It's Olympic hockey roster week: Let's get you prepped
Plus: The NHL's trade deadline isn't actually a deadline. Wait, what?
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Good morning to everyone except Doug Armstrong, who still hasn’t called to tell me I made Team Canada. It’s our last Red Light of 2025, which has been the most successful year in the history of the newsletter, and also the only one.
🥇🥈🥉 Olympic decision day
While you were sleeping, the Sabres won, but you knew that already because they never lose. The Jets lost, again. The Sharks beat the Ducks despite getting outshot 42-13. And the Wild made a statement by rolling the Knights in Vegas.
There was even a trade last night! Was it a big one, involving anyone you’ve heard of? Not necessarily, but we’ll take what we can get.
Meanwhile, there are much bigger roster decisions being finalized right now:
After months of speculation and projections, this is the week we’ll find out who made the various men’s Olympic teams. It sounds like the first roster to drop will be Team Canada tomorrow at noon. Team USA is going to unveil its roster on Friday morning. Other nations will make their own announcements, although all rosters have to be formally submitted before midnight tomorrow night, so leaks are likely.
There’s no shortage of prediction pieces out there, and we’re all ready with our “he was snubbed!” hot takes. But for now, let’s get you caught up on a handful of things you may need a reminder on before the names start dropping:
• The Olympic rosters are bigger than 4 Nations. By two players, specifically an extra forward and defenseman. In theory, that gives the GMs more room to surprise us, or to add an unexpected new face without subtracting an old one. We’ll see if that actually ends up happening.
• Injured players can be added. Obviously, health is going to matter with these picks, and you can’t make a final push for a spot if you’re up in the press box. But there’s no rule against, say, Canada taking Connor Bedard even though he’s not playing right now. If he can’t get back to full health before the Games, it wouldn’t be stuck with him, because …
• Injury subs are still allowed. If someone gets hurt between being named to a team and the start of the tournament, that player can still be replaced. In theory, that even means a team could get cute and name an injured player, giving itself an extra few weeks to settle on a replacement. In reality, GMs have been talking about these rosters for almost a year; they just want to get this over with. But either way, the final rosters aren’t necessarily final.
• The players who are next in line for spots will probably know that. In theory, the various GMs will spend the next day calling players with the good news that they’re on the team. But at least a few players who don’t make it will also get calls, and will be told to stay ready in case they’re needed. Those will be tough calls to get — hey, I don’t want to go to prom with you after all, but keep the night clear just in case something changes — and it will be interesting to see whether we find out about any of them.
• This can all lead to bad feelings when it goes wrong. Think about Toronto coach Pat Quinn benching Leafs goalie Curtis Joseph for Canada at the 2002 Games, or the Martin St. Louis/Steve Yzerman rift in 2014 that never really healed.
• Team USA left Tage Thompson and Cole Caufield off the 4 Nations team. Then the Americans benched Kyle Connor in the gold medal game. Then they lost by one goal, in overtime. This isn’t really related, I just like to bring it up because it’s funny.
💡 Trivia Time
Can you name every NHL team whose current leading scorer was acquired this offseason?
Hint: It’s a short list.
Answer at the bottom of this email.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Coast to Coast
🚨 Other Sean counts down the NHL’s biggest stories of 2025.
🏒 My weekend rankings feature five teams I can’t figure out, led by the Flyers. Yes, I somehow managed to get the number down to five, thanks for noticing.
🥅 The top-searched NHL cards on eBay in 2025: Wayne Gretzky, Connor Bedard, Sidney Crosby, Mario Lemieux and … Patrick Roy.
👶 At the World Juniors, Scott Wheeler reports on a Swedish winger who could be making a push to be this year’s No. 1 draft pick.
🛫 The Blue Jackets, who encountered mechanical problems with their plane, finally departed for Ottawa at 2:40 p.m. ET yesterday, with little time to spare before their delayed 7:30 p.m. ET start against the Senators. No matter, they won 4-1 anyway.
(Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
👁️ Milestone watch 👁️
We love a good milestone, don’t we folks?
I hope so, because there’s a chance we could be able to see some big ones, all within days of each other. Here are four big milestones that could be hit this week:
Steven Stamkos is three goals from 600. There are only 21 players in the 600-goal club, and only Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin are there among active players.
Patrick Kane is two goals from 500. He’ll be the 50th player to get there, and just the fifth American-born player, behind Mike Modano, Keith Tkachuk, Jeremy Roenick and Joey Mullen.
