switzerland shuts out France Adding NHL talent to a group that made a deep run in an international tournament last spring, Switzerland opened the Olympics with a statement victory against France.
Timo Meier of the New Jersey Devils scored twice in the third period, 39-year-old national team goaltender Leonardo Genoni stopped all 27 shots he faced and Switzerland shut out France 4-0 on Thursday. Damien Riat scored 55 seconds in, J.J. Moser of the Tampa Bay Lightning made it a two-goal lead three minutes in and there wasn’t much to worry about the rest of the way.
“It helps you a lot if you score two in the first, whatever it was, five minutes,” Moser said. “It just gives you a little bit more comfort, more confidence also for the rest of the game.”
The goals by Meier put the game out of reach after he and his teammates tilted the ice toward Keller. Meier called it “a mature performance there how we put the game away.”
With a boisterous contingent of fans in attendance, Switzerland outshot France 43-27 and sent them home happy.
A part of that was the play in net of Genoni, the 38-year-old who backstopped his country on an improbable run to the final at the world championships last spring before losing 1-0 to the U.S. in overtime. Genoni, who was tournament MVP with a 0.99 goals-against average and 0.953 save percentage, wasn’t sweating getting a shutout and is more worried about the rest of the Olympics.
“It’s a great start,” Genoni said. “We had a really, really good start into the game and could shut the door behind. It’s a perfect start for us.”
Switzerland next plays Canada on Friday.
“Obviously a big team coming up,” forward Nino Niederreiter said. “We’re going to try our best to poke the bear a little bit and see if we can go from there.”
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BYU receiver Parker Kingston has been charged with first-degree felony rape, the Washington County (Utah) Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
The charge comes after a nearly yearlong investigation that began after a 20-year-old woman reported a sexual assault to officers at St. George Regional Hospital, the attorney’s office said in a news release. The woman told officers that Kingston sexually assaulted her on Feb. 23, 2025, according to the release.
“Detectives with the St. George Police Department then gathered digital and forensic evidence,” the attorney’s office said. “They also conducted interviews with the parties involved and other witnesses. The information was then turned over to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for review.”
Kingston is being held without bail in Washington County and is scheduled to appear in Utah’s Fifth Judicial District Court on Friday.
“BYU became aware today of the arrest of Parker Kingston,” the athletic department said in a statement. “The university takes any allegation very seriously, and will cooperate with law enforcement. Due to federal and university privacy laws and practices for students, the university will not be able to provide additional comment.”
Kingston was BYU’s leading receiver in 2025, catching 66 passes for 924 yards and five touchdowns.
This is the second high-profile allegation of rape against a BYU football player in the past year. In May, former quarterback Jake Retzlaff was accused of rape in a civil lawsuit before the parties jointly agreed in June to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be refiled. No criminal charges were filed against Retzlaff. However, he would have faced a lengthy suspension for violating BYU’s honor code, which prohibits premarital sex, and transferred to Tulane.
In June 2024, in a dusty TV shop empty of customers save myself, my wife, and my kids, I stared deep into the LG C3 and Samsung S90C. I went back and forth between the two OLED screens for easily 20 minutes, happily paralyzed by the choice in front of me. The Video Only salesperson attempted to explain that there was no wrong decision.
A year and a half later, I disagree: I regret picking the Samsung over the LG. I regret it every time I adjust the volume on my TV, every time I plug in a new device, and especially ever since the Logitech Harmony Amazon Alexa integration shit the bed and I have to fumble a Samsung remote to switch inputs.
Samsung’s QD-OLED panel itself is phenomenal, if nothing special in 2026. The problem is the software. I would pay Samsung $100, right now, for this “smart” TV to be as dumb as the ones I grew up with.
Heck, I’d give Samsung 50 bucks just to let us disable the volume indicator. Failing that, let’s see if shame works.
Let me be clear: One of the final deciding reasons I chose the Samsung S90C over the LG C3 was that LG had failed me before. My LG E7 OLED, purchased from a not-long-for-this-world Fry’s Electronics in 2018, eventually developed a large heat blemish (not your typical burn-in) that sometimes discolored the picture. Before that, my previous Sony TV developed a line of dark pixels shortly after the warranty expired.
