General manager Doug Armstrong and Team Canada’s brass are set to begin three days of meetings Sunday in order to lock in a portion of the team’s Olympic roster.

The depth of Canadian players having strong starts to this season, though, is not making things easy for the group.

Five of the top eight scorers in the NHL this season are Canadian and three of them – Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Mark Scheifele were not a part of the 4 Nations Face-Off roster. The other two, Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid, have already been named to the Olympic team.

Nine players have scored 16 or more goals this season and seven of them are Canadian.Five of those sevenwere not on the 4 Nations team in Morgan Geekie, Bedard, Wyatt Johnston, Tom Wilson and Bo Horvat.

Geekie sits behind only MacKinnon with 20 goals and has 28 points in 28 games with the Boston Bruins this season, following up on an impressive 2024-25 campaign that saw him post 33 goals and 57 points in 77 games in his first season as a Bruin. The 27-year-old Strathclair,Man., native also has 52 hits, which is second only to Wilson among players with at least 13 goals this season.

When asked about Bedard’s Olympic case by TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun in an interview for The Athletic, Armstrong brought up Geekie.

“Yeah, no, and you look at Morgan Geekie, who is near the top of goal scoring in the league – that’s why you wait as long as possible,” Armstrong said. “Players are going to make this very difficult. I think what we’re finding is our forward group has a lot of nuance to it, a lot of different options, and less in the other positions. It’s going to be a difficult team to make as a forward, there’s no question.”

Five of Canada’s first six players named to the roster in June were forwards in MacKinnon, McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Sam Reinhart and Brayden Point. Cale Makar is the lone defenceman to officially lock in his spot on the roster so far.

With roster submissions due at the end of this month, Armstong and the team’s front office brass are hoping to lock in 70 per cent of the team’s roster as they meet in Florida.

“We’re hoping to walk out of this meeting with a large portion of the group going from pencil to pen,” Armstrong said. “The players have had two months to show their wares and now after this, we’re really going to home in on the final selection process, take this to the coaches, and find out where they believe the holes are in our group for things that they may need — whether that’s penalty killers, power-play people, faceoffs — and sort of use the last month to confirm that our pen players stay in pen, which we hope they will. We think they will. That’s been the history of these selection processes.

“And then round out the rest. And make sure if we have injuries from that group, we have a list that we’re comfortable with to continue to monitor for replacements.”

Armstrong is well aware that the team’s choices will be under scrutiny no matter who makes him the final roster and only a gold medal will quiet the critics.

“There’s no question, just because of the vast majority of players (to pick from), the roster should be scrutinized and picked apart, because that shows the passion in our country,” Armstrong said. “We’re not naive. If you win, you picked the right roster. If you lose, you haven’t picked the right roster.”

Team Canada will open its 2026 Olympic tournaments on Feb. 12 against Czechia in Milan. Games against Switzerland and France will follow with the winner of round-robin group and the top second-place team advancing straight into thequarter-finals.