{"id":387657,"date":"2026-01-03T02:04:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T02:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/387657\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T02:04:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T02:04:22","slug":"matheson-olympic-snub-a-sore-spot-for-oilers-blueliner-mattias-ekholm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/387657\/","title":{"rendered":"Matheson: Olympic snub a sore spot for Oilers blueliner Mattias Ekholm"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Edmonton Oilers<\/a>\u2019 defenceman Mattias Ekholm got the phone call to tell him he wasn\u2019t on Sweden\u2019s Olympic team, it was a pretty short conversation.<\/p>\n

There likely wasn\u2019t a \u201cthanks for letting me know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kind of like when you get a call and are let go from a company.<\/p>\n

Just a massive let-down. There\u2019s hurt, then there\u2019s anger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was probably my last shot at it. It\u2019s right up there with the Stanley Cup, the Olympics. Huge disappointment, not much I can do about it now,\u201d said Ekholm, who had a very legitimate shot at being the seventh or eighth D on what is a strong Swedish back-end but they took ex Oiler Philip Broberg, who has had a strong season in St. Louis and Leafs\u2019 Oliver Ekman-Larsson, instead.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s likely on stand-by in case anybody gets hurt between now and when the NHL schedule stops for the Olympic break Feb. 5. But for now, he was told to stand down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said I had just missed (out). So I guess I\u2019m on that (wait) list.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other Swedish defencemen considered but losing out were Boston\u2019s Hampus Lindholm and Detroit\u2019s young Simon Edvinsson. The top six were Victor Hedman, Rasmus Dahlin and Gustav on the left side, Erik Karlsson, Jonas Brodin and Rasmus Andersson on the right.<\/p>\n

Hedman, who could be team captain, is currently out after elbow surgery in Tampa, but they hope he\u2019s ready for Milan. \u201cThere are two ways of going with this. Firstly, someone from the existing squad can take his place, or we can replace him from outside. In that case, there are a few names,\u201d said coach Sam Hallam in conversation with Swedish media.<\/p>\n

The Swedish-Ekholm decision Friday was maybe in the cards as far back as last February at the 4 Nations Face-off, when the flu-ridden Ekholm somehow fell out of favour with Hallam. The coach was going to sit him for the last tournament game, but dressed Ekholm as an extra D with minimal minutes when some forwards got sick and didn\u2019t play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said the same thing to the Swedish papers \u2026 that I hope that wasn\u2019t a part of it,\u201d said Ekholm. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was anywhere near as big a deal as the media brought it out to be. It\u2019s more a question for him (Hallam), he\u2019s the one picking the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hallam might be the only coach in history who didn\u2019t fully appreciate what Ekholm brings to the table, and while Evan Bouchard\u2019s Oiler partner struggled in the early going of the season like pretty much every D-man, his game over the last month or so has picked up considerably. But, again, it was hard not to see the hurt in the Ekholm words when talking to the media here after Oilers\u2019 practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019ve done everything I can on the ice, especially in the last month, month and a half. I\u2019ve really shown what I can do out there, being an effective hockey player who deserves to be on that (Swedish) team. But, obviously, he didn\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ekholm can use the three-week rest to recharge as an Oiler at his age, but that\u2019s from the outside looking in. This was his big chance to be in the Olympics for the first time, and his nose is pressed up against the glass. He\u2019s a competitor, and he badly wanted to be part of the 25-man Swedish roster.<\/p>\n

He struggled at the 4Nations because he was sick. He was that way before the event, and afterwards, his voice a whisper, trying not to cough during interviews here.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was pretty obvious, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d said the Oiler defenceman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some virus going on. It lasted for months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trying to get your breath when your lungs are clogged with cold is hard, especially with the pace of the 4 Nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah (speed), that\u2019s amplified,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u2019s no excuse at that time of year (February). Everybody has something going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so only two Oilers are on Olympic rosters right now\u2014Connor McDavid<\/a> for Canada and Leon Draisaitl for Germany. Bouchard is also on a wait list if anybody goes down on the Canadian blueline.<\/p>\n

This \u2018n that: Draisaitl will have the C for the German team in Italy, and there\u2019s a chance that Oilers farmhand centre Josh Samanski, in his first North American pro year in Bakersfield and doing well, might also be on the Olympic roster as he\u2019s played for Germany at the world championship. They haven\u2019t announced their roster yet, and neither has Czechia, where David Tomasek, now playing back in Sweden for Farjestads, has an outside chance\u2026 Ex-Oilers winger Victor Arvidsson, who was at the 4 Nations and is now with Boston, didn\u2019t make the Swedish forward list for Milan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Edmonton Oilers\u2019 defenceman Mattias Ekholm got the phone call to tell him he wasn\u2019t on Sweden\u2019s Olympic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[4679,154,155,5862,21426,599,198,146,5300,642,425,6525,5,3647,370,868,4,24,782,15234,1298,3327,4011,3263,598,534,1498,18],"class_list":["post-387657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton-oilers","tag-alex-iafallo","tag-boston","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-david-bloom","tag-david-tomasek","tag-detroit","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-edmontonoilers","tag-erik-karlsson","tag-evan-bouchard","tag-hampus-lindholm","tag-hockey","tag-jonas-brodin","tag-leon-draisaitl","tag-mattias-ekholm","tag-nhl","tag-oilers","tag-oliver-ekman-larsson","tag-olympic-team","tag-philip-broberg","tag-rasmus-andersson","tag-rasmus-dahlin","tag-sam-hallam","tag-simon-edvinsson","tag-st-louis","tag-victor-hedman","tag-winnipeg-jets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115828717418466875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}