HELSINKI -- The Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 are still six months away, but Team Finland already has the event in sight.
"Let’s see how many (Dallas) Stars players will be named to their respective teams,” Stars forward Mikko Rantanen said on Monday. “Once we know the rosters, I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of Olympic talk in our room.”
Rantanen, along with Stars defensemen Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell, was named to Finland’s preliminary roster in June. Joining them were Aleksander Barkov of the Florida Panthers, Juuse Saros of the Nashville Predators and Sebastian Aho of the Carolina Hurricanes.
"Great players all six of them," Finland coach Antti Pennanen said. "Excellent goalie, top NHL defensemen and forwards who are among the best in the world."
Despite those initial six, Pennanen knows it won’t be easy to fill the remaining spots on the roster.
As such, he laid out what some of the contributing factors might be at Finland’s Olympic orientation camp on Monday. The Finnish Ice Hockey Association and the Finnish Olympic Committee gathered roughly 50 of the top Finnish players from the NHL and different leagues across Europe together in Helsinki in order to hear more about Milano Cortina, where many will be first-timers.
NHL players have not participated in the Olympics since 2014.
"The choice is always hard and difficult," Pennanen said. "There are so many good players to choose from. Today we talked about the argumentation for the choices, so the players know.”
The players also know what the expectation will be: another gold medal.
“We are proud of [Finland's] first Olympic gold ever (at the 2022 Beijing Olympics) and the team that won it," Pennanen said. "The medal motivates us.”
Still, what will the roster look like come February?
“It will be a very good and competitive team, a defense-first team," Finland's general manager Jere Lehtinen said. "We know the players we have. Remember the NHL Conference Finals last spring? There were altogether 12 Finns playing, many of them in big roles."
Finland will participate in the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 in Group B along with Slovakia, Sweden and the host Italy, which will be coached by Jukka Jalonen, who guided Finland to the gold medal in 2022.
Finland will open the tournament against Slovakia at Santagiulia Arena on Feb. 11.
"It’s too early to say much about the other teams in our group, but we know Italy will compete hard and we play against Jukka. We know the kind of team Sweden is, and Slovakia has become a good hockey country with some great players in the NHL. It’s an interesting group,” Lehtinen said.
