Marchand in unfamiliar spot on Olympic bubble

SUNRISE, Fla. – Brad Marchand is one of the most accomplished players in the NHL. He has won the Stanley Cup twice, he was a member of the Canada team that won the 4 Nations Face-Off last season, he has captained an Original Six franchise, and he has more than 1,000 NHL points.

Yet he is on the bubble when it comes to the final 25-man roster Team Canada will name Wednesday to compete in the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

It’s the first group of NHL players to represent Canada at the Olympics since 2014, the last time NHL players participated.

The tournament features 12 countries, each playing three preliminary games in its respective group. The three group winners and the best second-place team will get a bye into the quarterfinals while the other eight teams will play single-elimination games to determine the other four quarterfinalists. The gold-medal game will be played Feb. 22.

Each country is required to submit its final 25-player roster on Dec. 31.

Marchand, like the players he is competing against, has been a shoo-in for virtually every team he has played for since becoming a teenager. Not so for those clawing to make Team Canada.

“It’s been stressful,” Marchand said Tuesday, hours before a game against the Montreal Canadiens in which he was honored with a pregame ceremony for reaching 1,000 points earlier this season. “Every day you are trying to make sure you have something to prove and when you line up against a team, guys you are competing against, you try to out-perform them. You never know when people in the building are watching. Even when they are not, I am sure they are watching through other people’s eyes or online, so you can’t have a day off. It’s stressful.

“When you want to accomplish something that bad, especially because it has been so long, you know it’ll be my last opportunity, so you think about it a lot.”

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Each player will find out his fate when Team Canada management reaches out in the hours before the formal announcement from a hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota where the brass has gathered for the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship.

The 37-year-old has been thinking about this moment for so long that it has informed his every waking moment for the past two years. He underwent three surgeries before the 2024-25 season – repairing a torn tendon in his elbow and addressing sports hernia issues with surgeries to his groin and abdomen -- while still with the Boston Bruins, so he could be physically capable of giving his best when it was go-time for Team Canada.

He knows he did all he could to prove his worth, scoring 20 points (10 goals, 10 assists) in 23 games during Florida’s run to the Stanley Cup. He was traded to Florida from Boston on March 7, 2025 to give the Panthers an edge as they tried to repeat. This season, he has 45 points (23 goals, 22 assists) in 38 regular-season games.

He has 1,025 points (447 goals, 578 assists) in 1,138 regular-season games in a career that began as a fourth-liner with the Bruins in 2009-10 and has morphed into one worthy of Hall of Fame consideration when he hangs up his skates.

But has it been enough?

That’s the question rattling in the heads of elite-level Canada-born players across the League. Have they done everything they can to make Team Canada?

Macklin Celebrini of the San Jose Sharks is third in NHL scoring with 60 points (21 goals, 39 assists) in 39 games, but he is 19 and Team Canada has valued veterans. Tom Wilson of the Washington Capitals is among the premier power forwards in the NHL, but will his game transfer to international play? Seth Jarvis of the Carolina Hurricanes played for Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off but hasn’t played since Dec. 19 because of injury.

There are countless others looking at box scores each night, listening to scuttlebutt from insiders, wondering if they belong.

While it is Canada’s turn to name its roster Wednesday, the other countries will follow soon after. Each of the other teams will be revealed from Jan. 2 to Jan. 8.

But the resumes are finished now. Waiting is all that remains.

“They’ve been going flat out from the start,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said of the bubble players across the League. “There are great players that aren’t going to make that team and it may be that their year wasn’t as inspiring as years in the past. It’ll be heartbreaking because there will be great players that won’t play on [the Olympic] teams."