The men’s tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics has delivered clean moments, solid round-robin shifts, respectable elimination games. By Olympic standards? Perfectly fine.
The hockey’s been good. Not electric. Not chaotic. Not “did-you-see-that?” good.
Just… good.
But nobody’s rearranging their day for it. Nobody’s arguing about it at work. It feels like we’re all waiting. Waiting for the real heavyweights to collide. Waiting for a game that actually bends the temperature in the building. The true superpowers start circling each other this week. That’s when it should get meaner. Faster. Worth the hype.
And yet there’s still something missing. We all know it. This isn’t best-on-best. Not really.
You can sell it that way. The league can push it that way. The broadcast can say “all the best players in the world” with a straight face. They’d only be half right. Because the perennial superpower — the sport’s longtime villain, chaos agent, and talent factory — isn’t here.
No Russian roster. No Russian chaos. No Russian edge.
And I’m not getting into geopolitics. This isn’t about policy. It’s about hockey. If you’re calling this the pinnacle, you have to acknowledge what’s absent. We’re being denied one last world-stage collision between Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. That’s not nostalgia. That’s unfinished business.
We’re missing the possibility of Nikita Kucherov threading a no-look pass to Kirill Kaprizov for something that melts social media in real time. No Artemi Panarin slipping a tape-to-tape feed to Evgeni Malkin for that vintage one-timer from the left circle.
And here’s the part nobody wants to admit. The goaltending would have been absurd.
Igor Shesterkin.
Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Ilya Sorokin.
That’s not depth. That’s overkill.
We haven’t even touched the blue line. Mikhail Sergachev moving pucks with authority. Vladislav Gavrikov playing shutdown minutes. Nikita Zadorov bringing the snarl.
Imagine a Russia–Canada semifinal. Or USA–Russia with a gold medal berth on the line. That’s not just hockey. That’s global theater. Finland or Sweden could still crash the party. They always can. That’s the beauty of international play. But let’s be honest. The shadow matchup everyone subconsciously expected was USA vs. Russia. Skill versus skill. Speed versus spite.
Love them or hate them, that roster would have carried personality, tension, and storyline gravity. The round robin wouldn’t have felt like a pregame show. Every shift would’ve hummed.
Instead, this tournament feels like a slow walk toward something that never quite materializes.
The hockey is good. But it isn’t complete.
And if you don’t feel the absence of Ovi on this stage, you’re not paying attention.