Syracuse, N.Y. — The flag that hangs by the Harley family’s pool in Jamesville displays the Canadian maple leaf in the center and the American stars and stripes on the sides.
“Which is kind of what we are,” Stephanie Harley said. “Like, we’re both right. We appreciate both countries.”
Dr. Brian Harley, from Alberta, and Stephanie, from British Columbia, had their first two children in Edmonton before moving to Jamesville in 2000 when Brian received a fellowship at Upstate. They had two more children in Jamesville, and one of them, Thomas Harley, is a defenseman for the Canadian men’s hockey team considered the favorite for gold at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics.
Top-seeded Canada begins knockout play at 10:40 a.m. on Wednesday against either Czechia or Denmark. The gold medal game is set for Sunday at 8:10 a.m. on NBC and Peacock.
Harley, 24, has developed into one of the best young defensemen in the NHL for the Dallas Stars and this Canadian call-up represents his biggest international stage yet. He represented the U.S. as a 13 and 14-year old, but the Americans didn’t invite him back, and once Team Canada learned of his dual citizenship, they quickly added him to their squad and he never switched back.
“Honestly, I never thought I’d make it to this level,” Harley told syracuse.com. “But growing up in the states, raised as a Canadian, was always a little bit of inner turmoil as far as which way I would play if the opportunity ever came.”
Harley moved to Ontario for junior hockey after his freshman year at Jamesville-DeWitt, but he still comes back to Syracuse every summer to train and spend time with family and friends. Despite his lingering connection to the area and burgeoning success at the highest level of the sport, he hasn’t had as much success in flipping friends over to his side of the greatest current rivalry in international hockey.
“If the game could end 10-9 and Thomas had nine goals,” former Syracuse Nationals teammate Jimmy Rayhill said. “I’d be OK with that.”
“It’s pretty similar reactions across the board,” Harley said. “We hope you do well, but if you play the U.S., we hope you lose.”
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Jamesville native Thomas Harley seeks gold with Team Canada
With the return of NHL players to Olympic play for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Games, the gold medal is expected to be decided by yet another rematch between the U.S. and Canada. Harley filled in for Team Canada on last-minute notice the last time the two teams squared off, at the 4 Nations Faceoff last February.
Because of how late Harley was added to Canada’s lineup for the 4 Nations final, Brian and Stephanie curled up on their couch with a plate of nachos to watch their son deliver an assist and help Canada to the title.
This time, they’re prepared.
Stephanie has a “stash” of red clothes – red sweaters, red vests, red shoes – to blend in with the sea of red in the crowd in Milan. They’ll watch Harley in person this time, alongside older brother Stuart and Grandma Wendy, an Edmonton native who “bleeds maple leaf red,” Brian said.
It’ll be yet another culmination of 20 years of hockey memories.
“It’s just kind of like all these little wow moments,” Stephanie said. “And this is gonna be like, wow moments squared.”
Brian played goalie at the University of Alberta and brought up all four of his kids as hockey players with the Syracuse Nationals, where he still coaches. Harley’s older sister Emilie played at Robert Morris and professionally for two years, but even she admitted Harley was the most hockey-mad of all the siblings.
Harley’s jersey number for Team Canada, 20, is the same as Brian’s with the University of Alberta.
Harley learned to skate at the Toyota Coliseum at the Fairgrounds and grew up playing street hockey with his siblings. They all took turns wearing the Team Canada goalie pads the family owned.
Thomas Harley, wearing Team Canada goalie pads, surrounded by, from left, younger brother Greg Harley, older sister Emilie Harley, older brother Stuart Harley and Gavin Gray.Stephanie Harley
He had NHL dreams as soon as he could hold a hockey stick, Emilie said.
“I remember when he was little, I mean, I always thought he was just like my dorky little brother,” Emilie said. “But he would say that he wanted to play in the NHL and he would play the NHL video game all the time and like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ He’s like, ‘I want to be in the NHL.’
And we were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, Tommy, but like, what do you really want to do?’ And he always stuck to his guns on that.”
Though Harley’s physical abilities didn’t truly take off until he hit his growth spurt around 15, his hockey instincts set him apart from other players who were more physically developed.
He anticipated what would come next. Often, he didn’t try to make the plays that everyone else made — he’d try a different, more complex play. He was always a factor in the game.
Brian, who developed an eye for the subtle differences in youth hockey players through decades of coaching the best in Central New York, saw that Harley had an advanced ability to read the game.
