The best Team Canada roster there has ever been had 11 forwards who would go to the Hockey Hall of Fame, five Hall of Famers on defence and two goaltenders who would later also be enshrined in downtown Toronto.
That was the 1976 Canada Cup team. Bobby Orr’s last hurrah. Denis Potvin not that far behind him. And the Big Three from the last Montreal dynasty, Serge Savard, Larry Robinson and Guy Lapointe on defence, all playing together.
There never has been a defence as storied or complete as that one. There never will be again.
Up front, you had your choice of Phil Esposito or Marcel Dionne, Bobby Clarke, Gil Perreault or Darryl Sittler at centre. And if you needed some help on the wing, there was Guy Lafleur, Bobby Hull and the inimitable kid, Bob Gainey, on the wing.
Eighteen Hall of Famers on one team. Back when Canadian hockey was as strong and dominant as it has ever been, even with Rogie Vachon and Gerry Cheevers in goal.
It is 38 years later and Connor McDavid, Cale Makar, Nathan McKinnon and Sidney Crosby — all of them all-time greats, all of them among the greatest players we’ve ever seen — will lead Team Canada into the 4 Nations Face-off tournament in February.
This is the prelude to the Winter Olympics of 2026, after a 12-year absence of best-on-best international hockey. This tournament matters mostly for Olympic preparation and understanding who can and who can’t play at the highest level, than it is about winning.
But we’re Canadian. So winning matters. It always does. Even in a shrunken, dressed-up, made-for-NHL tournament of this nature.
The hockey world has grown exponentially and changed since 1976. Canada had 14 sure-thing Hall of Fame players on its roster at the fascinating Olympics win in Vancouver in 2010.
But it had 15 Hall-of-Famers, or will-be Hall of Famers, on the ’98 Olympic team that came home without a medal from Nagano.
This version of Team Canada, brought to you by Bruins general manager Don Sweeney and his staff and, really, overseen by the Olympic GM Doug Armstrong, has five certain Hall of Fame players — Makar and Alex Pietrangelo on defence; Crosby, MacKinnon and McDavid up front and, of the three Canadian goaltenders selected Wednesday, they will get to Hall years from now only by paying admission.
Maybe Brad Marchand, one of the 13 Canadian forwards, will get there one day. Maybe Mitch Marner. Maybe Sam Reinhart will if he continues scoring the way he has the past two seasons. Maybe Brayden Point. Too many careers still in mid-stream. None of them sure things.
So you have no all-time greats in goal for Canada, one on defence in Makar, four up front.
Which begs the question: Is Canadian hockey in decline?
It’s hard to say that when McDavid is doing what’s never been done before at a time when it’s more challenging to produce offence. But the roster depth seems lacking in comparison to those of the past. And in this tournament, the Canadian roster isn’t as deep as Team USA. It’s not as strong in net as the Americans, or as deep in goal or defence as the team that Sweden introduced on Wednesday afternoon.
And many of the very best NHL players today — Nikita Kucherov, Kirill Kaprizov and Leon Draisaitl to name three — do not have teams to play on in this event.
The Russians have at least five goalies better than anyone that was available to Canada. Kucherov and Kaprizov are not a huge drop-off from McDavid and MacKinnon, as great as they may be.
Team Canada won gold in 2010 in overtime at Vancouver and a country erupted. Four years later, they were clinically dominant in winning Olympic gold in Sochi.
This is a new roster. Many of these players have never played together. With a new coach in Jon Cooper and, somehow, Mark Scheifele left behind for reasons unexplained and the veterans John Tavares and Steven Stamkos no longer part of the national team mix.
Cooper is a superb coach. But there’s a tangible difference between coaching in the NHL and tournament coaching. Every game in a tournament such as this one is a best-of-one. Every game matters. In a tournament less than two weeks in length, Mike Babcock barely had time to annoy any of his players. It was perfect for Babcock, who won two Olympic golds and exhausted his coaching staff in the process.
Olympic GM Armstrong won’t accept the fact that Canadian goaltending is at an all-time low. There was Carey Price in 2010 and Roberto Luongo before that, and along the way there was Patrick Roy and Martin Border and some of the best goaltenders we’ve ever seen. All of them superb in their own ways.
Now it’s Adin Hill and Jordan Binnington and, if things go real badly, there’s Sam Montembeault, the token French-Canadian on Team Canada. Hill has a Stanley Cup from Vegas, Binnington one from St. Louis and Armstrong is quick to point out that seven of the past 10 goaltenders to win the Cup happened to be Canadian.
That’s the optimistic view. This is a sound Team Canada with players such as Travis Konecny, Mark Stone and Anthony Cirelli, a lineup not deep in stars but deep in solid. Everywhere but in goal.
Team Canada shouldn’t be favoured in the tournament except for one factor: They’re Canadian.
