Team Canada revealed the rest of the coaching staff that would share the bench with Jon Cooper for the 2026 Winter Olympics, and Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar did not make the cut, despite being one of the best Canadian minds in the NHL.
Team Canada reveals the assistant coaches that will be joining Jon Cooper’s staff for the 2026 Winter Olympic Games! 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/afS0SITR3G
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) July 21, 2025
The four coaches who got the nod instead of Bednar are Bruce Cassidy (head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights), Pete DeBoer (former head coach of the Dallas Stars), Rick Tocchet (head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers) and Misha Donskov (former assistant coach of the Dallas Stars). With Cooper leading the charge, it’s a tough group to crack, but safe to say that the 2022 Stanley Cup Champion was snubbed at the same time.
Paul Maurice, head coach of the back-to-back defending champion Florida Panthers, was also snubbed from the list.
Having a coach who was just fired in DeBoer and a guy who’s not even a head coach in Donskov over two coaches who have won three of the last four Stanley Cups is an interesting decision to say the least, but the higher-ups for Team Canada figured it was the right decision.
For Bednar, he is the second-longest tenured head coach in the NHL, only behind Cooper. The Avalanche hired him just weeks before training camp in 2016 after Patrick Roy resigned at an odd time. He couldn’t do much with the cards he was handed that year, as the club put up just 48 points in the entire season, but every year since then has seen the burgundy and blue in the playoffs, highlighted by a championship in 2022.
He was not included on the coaching staff for the 4 Nations Face-Off back in February, and the story repeated itself this week.
While Bednar has had a handful of difficult playoff series, like the 2023 loss to Seattle and this year’s loss to Dallas, he has still gotten this team to the Conference Semifinals in five of the last seven seasons, a feat that has only been accomplished by the Stars and the Carolina Hurricanes in that same span.
On the bright side, the decision will allow Bednar to have a good reset before taking on the most challenging portion of the NHL season after the extended mid-season break for the Olympics. However, he won’t get the chance to be behind the bench with Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, who were both announced as some of the first players on the roster back in June.
