The stadium lights in Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena may glow in a smaller barn and on a shorter sheet, but they burn brighter as the elimination portion of the Men’s Ice Hockey tournament kicks into high gear tomorrow. Nathan MacKinnon is built for the heat—and he’ll be right at the center of any Team Canada Olympic glory.
Eyes may be wide from the Olympic scale, but that just lets MacKinnon see the game on a level few can match.
He may not be sleeping as soundly these nights, but between the whistles? He hasn’t shown a hint of it.
Managing Nerves
Ahead of Canada’s tournament opener against Czechia on Feb. 12, Nathan MacKinnon laid it bare: the Olympic weight was real. “The Olympics are huge, and I was nervous,” he said. “I can usually sleep before a game, and I could not sleep.”
Those nerves haven’t surfaced on the ice. Canada dominated the group stage—3-0, outscoring opponents 20-3, capped by a 10-2 rout of France on Feb. 15—and MacKinnon has been electric. He followed up with: “We are good at what we do, but we feel like kids at this tournament.”
That wide-eyed wonder is a superpower. Staying connected to the kid who fell in love with the game keeps the pressure from crushing you; it channels it. And make no mistake—for Team Canada, the pressure is immense as single-elimination begins tomorrow.
As Canadian captain Sidney Crosby framed it pre-tournament: “There’s expectations, there’s pressure that comes with that, but it’s about our group and trying to be the best team we can. It’s on all of us to help each other, and that’s what we’ll try to do.”
So far, all that pressure has done is polish MacKinnon into a sharper diamond. The Avalanche star arrived feeling the magnitude; now he’s shining under it, ready for the knockout rounds.
Humble in Highlights
One clear sign of MacKinnon honoring that younger self is his humility amid Canada’s dominance in the group stage.
After burying a power-play goal on a feed from Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby, he deflected credit: “Two of the best players in the world, and passing it to me was cool. I did not do a lot on that one. Anyone could put that in.”
He’s shown similar grace toward 19-year-old phenom Macklin Celebrini, the youngest NHL player ever to suit up for Canada at the Olympics (with NHL players).
When asked if he could have matched Celebrini’s poise and production on this stage, MacKinnon told Arpon Basu of The Athletic: “I was an idiot. No, no. Not good enough, not mature enough, not anything enough.”
Some might push back—after all, an 18-year-old MacKinnon torched the NHL in his rookie year and shone in the playoffs—but this stage carries heavier stakes and deeper anxiety.
I think the same 18-year-old Nathan would be pretty proud of where he is today—on the cusp of adding the one piece of hardware he’s never had the chance to win: Olympic gold.
Business Time
One of the early narratives of this tournament tried (yet again) to paint Nathan MacKinnon as a no-fun, super-serious, emotionless robot—as headlines latched onto his claim that he wasn’t in Milan for fun, but to win gold.
Emotionless? Nothing could be further from the truth.
What we’re witnessing at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games is pure, unadulterated passion, pride, and purpose.
MacKinnon is in Milan for one thing: to win a gold medal and honor the young Nathan who watched Sidney Crosby score the golden goal in 2010 and surely thought, “That’s gonna be me one day.”
That “one day” is now.
