Familiarity from 4 Nations key behind building Olympic rosters

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2025-26 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher. In this edition, Drew Bannister, former coach of the St. Louis Blues and Sault Ste. Marie of the Ontario Hockey League, and defenseman with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Edmonton Oilers, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim and New York Rangers, talks about his experiences of building and coaching a team in international competition. Bannister was most recently an assistant coach for Canada's National Men's Team at the 2025 Spengler Cup in Davos, Switzerland.

There's certainly a lot of work from the management side of things when building a roster for the Spengler Cup. Making calls to organizations to see what players may or may not be available is a big one. It's a big commitment from those NHL and American Hockey League teams to allow their players to leave and be away from their team, miss a few games over Christmas.

I remember putting together Canada's Under-18 team (for the 2017 Ivan Hlinka Cup) when we were in Calgary for a week, building our structure, practicing with the players and then picking the team toward the end and then leaving to go to Czechia. I did the same thing with the Under-16 team (for Team Ontario at the 2015 Canada Winter Games). I had a good 6-8 months to scout some of those younger players in midget hockey going into major junior and then picking the team around December. I still had a good 4-6 weeks to implement some structure at the time and talk with players over FaceTime to go over some of the structure.

Spengler was a little bit different compared to those because the team wasn't announced until probably the day we left or even the day we arrived [in Davos] because there were a lot of moving pieces and there were injuries and illness. We had to fill some roster spots right until the end, and then players coming over from North America had to get accustomed to the time change. We only had one skate and then a morning skate before we played our first game against the U.S. Collegiate Selects. It's hard to build any real structure into the team but players at that level, they think the game very well. You give them as much as they need and they're able to adapt on the fly. I think what you get out of the games is the teaching points within the structure that you're trying to implement in a short period of time but not harping on it. Whether it's your effort level, your details, such as face-offs, your puck battles, playing on our toes, trying to win races to pucks, creating offense and being a better defensive team ... that's what you're trying to instill.

We tried to pick players that might have had familiarity with each other. Maybe they played in college together, maybe Canadian junior together or maybe they play at the NHL or (American Hockey League) level together.

I think familiarity is the key word here. When you look at Team Canada and Team USA for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, both countries came out of the 4 Nations Face-Off with good groups, so there weren't a lot of changes. I think the management groups for each country felt if they were to go back with them, they would be competing at a high level and have an opportunity to win a gold medal.

That said, players dictate that with their performance. Canada made a few changes, and I think the U.S. made a few changes, too, but I think the familiarity of the group they had at 4 Nations was important. I think that goes a long way in forming the line combinations, guys playing together. It certainly benefits the coaching staff, helping form line combinations and implementing structure with their team.

There were a few players that did have outs from other leagues that we brought in. (Canada associate general manager) Stacy Roest did a great job of going overseas and scouting these players and then scouting players in Switzerland. He was very familiar with the AHL working with the Tampa Bay Lightning for as many years as he did and then, myself, coming out of the AHL not long ago, understanding a lot of the players and what players would be available. There were a lot of phone calls and rightfully so, because this being an Olympic year and a condensed schedule for the NHL teams made it very challenging for us to find players that would be available to go over.

All things considered, it was really remarkable how quickly the players came together to become a team. The biggest thing we struggled with was scoring as a group, and typically the [Spengler Cup] is very low scoring. That could have been from a lack of chemistry, but I thought the players really bought into what we were trying to teach them in the limited time and there certainly wasn't a lack of effort to try from our players. It was just one bounce that didn't go our way in the games that could have been the difference where we find ourselves playing in the semifinals and an opportunity to play in the finals. We just weren't able to find those bounces.

I was happy to hear (goalie) James Reimer signed a one-year contract with the Ottawa Senators after the tournament. He played extremely well for us in his two games (1-1-0, 2.52 goals-against average, .906 save percentage). We won our first game, so we had a day off. If we defeated Davos, we would have had a break and then been able to run with [Reimer]. We weren't able to play him in the quarterfinal-round loss because it would have been four games in four nights because your semifinal and final are right after that. It would have been too quick a turnaround for him.

James went over I think a week or 10 days before the tournament, practiced with one of the Swiss teams over there to get up to speed. I think players such as [Reimer] understand that for them to have success, they have to go above and beyond. Getting over there early without his family for a week to get on the ice and skate, he felt was important for his success and for the team. It certainly wasn't a goalie issue for our team. It was more of just timely scoring and being able to separate in games, but I'm just really happy for James to see this opportunity in Ottawa.

Obviously, you're not around for as long as he has been if you're not an extremely professional hockey player, good person and a great teammate. And James certainly showed us all about that when we were over there.