But both Sony and LG had unobtrusive onscreen volume indicators, just little icons near the edge of the screen. Samsung believes that anyone who ever needs things a little louder or quieter is willing to tolerate this aberration:
This eyesore stretches nearly a third of the way across the screen, vertically and horizontally, obscuring the incredible moving art I’m trying to watch underneath. And if you’re using a receiver, it consumes all this screen space to convey basically zero information. Not the current volume level, unless you’re using the TV’s built-in speakers, and not whether I’m getting a stereo or surround or Dolby Atmos signal.
It is the Samsung equivalent of Microsoft Clippy, but worse: “Looks like you’re trying to adjust the volume!”
We watch plenty of movies that contain both too-loud action and too-quiet dialogue, at an hour when kids are supposed to be in bed, so we’re adjusting that volume all the time.
In 2023, user “1544CT” on the Samsung Community forums complained that “as a person that watches a lot of Movies and shows I can no longer recommend Samsung until this annoyance is fixed.” But they didn’t seem optimistic. After all, the company hadn’t yet acted on a 26-page thread about the annoyance from 2020, one that now has over 130,000 views.
1/13Gallery: 12 places on the internet I found people complaining about the volume OSD.
There are numerous Reddit threads and even a Change.org petition to fix it. Though a Samsung moderator promised to deliver the complaint to the company’s engineers, it’s been three more years and nearly 50,000 more views without a resolution. Some users reported getting a v2203 update that reduced the size of the overlay, at least, but it appears that update may have been paused in December due to issues. Will we ever get it?
Problem number two: Samsung has no proper concept of an HDMI input, so I’m fumbling with a remote every time I plug a new gadget in.
Here is how my Samsung TV works in 2026:
Step 1: Plug a game console into an HDMI port.
Step 2: Wait for the Samsung TV to autodetect the game console. And if it doesn’t have good HDMI-CEC, which I’ll explain in a sec:
Step 3: Press the home button on the remote to see a forest of colorful Smart TV app icons, none of which are my game console.
Step 4: Press left on the D-pad to ignore those icons and instead summon the vertical sidebar. Press down, and then right, to summon a different horizontal bar of Connected Devices. If it’s an unknown one like the Analogue 3D, hope it’s the one I labeled “PC” last time.
Step 5: Set that “PC” to game mode for the umpteenth time by summoning a basic settings menu, then an advanced settings menu, then scrolling to the game mode toggle.
Step 6: Play.
Step 7: Repeat steps 2–5 each time I unplug and plug in a new device.
I suspect not everyone’s always plugging in new gaming handhelds and Analogue 3Ds and mini-SNESes over HDMI like me. But on my LG TV set, and every HDMI-capable set I’ve ever owned before, I could just press a button to cycle through HDMI inputs until the right picture showed up.
Thankfully, my PS5 and Switch 2 have pretty decent implementations of HDMI-CEC, the communications protocol that lets them send commands to my TV. When the kids want to watch Netflix or fire up Astro Bot, the power button on the DualSense pad or Switch 2 Joy-Con will do it. But weirdly, they won’t turn my TV and receiver off.
I used to get around most of this by setting up complicated Logitech Harmony Hub routines that’d fire when I said “Alexa, turn off the TV” or “Alexa, turn on the Nintendo Switch.” But since that infrared Wi-Fi remote stopped syncing to Amazon and Logitech’s servers properly this year, I’ve had to use Samsung’s software and remote more than ever.
I sure miss when this li’l dude just worked.
One day, I had the idea to try Home Assistant, when the Samsung TV and Samsung’s SmartThings showed up in a list of possible integrations. Maybe I could switch HDMI devices from my phone? But Samsung doesn’t expose individual HDMI ports there, either; I could only tell my screen to switch to “TV” or “HDMI,” no other sources or channels.
Those other HDMI sources doexist in Samsung’s API, because a homebrew third-party integration made my other Connected Devices like “PlayStation 5” and “AV Receiver” appear in Home Assistant — but only after connecting my TV to Samsung’s cloud and generating a custom API key. Yes, I have to reach out over the internet through Samsung’s cloud and back into my home to change HDMI inputs. And it’s still not reliable, because Samsung’s cloud sometimes tells me I’ve made too many requests, and sometimes needs a whole new token before it’ll accept commands again.
