Connor Bedard left off Canada’s 2026 Olympic Roster

Connor Bedard is not going to Italy, as of now.

For a player who has carried the weight of “generational talent” since his early teens, being left off the initial 25-man roster feels like an insane realization. However, according to GM Doug Armstrong, this wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t strictly a result of a shoulder injury. It was a philosophical choice about how to build a winning team.

Why Connor Bedard was left off the roster

If you look purely at the box score, the decision is baffling. Before a shoulder injury sidelined him, Connor Bedard was tearing through the NHL with the kind of production that franchises dream of. Through 31 games, the Chicago Blackhawks center posted 19 goals and 25 assists. That’s 44 points—a 100-plus point pace—on a team where he is the primary and often sole focus of opposing defenses.

The narrative immediately shifted to his health. Was the shoulder injury the deciding factor? Armstrong shut that theory down quickly. “Not a lot,” Armstrong said regarding the injury’s impact on the snub. “His name was right there until the last second.”

This confirms that Bedard wasn’t a medical cut; he was a hockey cut. The management team looked at one of the most productive scorers in the league and decided they could win without him.

Role players over pure scoring skill

The exclusion of Connor Bedard signals a distinct strategy from Hockey Canada: reliable structure over raw offensive ceiling. Armstrong and his staff aren’t trying to win an All-Star game; they are trying to win a gold medal in a short tournament where defensive lapses are fatal.

This philosophy opened the door for players like Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel. Are they as gifted as Bedard offensively? No. But they are elite penalty killers and defensive specialists who thrive in the grinding moments of a game. Armstrong emphasized penalty killing as a major factor in the final selections, suggesting that Bedard’s elite offensive toolkit didn’t outweigh the need for 200-foot reliability in the eyes of the brass.