Medal madness: Stars collect six medals in successful trip to 2026 Olympics

The Stars collected six medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, including a gold medal for Jake Oettinger and Team USA.

Oettinger was the backup goalie as the United States beat Canada in overtime on Sunday, 2-1, in the championship game. Thomas Harley received a silver medal for his work with Canada, while Mikko Rantanen, Esa Lindell, Roope Hintz and Miro Heiskanen won bronze with Finland. While Rantanen and Radek Faksa (Czechia) missed games with injuries, and we won’t have an update on either until they return to Texas, the Olympics seemed a huge success for Stars players.

“It’s great for every player who goes over there,” said Stars coach Glen Gulutzan. “It’s experience at the highest level, and that should help you get better.”

Harley was fourth on Team Canada in time on ice at 118:14 for the tournament and had a goal and three assists. He should now come back to the Stars with a new dose of confidence and look to help lead the team into the playoffs.

“To kind of prove to yourself and the world you can play at that level is big, and then you just go back to the NHL, and it’s just a little bit slower for you,” Harley told reporters in Italy.

Harley will be joined on defense in Dallas by Heiskanen and Lindell. Those two played more minutes than any other players at the Olympics, as they helped Finland earn bronze.

Both were partners in Dallas and are expected to return to that role, so the Olympic experience should help.

Rantanen suffered a lower body injury against Canada and his update will be key before the team returns to NHL play on Wednesday against Seattle. The Stars have 25 games remaining, and the schedule will be tight, but Gulutzan said he hopes a good practice plan will be helpful in getting the team back to the style of play that led to a six-game winning streak before the break.

“The way we were reloading, our aggressiveness, our physicality was at a different level for the last five games. It was better in every metric we had,” Gulutzan said. “We tidied up a lot of areas.”

Stars forward Matt Duchene said the team is working hard during the mini training camp to find the style of play that was successful.

“I think we know why we had that success,” Duchene said. “It’s just a mentality with this group. When we have the right mentality, we are successful. The work ethic is always there. For us, it’s just a mindset of doing the things that make us tough to play against.”

Duchene said that the team is doing much better at the details of the game. Gulutzan has preached being “one percent better” in every area, and they were living that out during the winning streak.

“When he talks about the one percent, I think we’re starting to get an idea of what that really means,” Duchene said. “We see what it looks like with it, and we see what it looks like without it. It’s just little habits that make the rest of the game easier. I think we had good balance because of that, and we won some games because of it.”

Getting back on the same page will be a small challenge, but the players seem excited to get that chance. The Canada-USA battle was intense and it did spark some deep competition.

Connor Hellebuyck led Team USA to the gold medal win with 41 saves, and Jack Hughes won the game in overtime. That was significant for an American team that last won gold in 1980, and it also creates hunger for all players to chase a different kind of glory.

"I can't even believe this," Hughes told reporters in Italy. "I mean, it's such an unbelievable game, USA-Canada. Such a good game. There's so many great players. We're a great team. That's exactly how we wanted it to go. We're underdogs to Canada, [but we] beat them. It could have gone either way."

For the Finnish Stars, they had great effort in a 6-2 win over Slovakia to claim bronze after losing a narrow 3-2 semifinal matchup against Canada.

“It’s the Olympic games and you have a chance to win a medal, so it’s huge and it was easy to get fired up,” Heiskanen said.

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.