Canadiens’ Olympians Readying For Their Semifinals
While most of the Montreal Canadiens have returned to training in Brossard, three of the Habs’ four Olympians are getting ready for the semifinals on Friday. Alexandre Texier is the only Canadiens player who has been eliminated so far. Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Oliver Kapanen’s countries are all part of the four aces, along with Team USA.
On Friday at 10:40 AM ET, Nick Suzuki and Team Canada will be taking on Oliver Kapanen and Finland, at least on paper. The Canadiens’ rookie has been dressed for a single game by the Finnish coaching staff, but he didn’t even get to step on the ice, remaining glued to the bench the entire game.
These two teams didn’t cruise into the semifinals; Finland lost its first game of the tournament against Juraj Slafkovsky and Slovakia and was losing its quarterfinal 2-0 to Switzerland until Sebastian Aho got the comeback started with the Finns’ first goal. Miro Haskanen tied the game up with just over a minute left, and former Canadiens player Artturi Lehkonen scored the game-winning goal in overtime.
Canadiens: Laine Back On The Ice Canadiens’ Suzuki Rescues Canada, And Marner Scores Big Game Winner Canadiens: Slafkovsky and Slovakia Book Semifinal Spot With Big Win Over Germany Lehkonen leads his country in points with five, tied with his former teammate with the Colorado Avalanche , Mikko Rantanen.
Four Finns have four points and will also have to be closely monitored by the Canadiens: Aho, Eetu Luostarinen, Kaapo Kakko, and another former Hab, Joel Armia. As for Canada, they came close to disaster against Czechia, who scored a go-ahead goal with less than eight minutes to go in the game through Ondrej Palat, even though the Czechs had six players on the ice at the time.
Canadiens captain Suzuki came up big with the game-tying goal with less than four minutes to go in the game, and Mitch Marner booked Canada’s place in the semis with an overtime goal. This entire shift by Nick Suzuki 🇨🇦 was unreal. He was a one man forecheck who started the play and scored the game-tying goal.
Our Habs captain is as clutch as it gets 🔥 pic.twitter.com/aNTKtMsqmI — /r/Habs (@HabsOnReddit) February 18, 2026 The big question for Canada is whether Captain Sidney Crosby will be in the lineup. He was hurt against the Czech and had an MRI done yesterday. The nation eagerly awaits the results, but it’s a real possibility that he won’t be able to suit up.
While it would be a massive loss, the Canadians have enough debt to overcome it, but it won’t be easy. They certainly handled his loss better than their women counterpart handled Marie-Philip Poulin's injury . Speaking to the media on Thursday morning, Sam Bennet said he was scratched from the quarterfinal due to illness, but since he was at training that morning, one can assume he’ll be ready to play tomorrow.
John Cooper will also have to decide if he wants to start the game with his offence spread around or if he wants to use his “Mach-3” line from the get-go. Putting Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Macklin Celebrini together at times has been key to Canada’s success so far.
McDavid and Celebrini lead the tournament in points with 11 and 9, respectively, while MacKinnon, who is clearly dealing with some ailment, has six points. If Crosby can’t play, Suzuki will no doubt be back centring Mark Stone and Mitch Marner; his performance on Wednesday impressed Cooper, who said that when the country needed a goal, Suzuki answered.