The Washington Capitals’ Logan Thompson and Tom Wilson have been making their case to be included on Team Canada’s roster for the 2026 Winter Olympics. With just three months remaining before the games in Italy begin, Canada’s general manager Doug Armstrong still has a number of significant roster decisions to make.
Six players, Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, Brayden Point, Sam Reinhart, and Cale Makar, were already named to the preliminary Olympic roster in June.
Team Canada hosted a training camp in Calgary at the end of August, to which Wilson was invited, but Thompson was not. Goaltenders Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill, and Samuel Montembeault all attended.
Binnington is heavily favored due to his performance in the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off. Wilson is hardly considered a lock to make the team, with his pugnacious playing style and likelihood of taking penalties from International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) referees making him a risky choice.
Will Thompson Be Snubbed Again by Canada?
Thompson has led all NHL goaltenders in goals against average and save percentage to begin the season, despite playing on a Capitals team that has had a slow start. In his first eight games, he’s posted a 5-3-0 record while only giving up 1.51 goals per game.
Last season, Thompson was a notable snub from Canada’s 4 Nations team, despite having a career year and finishing fourth in Vezina Trophy voting. He earned a 31-6-6 record and posted a .910 save percentage (SV%) in the Capitals’ run to the playoffs. His omission led many to believe that Team Canada assistant coaches Bruce Cassidy and Peter DeBoer, Thompson’s former coaches in Las Vegas, had purposely ignored him.
“I don’t think Cassidy and DeBoer were going to have (Thompson),” Steve Valiquette said on Sportsnet’s Real Kyper & Bourne last February before the 4 Nations Face-Off. “They didn’t have a great experience with him in Vegas. There were times they wanted him to play and he wasn’t available. I know a little bit about what happened there, and I can’t get into it,” Valiquette added. “It was never going to happen.”
Binnington played in four games at the 4 Nations Face-Off, going 3-1 and posting a .907 SV% in route to Canada’s eventual winning of the tournament. He’s had a tough start to the 2025-26 season, as have his St. Louis Blues, going 2-4-2 with a 3.21 GAA and a SV% under .900.
Related: Canada’s Projected Roster for the 2026 Winter Olympics
Matt Larkin recently wrote that Thompson is “not viewed as a good dressing room fit, particularly if his old Vegas teammate (Adin) Hill makes the team … Canada would be wise to pick Thompson, who seems to fit into the Washington Capitals’ room just fine, but I’ll be shocked if it happens.”
Thompson’s only experience in international play for Canada came at the 2022 World Championship, where he played in four games, posting a 3-1 record and .881 SV%, leading his team to a silver medal.
Would Wilson’s Game Translate to the Olympics?
Wilson leads his team with six goals and seven assists in 12 games, as well as 36 hits, which makes him the highest-scoring player among the league’s top 25 hitters. He’s been a 20-plus goal scorer four times in his career and is coming off a career-high in 2024-25, where he scored 33 goals and added 32 assists.
Wilson’s game has evolved over the years, and he has worked hard to be a multi-dimensional asset for the Capitals and not just the guy sitting in an NHL disciplinary hearing for a controversial hit. Still, the question of whether Wilson’s rough and tumble game would translate to the notoriously buttoned-down IIHF game, looms large.
“We want strong, hard [defense] that can play in front of our net and we want to be able to play and get inside,” Doug Armstrong told Sportsnet. “We want big, strong players that can play in hard areas. As Brian Burke said, ‘arrive with ill will.’ That’s the type of player that we want to have.”
Wilson was left off last season’s 4 Nation Face-Off team in a tournament that was highly-lauded for its physicality and snarl. Team USA’s Brady and Matthew Tkachuk ignited the series with a line brawl in their first match against Canada. Had he been there, Wilson would have been in his element. If Team Canada believes the U.S. will bring a similar approach to the typically-peaceful Olympics, they may find a player like Wilson useful.
“It really makes you want to put your head down and just work as hard as you can to put yourself in the conversation for making the Olympic team,” Wilson said in September. “It’s a goal for sure. I think (if) you ask most guys in that room at orientation, they want it more than anything in the world. They want to play for Team Canada at the Olympics and try and win a gold medal. When you’re a kid, it’s the Stanley Cup and an Olympic gold medal, that’s everything — that’s your biggest and wildest dreams.”
Wilson’s only experience representing his country came as a junior player, at the 2011 World U17 Hockey Challenge and at the 2011 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, where he had three points in five games in Canada’s gold medal run. He was cut from the final roster of the 2013 World Junior Championships roster and was kept from playing in 2014 by the Capitals.
