Drew Doughty & Darcy Kuemper Named to Team Canada for 2026 Winter OIympics!

Celebrating New Year’s Eve with some individual recognitions for the LA Kings. Over the summer, Adrian Kempe (Sweden) and Kevin Fiala (Switzerland) were selected as “First Six” players for their respective countries. Each of the 12 participating nations named their first six players back in June, with Kempe and Fiala both being locks to play in the tournament. More on those players HERE.

Today, two additional members of the Kings were selected to the tournament, as Drew Doughty and Darcy Kuemper were named to Team Canada's roster for the tournament in February! More on two very deserving Kings below.

Drew Doughty
Doughty is a two-time Olympian already and has two gold medals on his Hall of Fame resume, as he was a part of the Canadian squad that won in 2010 and 2014. At the 2014 tournament, Doughty led all defensemen with four goals and was tied for second among blueliners with six points. For his performance, Doughty was the only Canadian player selected to the All-Tournament team, one of two defensemen included. When you combine his success at the Olympics with gold medals at the World Cup of Hockey, the 4 Nations Faceoff and the World Junior Championships, as well as a silver at the World Championships, Doughty is one of the most accomplished players of his era on the international stage. He’ll get what could potentially be his final opportunity to play in a best-on-best international tournament in Milan in February. He’ll certainly be inclined to make the most of it.

Statistically speaking, Doughty has been back at the level he was at prior to his ankle injury last season, which left him playing at well below 100 percent down the stretch and into the playoffs. Doughty has a 60.5 percent 5-on-5 goal share through 31 games, which would be the best rate of his NHL career should it carry over throughout a larger sample size of a full season. Doughty has been on the ice for 1.61 goals against per/60 this season, second in his career only to his 2017 campaign, one of five All-Star selections he has to his name. Of the 135 defensemen in the NHL to play at least 500 minutes of 5-on-5 hockey this season, Doughty ranks tenth in goals against per/60. If you expand from 5-on-5 to all even-strength situations, Doughty is seventh. Simply put, defensively, the numbers would tell you Doughty has been as good as he’s ever been.

Offensively, while the Kings have obviously struggled as a whole, they’ve produced at their highest clip when Doughty has been on the ice. The Kings have scored 3.09 goals per/60 at even strength with Doughty on the ice, the best clip among Kings blueliners by a wide margin. He’s been over three in that area five times throughout his career, including this season. While his individual numbers are down a bit, he's still pacing towards a 35-point season over 82 games.

The numbers present a very simple position – Drew Doughty has been very good this season and is more than deserving of his place on Team Canada.

In terms of his role at the tournament, with Cale Makar on the team as the team’s clearly defined RD1, I wouldn’t expect to see Doughty playing a top-pairing role. However, he’s a big-game player and it’d be hard to think of anyone who takes more pride in representing his country than Doughty. At the 4 Nations Faceoff in February, Doughty began the tournament as the seventh defenseman and progressed as the tournament went along, finishing in a Top-4 role in the gold-medal game. Regardless of where he starts, don’t be surprised if Doughty is relied on more and more as the stakes get higher and higher. Canada is a gold-medal favorite and if it does in fact win at the tournament, it would be just another accolade in Doughty's already impressive trophy case.

Darcy Kuemper
Joining Doughty on Team Canada will be his Kings teammate, goaltender Darcy Kuemper.

Kuemper shouldn’t be considered an off the board selection, considering his Vezina nomination last season and his terrific start this season. However, he was not selected to the team for the 4 Nations Faceoff last season and wasn’t invited to Hockey Canada’s summer orientation camp either. His play has simply forced his way into the discussion and he couldn’t be more deserving of the opportunity to represent his country.

Over the last two seasons, Kuemper has posted a .920 save percentage, which is tied with Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck and Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy for the best clip in the NHL. His 2.07 goals-against average is the best mark of any netminder in the league in that span. He leads all Canadian-born goaltenders in that category. Per Natural Stat Trick, Kuemper has saved 37.8 goals above average, which calculates the difference between the goalie's Goals Against and a Goals Against with the same Shots Against and the average SV%. That ranks third best in the NHL, behind only Hellebuyck and Vasilevskiy. Kuemper’s seven shutouts in that span are one shy of the league lead. The Kings have been one of the NHL’s best defensive teams since Kuemper came on board and he’s been the “backbone” of those efforts, as Jim Hiller has repeatedly said.

That all paints a picture that is extremely clear – Statistically speaking, Darcy Kuemper has been the best Canadian goaltender in the NHL over the last two seasons and it isn’t even remotely close.

While Kuemper is just coming back off an injury, if we’re looking specifically at his international prospects, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. He’s been excellent when he’s played and as we approach January, which is an absolute gauntlet for most teams with the condensed schedule the Olympics caused, Kuemper should be approaching that time very well rested, while most others have been in the grind now for some time. Kuemper is progressing back towards a return and having returned to practice, he’s getting close to that point. Be good to get him back soon, though, from all perspectives.

On the international stage, Kuemper does have some experience, though this will be his first best-on-best tournament. Kuemper backstopped Team Canada to a gold medal at the 2021 IIHF World Championships. He played in eight of his team’s 10 games, including the gold-medal game, when he made 29 saves on 31 shots to help his team earn the gold medal in overtime against Team Finland. Kuemper also played in the World Championships in 2018, as Canada finished fourth.

In Milan, Kuemper will be in the mix with Jordan Binnington of St. Louis and Logan Thompson of Washington for minutes in net. Assume that Binnington is the likely starter, after he backstopped Canada to gold at the 4 Nations Faceoff in February. Don’t sleep on Kuemper though. If he can continue his level of play that he’s had with the Kings, perhaps the statistics might just speak for themselves come February.