I’m about ready to go looking for an old-school infrared universal remote at this rate and teach my kids some pointing skills. But hey, Samsung, how about $50 for a fix? I have PayPal, Venmo, hell, I’ll type my card number into the TV itself if you’ll let me.
I asked Samsung a couple days ago about possible updates, but it didn’t have an answer by publish time.
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Inside Team USA’s Olympics 2026 Gift Bag Featuring Starbucks’ Bearista Cup and More
Madison Chock and Evan Bates’ path to an Olympics 2026 gold medal was supposed to be a smooth skate.
At least, that’s the reputation the Team USA skating duo had established for themselves ahead of the Milano Cortina games. However, their shoo-in shot for the top of the winner’s podium was slightly interrupted Feb. 9, when the couple—who have won three consecutive world titles—scored behind French rivals Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron in the rhythm dance.
For the opening segment dance, Chock and Bates skated to a Lenny Kravitz medley and scored an impressive, but surprisingly low 89.72, while their French counterparts earned a slightly better 90.18 for their skate to Madonna’s “Vogue.”
And while the United States pair entered the games as favorites, and had previously scored much better for the same routine, Chock said in a post-event interview, per NBC, “We were really happy with how we skated tonight.”
Meanwhile, Bates—with whom Chock tied the knot in 2024—argued they performed “even better” than in their team event, which landed them a score of 91.06.
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The 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic men’s ice hockey tournament begins Wednesday with round-robin play, and it’s the first time NHL players have participated in the Winter Games since 2014.
Here’s a primer for this best-on-best tournament for the hockey die-hards — and for those Olympic fans asking, “What’s a Tkachuk?”
Why are NHL players back in the Olympics?
The NHL began sending its players to the Winter Olympics in 1998. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Canada men have won three gold medals since then, having previously not won once since 1952. Canada’s last gold was in the 2014 Sochi Games, which was also the last time NHL players graced Olympic ice.
For decades, the NHL and its players have sparred over Olympic participation. The players want to represent their countries in the world’s most prestigious and historic athletic event — like the generations of Americans inspired by the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980. NHL owners are loathe to shut down their regular season and loan their talent to an IOC that doesn’t share revenues or give the league any tangible financial benefit. But for the sake of “growing the game,” the NHL has participated, with some exceptions.
The league didn’t participate in the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang because of a change in terms with the IOC and because “the overwhelming majority of our clubs” were “adamantly opposed” to disrupting the 2017-18 season, according to commissioner Gary Bettman, who was also seeking concessions from the NHL Players Association. NHL owners were opposed to shutting down the regular season to play in South Korea, a market the league didn’t consider a priority for global growth.
Discouraged by that decision, the NHLPA had language written into their new collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020 that stated the players would participate in the 2022 and 2026 Olympics. But the caveat for the 2022 Beijing Games was whether the 2021-22 NHL season was “materially impacted” by COVID-19 postponements. The NHL and NHLPA agreed to hold players back from the Beijing Games after 50 NHL games had already have been postponed through Dec. 23, 2021.
International Ice Hockey Federation president Luc Tardif backed the league, saying, “We understand the NHL’s decision is in the best interest of the health and safety of its players.” When Marty Walsh, former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden, was hired as NHLPA executive director in 2023, he made a return to the Olympics his priority. After months of contentious negotiations, the NHL announced in February 2024 that it would send its players to the Milan Cortina Games. Bettman said the negotiations turned on the players’ “big ticket” items being taken care of, like insurance and travel and accommodation costs, as that responsibility fell to the IIHF and IOC.
With that, it was game on for Italy, for players from almost every country.
This could be the last Olympic hockey tournament played under these restrictions. The IIHF kept its ban in place for the 2026-27 season, but signaled a willingness to reconsider the status of Russian and Belarusian under-18 teams for 2027-28. Organizations such as FIFA also have signaled they’re ready to lift their restrictions on Russia.