Nathan MacKinnon is one goal from 400. At the rate he’s scoring, we’ll assume he gets this one quickly, then pencil him in for 500 sometime later this season.
Anze Kopitar is two points away from 1,300. He’ll be the 38th player to get there, and maybe more impressively, just the fourth Selke winner to hit the mark.
And since I know you Team Chaos fans out there expect me to know this … I did check to see if there are nights where all four players could hit their milestones at roughly the same time.
The next time Nashville, Detroit, Colorado and Los Angeles are all in action on the same day is this Saturday. But the Wings’ game is in the afternoon, meaning we couldn’t get all four records within moments. We run into the same problem on Jan. 10, when all four teams play but the Avs are in the afternoon. The closest we can get to is Jan. 16, when all four teams play at night but we still have time zones to fight through.
Did I keep looking past that? Look, I love chaos as much as the next guy, but MacKinnon isn’t taking three weeks to score one goal.
🍿 What to Watch
Only five games tonight, as the league takes a breather in between double-digit nights.
📺 Canadiens @ Panthers
7 p.m. ET on ESPN+ / TSN2 / RDS
It feels weird to talk about possible playoff previews in the Atlantic, given how much churn we’ve seen in the division so far. Still, this could absolutely be a first-round matchup, and it’s the first time the two teams have crossed paths this season.
📺 Devils @ Maple Leafs
7 p.m. ET on ESPN+ / Sportsnet
Craig Berube’s seat is red-hot in Toronto, where they’ve already fired one assistant. What better time for a visit from Sheldon Keefe, the guy who held the Leafs job for parts of five seasons? His Devils aren’t exactly rolling right now, but they can add to the Maple Leafs’ misery, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
📺 Flyers @ Canucks
10 p.m. ET on ESPN+ / Sportsnet
Speaking of ex-coaches, the late game features Rick Tocchet’s return to Vancouver, where he won the Jack Adams in 2023 before it all fell apart last season. He’ll be bringing his Flyers, who’ve been one of the league’s best surprises so far … and might have him in the running for a rare Jack Adams repeat.
Full NHL schedule here. Try streaming games like these for free on Fubo.
Wheelin’, dealin’ Jim Rutherford. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
No Dumb Questions
We believe that in hockey, as in life, there are no dumb questions. So if you have something you’ve always wondered about the sport, ask away by emailing us at redlight@theathletic.com.
🤔 When is a deadline not a deadline?
We just had the holiday trade freeze, which is something you always hear about twice: when it starts, and then again when the freeze is lifted and trading resumes. But that made me realize that we don’t treat the real trade deadline the same way. You never hear about trading being legal again.
So my question is: When does trading resume after the deadline? I assume the answer is “when the season is over,” but isn’t that different for different teams? — Kevin S.
So here’s the thing about the trade deadline: It’s not really a deadline. You can still make trades once it passes, whether it’s been a week or a day or a few minutes. Unlike the holiday freeze we just went through, the traditional trade deadline doesn’t put a halt to trading at all.
Instead, it introduces an extremely important caveat: Any player traded after the deadline is ineligible to play for his new team that season.
In other words, the Oilers and Avs could pull off a McDavid-for-Makar blockbuster at 3:05 on deadline day, and there’d be nothing the league could do to stop them. But neither player would be eligible to play any more games, including the playoffs. That would obviously be a deal-breaker for just about every deadline deal we see, and it’s why the deadline matters. But if you want to get technical, it’s really an eligibility deadline, not a trade deadline.
And yes, we do occasionally see trades that come in after the deadline has passed. Most years have at least one, although you rarely hear about them because they don’t involve meaningful NHL players.
So, to answer your question: There is no moment when the freeze lifts after the spring trade deadline, because there’s no freeze in the first place. Teams are free to continue trading if they wish. They just can’t use any players they acquire until the following season.
- Our latest trade board is here, by the way.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Your Trivia Answer
Only one team in the NHL has a current scoring leader who wasn’t on the team last year.
Did you think of Mitch Marner in Vegas? If so, you’re wrong, because he’s one point back of Jack Eichel.
Another “close but not quite” guess would be J.J. Peterka, who’s in the mix in Utah but is looking up at a few teammates.
No, our one and only answer is in Philadelphia, where former Anaheim Duck Trevor Zegras leads the Flyers.
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