That matters the way it matters with Finnish players, who almost always punch above their weight.
All of that will make this tournament fun to watch and unpredictable. Marner on Canada. William Nylander on Sweden. Auston Matthews leading Team USA. A Maple Leafs smorgasbord of sorts.
Even if the Canadian team looks nothing like that Canada Cup team of 1976. Those teams come along every century or so.
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4 NATIONS FACE-OFF ROSTERS
CANADA
Forwards
Sam Bennett, Florida Panthers
Anthony Cirelli, Tampa Bay Lightning
Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins
Brandon Hagel, Tampa Bay Lightning
Seth Jarvis, Carolina Hurricanes
Travis Konecny, Philadelphia Flyers
Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
Brad Marchand, Boston Bruins
Mitch Marner, Toronto Maple Leafs
Connor McDavid, Edmonton Oilers
Brayden Point, Tampa Bay Lightning
Sam Reinhart, Florida Panthers
Mark Stone, Vegas Golden Knights
Defencemen
Cale Makar, Colorado Avalanche
Josh Morrissey, Winnipeg Jets
Colton Parayko, St. Louis Blues
Alex Pietrangelo, Vegas Golden Knights
Travis Sanheim, Philadelphia Flyers
Shea Theodore, Vegas Golden Knights
Devon Toews, Colorado Avalanche
Goalies
Jordan Binnington, St. Louis Blues
Adin Hill, Vegas Golden Knights
Sam Montembeault, Montreal Canadiens
UNITED STATES
Forwards
Matt Boldy, Minnesota Wild
Kyle Connor, Winnipeg Jets
Jack Eichel, Vegas Golden Knights
Jake Guentzel, Tampa Bay Lightning
Jack Hughes, New Jersey Devils
Chris Kreider, New York Rangers
Dylan Larkin, Detroit Red Wings
Auston Matthews, Toronto Maple Leafs
J.T. Miller, Vancouver Canucks
Brock Nelson, New York Islanders
Brady Tkachuk, Ottawa Senators
Matthew Tkachuk, Florida Panthers
Vincent Trocheck, New York Rangers
Defencemen
Brock Faber, Minnesota Wild
Adam Fox, New York Rangers
Noah Hanifin, Vegas Golden Knights
Quinn Hughes, Vancouver Canucks
Charlie McAvoy, Boston Bruins
Jaccob Slavin, Carolina Hurricanes
Zach Werenski, Columbus Blue Jackets
Goalies
Connor Hellebuyck, Winnipeg Jets
Jake Oettinger, Dallas Stars
Jeremy Swayman, Boston Bruins
FINLAND
FORWARDS
Sebastian Aho, Carolina Hurricanes
Joel Armia, Montreal Canadiens
Aleksander Barkov, Florida Panthers
Mikael Granlund, San Jose Sharks
Erik Haula, New Jersey Devils
Roope Hintz, Dallas Stars
Kaapo Kakko, New York Rangers
Patrik Laine, Montreal Canadiens
Artturi Lehkonen, Colorado Avalanche
Anton Lundell, Florida Panthers
Eetu Luostarinen, Florida Panthers
Mikko Rantanen, Colorado Avalanche
Teuvo Teravainen, Chicago Blackhawks
DEFENCEMEN
Jani Hakanpaa, Toronto Maple Leafs
Miro Heiskanen, Dallas Stars
Esa Lindell, Dallas Stars
Olli Maatta, Utah Hockey Club
Niko Mikkola, Florida Panthers
Rasmus Ristolainen, Philadelphia Flyers
Juuso Valimaki, Utah Hockey Club
GOALIES
Kevin Lankinen, Vancouver Canucks
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Buffalo Sabres
Juuse Saros, Nashville Predators
SWEDEN
Forwards
Viktor Arvidsson, Edmonton Oilers
Jesper Bratt, New Jersey Devils
Leo Carlsson, Anaheim Ducks
Joel Eriksson Ek, Minnesota Wild
Filip Forsberg, Nashville Predators
William Karlsson, Vegas Golden Knights
Adrian Kempe, Los Angeles Kings
Elias Lindholm, Boston Bruins
William Nylander, Toronto Maple Leafs
Gustav Nyqvist, Nashville Predators
Elias Pettersson, Vancouver Canucks
Lucas Raymond, Detroit Red Wings
Mika Zibanejad, New York Rangers
DefenCemen
Rasmus Andersson, Calgary Flames
Jonas Brodin, Minnesota Wild
Rasmus Dahlin, Buffalo Sabres
Mattias Ekholm, Edmonton Oilers
Gustav Forsling, Florida Panthers
Victor Hedman, Tampa Bay Lightning
Erik Karlsson, Pittsburgh Penguins
Goalies
Filip Gustavsson, Minnesota Wild
Jacob Markstrom, New Jersey Devils
Linus Ullmark, Ottawa Senators