Russia’s absence from international tournaments prevented the NHL and NHLPA from staging another World Cup of Hockey since the last one in 2016, so they had to get creative. The result was the 4 Nations Face-Off held last February in Montreal and Boston, a successful event that solidified the U.S. and Canada as hockey’s current superpowers and gave their rivalry nuclear-level heat.
play
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P.K. Subban’s biggest question for Team USA heading into the Olympics
P.K. Subban’s biggest question for Team USA heading into the Olympics
Is U.S. vs. Canada an inevitability in the gold-medal game?
Like King Kong and Godzilla (or the Canadian kaiju equivalent) flattening cities before the two monsters throw down against each other, so are the U.S. and Canada in the men’s tournament. They are easily the deepest two teams in all positions, especially as injuries have affected other traditional hockey powers. They also have Cup-winning coaches in Canada’s Jon Cooper (Lightning) and Team USA’s Mike Sullivan (Rangers).
Team Canada’s offense offers:
One of the greatest center trios in hockey history. Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid, in his first Olympics, has four MVP wins (three regular season, one postseason) and five scoring titles in his 11-year NHL career. Colorado Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon, also in his first Olympics, has scored 40 goals in 55 games this season. Pittsburgh Penguins star and two-time Olympic gold-medalist Sidney Crosby remains a point-per-game player at 38 years old and is considered the NHL’s best all-around player of this century.
The NHL’s greatest antagonist in Brad Marchand (aka the “Rat King”) of the Panthers, and the league’s most controversial checker in Tom Wilson of the Washington Capitals, both of whom can also thrive offensively.
Defenseman Cale Makar of the Avalanche, who is third all time in the NHL for points per game among defensemen (1.08).
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Macklin Celebrini scores filthy tying goal, then sets up Sharks’ OT winner
Macklin Celebrini scores the tying goal in the third period, then makes the winning assist to William Eklund.
But for the first time in the NHL’s Olympic era, Team USA has iced a roster that can match Canada’s depth while surpassing it in some areas. Even while deciding to leave some great offensive players off the roster — Montreal’s Cole Caufield and Dallas Stars winger Jason Robertson most prominently — the Americans might have their deepest collection of scoring talent ever.
Minnesota GM Bill Guerin built the 4 Nations team that lost in overtime to Canada in the championship, and ran back much of that roster for the Olympics. Among the Team USA highlights:
There’s a reason fans have been shaking with anticipation about these Olympics. U.S. vs. Canada could be an all-timer, whether they meet for a medal or earlier in the knockout round.
When could the U.S. and Canada conceivably meet?
The Olympic men’s hockey tournament is split into three groups for the qualification round. Though the Olympic draw does give us an opening-round rivalry game between Finland and Sweden, the other two teams from the 4 Nations Face-Off, Canada and the U.S., are in separate groups:
Group A: Canada, Switzerland, Czechia, France
Group B: Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Italy
Group C: United States, Germany, Latvia, Denmark
Seeding for the elimination round is determined (in order) by record, points, goal differential, total goals scored and then IIHF world ranking. The top four teams receive a bye to the qualification round, and it would be stunning if Canada and the U.S. were not among them. Team USA has arguably the easiest draw, while Canada should be better than Switzerland and Czechia — although neither will be easy outs.
Keep in mind that this isn’t a rigid bracket. According to the IIHF, the semifinal round has the highest-seeded team playing the lowest-seeded team after the quarterfinals, and the second- and third-highest seeds play each other. So if Canada and the U.S. are seeded first and second after the round robin and win out, they could meet for gold.
But there’s an X factor here: Group B. Please recall in the 2014 Sochi Games that the U.S. and Canada were seeded in different groups and both had two regulation wins and one overtime/shootout win. Sweden, meanwhile, was in a third group and had three regulation wins to finish first after the round-robin. That led to the U.S. and Canada facing off in the semifinals for the right to play for gold. Canada beat the U.S. 1-0 and the Americans were so disheartened that they didn’t even win bronze.
What are the major concerns for Canada and the U.S.?
Canada’s weakness is glaring: Its goaltending.