“Even when he was a mite, he would be out there and you think this kid’s gonna fall over,” Stephanie said. “Like, there’s no way he’s gonna get there. But his hockey IQ, even at an early age before he could skate really well, was developed and he would be in the right spot.”
Thomas Harley began his hockey career skating with the Syracuse Nationals.Stephanie Harley
The U.S. and Canada run their hockey development systems differently, and Harley was not eligible to try out for any of Canada’s provincial camps because he did not live in the country. He made the U.S. camps for New York state at age 13 and 14, and made the national team camp the summer before he left home to play junior hockey in Ontario.
That camp featured 12 teams – about 240 total players – to be whittled down to 40 for the U.S. national development program’s camp the following summer. Harley wasn’t as physically mature as many others at the camp and he didn’t impress, Brian said.
But because of his play in the next hockey season with the Vaughan Kings of the GTHL, widely considered to be the top minor midget hockey league in the world, Harley was forecasted to be one of the top defensemen taken in the upcoming OHL draft. He was constantly playing in front of both Canadian and American scouts, but he didn’t receive an invite to the U.S.’s upcoming top-40 camp.
“We were expecting an invite to the national development top-40 camp,” Brian said. “And Tommy was kind of excited about it. We always raised him as Canadian. Everybody in the family cheered for Canada at the Olympics, but he also had been in the U.S. hockey development system at that point and kind of was thinking that’s what he’d really like to do.”
A week after the U.S. didn’t invite Harley to its camp, Brian got a frantic call from Hockey Canada asking for a copy of Harley’s passport. They wanted to invite him to their national team camp in Calgary.
“They were like, ‘He’s Canadian?’” Brian said.
Harley went to Calgary that summer for the Canadian camp instead of the U.S. camp and impressed. Over the course of that season with Vaughan, his skating had taken off and he had grown three inches and added 25 pounds. The U.S. invited him to another tryout, but he wouldn’t switch back.
“That made the decision very easy,” Harley said of the snub by the U.S. “After that, it was Canada all the way.”
“For right or for wrong, USA Hockey just started making decisions on 14-year-olds instead of 15-year-olds,” Brian said. “…That would have changed everything because then he would have been wearing the stars and stripes.”
Though he’s only been a full-time NHLer for two and a half seasons and a Team Canada senior team player for a handful of games, Harley’s old teammates from Syracuse could always see this coming.
Over the past three seasons, he leads all NHL defensemen with six regular season overtime goals – including one to lead the Stars past the Jets just days before he left for Milan. His most famous game-winner clinched a playoff series for the Stars in last year’s Western Conference second round.
Dallas Stars’ Thomas Harley celebrates after scoring in overtime in Game 6 of a second-round NHL hockey playoff series against the Winnipeg Jets in Dallas, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)AP
He did the same with the Syracuse Nationals. While many stars are loud, Harley always had a stoic, unwavering confidence, a quiet and thoughtful approach to the game and an undeniable hunger for the puck.
“I think especially at a young age, you see this huge disparity between kids,” Rayhill said. “Some are just like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to be the one to lose this.’ And he was never that way. He was always like, ‘I’m gonna win this.’”
Despite a slower than usual start to this season with the Stars, Harley’s pressure-packed heroics earned him a spot on Team Canada. In his first Olympic appearance wearing the maple leaf on Thursday, he nabbed two assists against Czechia. He scored his first senior team goal on Friday against Switzerland.
Thomas Harley has a goal and three assists across five senior team appearances for Team Canada.Getty Images
Harley still comes back to Jamesville every summer and stays in his old room at his parents’ house. He barbecues steaks, swims in the pool, plays board games with his family and hangs out with his friends. He’s recently taken to golfing and likes to go to Drumlins, Tecumseh and occasionally Green Lakes.
“It’s where I’m comfortable with, it’s where I’ve trained and skated my entire life, so I have a good system there,” Harley said about why he still comes back to Central New York. “And it’s a lot cooler than Texas in the summers.”
After three weeks off, he starts training again. On Saturdays, Brian takes him out to the rink to work on specific things the two have noticed throughout the year. They still talk on the phone after every game.
If the U.S. and Canada play for the gold medal on Sunday, Harley will yet again face the intersection of his two nationalities and his own hockey upbringing. Syracuse friends may still be pulling for Team USA, but if the game gets tense and Harley gets the puck, they know what he wants to do with it.
“When it came down to it and you wanted a kid out there that really could probably perform and make it happen, he’s the kid you put out there,” Stephanie said. “And he did it when he was 8.”