St. Louis Blues netminder Jordan Binnington was absolutely brilliant in Canada’s 4 Nations overtime win over the U.S. but has been one of the two worst goalies in the NHL this season by traditional or advanced stats. Canada swapped out its other 4 Nations goalies (Adin Hill of Vegas and Samuel Montembeault of Montreal) for demonstrable upgrades: Kings goalie Darcy Kuemper, who won a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022; and Capitals goalie Logan Thompson, tied for sixth in NHL save percentage over the past two seasons. They’re better, but still nowhere near the U.S. in goaltending quality.
For the Americans, it’s scoring and experience. Will GM Guerin regret leaving off some pure scorers at forward and on defense — where Montreal’s Lane Hutson and the Rangers’ Adam Fox were snubbed — in favor of players with more defensive acumen? How much can New Jersey Devils star Jack Hughes, hampered by injuries and playing out of position, and New York Rangers captain J.T. Miller, having a terrible season, contribute? Can Matthews, who didn’t have a goal at 4 Nations, find the back of the net?
Team USA has Stanley Cup champions in forwards Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk and Jake Guentzel (Tampa Bay Lightning), but Canada has more rings in the room. It also has Crosby, and no one on the U.S. roster comes close to matching the experience and leadership of Canada’s captain. When adversity hits — like a third-period deficit in an elimination game — the Canadians have calming influences where the Americans might have players gripping their sticks tighter.
One of Guerin’s big bets on this roster is IIHF world championship experience. The Americans won that event in 2025, the first on-ice trophy for USA Hockey in the tournament in 92 years. Olympic forwards Tage Thompson (Buffalo Sabres) and Clayton Keller (Utah Mammoth), defensemen Jackson LaCombe (Anaheim Ducks, an injury replacement for Florida’s Seth Jones) and Werenski, as well as Swayman, played in that championship game. So a lot of American players have “big game” experience. But they don’t come much bigger than Olympic tournament elimination games.
Who are the other medal contenders?
Sweden is the consensus pick for the third-best team in the tournament, and it would be foolish to count the Swedes out.
They have a stout defense corps: Buffalo Sabres star Rasmus Dahlin and Panthers stopper Gustav Forsling; Tampa Bay Lightning captain Victor Hedman and the Golden Knights’ Rasmus Andersson; as well as Erik Karlsson, the 35-year-old Penguins blueliner who can still make things happen on offense.
But to take down either Canada or the U.S., it will take elite goaltending. Sweden might have it. Minnesota’s Filip Gustavsson has been one of the NHL’s top netminders and is seeking redemption after giving up two goals on four shots to Finland in the 4 Nations Face-Off before being pulled because of illness. He should be their No. 1 over the inconsistent Jacob Markstrom (Devils) and Wild rookie sensation Jesper Wallstedt, who has better numbers than Gustavsson this season.
Finland is the reigning gold medal winner, having captured the championship in Beijing with non-NHL players. The Finns suffered the tournament’s most significant injury loss when Florida star Aleksander Barkov needed preseason surgery to repair a torn ACL and MCL in his right knee. He was the engine that drove the Panthers to back-to-back Stanley Cup wins and a center who would have given Finland formidable depth at the position along with Sebastian Aho (Hurricanes), Roope Hintz (Stars) and Anton Lundell (Panthers).
As usual, underestimate the hard-working Finns at one’s own peril. Winger Mikko Rantanen (Stars) showed in last season’s Stanley Cup playoffs that he can carry a team on his back offensively. His Stars teammate Miro Heiskanen is one of the best defensemen in the tournament. If Juuse Saros (Predators) can level up his game from a below-average regular season, the Finns could be dangerous. At a minimum, Finland is never a pushover.
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Mikko Rantanen scores a beauty for the Stars
Mikko Rantanen dangles his way to the net and scores a brilliant goal for the Stars.
Switzerland brings an interesting squad to Italy, with NHL standouts in forwards Nico Hischier and Timo Meier (Devils), Kevin Fiala (Kings), Nino Niederreiter (Jets) as well as defenseman Roman Josi (Predators) and J.J. Moser (Lightning). What they don’t have in these Olympics is a difference-maker in goal, with NHL goalie Akira Schmid (Golden Knights) joining Swiss league players Reto Berra (who has NHL experience) and Leonardo Genoni, who has played well at Worlds. Where have you gone, Jonas Hiller?
Germany boasts one of the best hockey players in the world in Oilers star Leon Draisaitl, as well as one of the NHL’s best defensemen in Moritz Seider of the Red Wings. They also have pair of accomplished scorers in Utah’s JJ Peterka and Ottawa’s Tim Stutzle. The rest of the roster is mostly made up of Deutsche Eishockey Liga players, some with NHL experience. Someone who could play spoiler: Seattle Kraken goalie Philipp Grubauer, one of the NHL’s best netminders this season and a candidate for comeback player of the year.
Czechia’s forward group is dotted with names familiar to NHL fans, each of whom have 22 goals on the season: Boston scoring star David Pastrnak, Colorado winger Martin Necas and Vegas center Tomas Hertl. But the great hope for the Czechs is their goaltending, which boasts one of the best trios in the tournament based on their NHL campaigns: Anaheim’s Lukas Dostal, Utah’s Karel Vejmelka and Philadelphia’s Dan Vladar.
Slovakia won its first men’s hockey medal when it captured bronze in Beijing. Montreal forward Juraj Slafkovsky was that tournament’s MVP and returns here as one of Slovakia’s only NHL standouts at forward. They have some NHL talent on the back end, including Erik Cernak (Lightning), Martin Fehervary (Capitals) and Simon Nemec (Devils). But none of their three goalies have any NHL experience — and one of them, Adam Gajan, is in his second NCAA season with the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Denmark has three familiar faces at forward — Nikolaj Ehlers (Hurricanes), Oliver Bjorkstrand (Lightning) and Lars Eller (Senators) — and in net Frederik Andersen (Hurricanes), who once upon a time was a game-stealer internationally but has been off his mark with Carolina this season.
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Oliver Bjorkstrand capitalizes on the power play
Oliver Bjorkstrand nets power-play goal
Latvia has several players with North American experience but only three currently in the NHL: Forwards Teddy Blueger of Vancouver, Zemgus Girgensons of Tampa Bay and Uvis Balinskis of Florida. The Latvians do have some intriguing goaltenders in Elvis Merzlikins of the Blue Jackets and Arturs Silovs of the Penguins.
France made the 2026 Olympics after Russia was ruled ineligible. Italy made the tournament as the host nation. It would be a mini-miracle if either of them won a game in group play. But hey, maybe they’ll benefit from the smaller ice.
What was the controversy over the Olympic rink?
Well, the most prominent controversy was whether the Olympic hockey tournament would be held in a pile of slush in the middle of rubble. As of November, construction was so far behind schedule that test events had to be moved and Olympic organizers declared there was no “Plan B.” As late as Jan. 25, there was a layer of mud down the Zamboni tunnel all the way to the ice at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena.
By the time the Olympics started, the venues were still be worked on but were more than functional — including the ice, which players called soft but not unplayable.
The other controversy was over the size of the Olympic ice. A few months ago, Team Canada GM Doug Armstrong and assistant coach Peter DeBoer casually mentioned that the ice in the 2026 Olympics would be smaller than an NHL rink. The IIHF released a statement in September confirming the rink would be a 196.85-foot by 85.3-foot sheet, smaller than the NHL’s standard 200-foot by 85-foot dimensions.
Though NHL teams that play internationally have often had to adapt to different ice dimensions, the fact the Olympic sheet was smaller caught some observers off guard. Will the smaller ice surface create more physicality between the teams, necessitating Canada’s adding of Wilson to the roster? Or is he simply an anti-Tkachuk deployment mechanism?
What are the major dates to know for the tournament?
The fun starts Wednesday with round-robin action in Group B. Team USA, seeking its first gold medal since 1980, hits the ice against Latvia on Thursday, and Canada opens against Czechia.
The men’s qualification round playoff is scheduled for Feb. 17, with the quarterfinals set for Feb. 18. The semifinals are set for Feb. 20, with the losers of those games vying for the bronze medal on Feb. 21, and the winners playing for Olympic gold on Feb. 22.
Will we see another round of hockey’s greatest rivalry in these games? It’s finally time to find out.
