{"id":444864,"date":"2026-02-04T08:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/444864\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T08:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:41:13","slug":"canada-picks-panthers-bennett-to-replace-anthony-cirelli-at-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/444864\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada picks Panthers&#8217; Bennett to replace Anthony Cirelli at Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MILAN \u2014 Sam Bennett was added Tuesday to Canada\u2019s men\u2019s hockey team at the Olympics in Milan as an injury replacement for Anthony Cirelli.<\/p>\n<p>Hockey Canada announced the change roughly 48 hours after Cirelli was injured in Tampa Bay\u2019s outdoor Stadium Series game Sunday night against Boston. Bennett also left Florida\u2019s game Monday night because of an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n<p>Bennett, 29, was one of only a handful of players from Canada&#8217;s 4 Nations Face-Off roster left off the Olympic team last year. Bennett was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP last year when the Panthers won the Stanley Cup for a second consecutive season.<\/p>\n<p>Bennett joins several other current Panthers players and staff already named to represent their countries at the Olympic Games:<\/p>\n<p>Players<\/p>\n<p>Uvis Balinskis (Latvia)Sandis Vilmanis (Latvia)Anton Lundell (Finland)Eetu Luostarinen (Finland)Niko Mikkola (Finland)Sam Reinhart (Canada)Brad Marchand (Canada)Gustav Forsling (Sweden)Matthew Tkachuk (USA)<\/p>\n<p>Staff<\/p>\n<p>Bill Zito (Assistant General Manager \u2013 USA)Teddy Richards (Equipment Manager \u2013 USA)Tuomo Ruutu (Assistant Coach \u2013 Finland)Myles Fee (Video Coach \u2013 Sweden)Jamie Kompon (Assistant Coach \u2013 Germany)<\/p>\n<p>WPTV anchors Mike Trim and Meghan McRoberts will be following the Panthers players&#8217; Olympic journey, making the trip to Italy to cover their pursuit of gold.<\/p>\n<p>The Opening Ceremony takes place Friday and will be broadcast on WPTV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 Sam Bennett was added Tuesday to Canada\u2019s men\u2019s hockey team at the Olympics in Milan as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,4,63,83,3037],"class_list":{"0":"post-444864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-panthers","14":"tag-sam-bennett","15":"tag-team-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116011470828677428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444864","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=444864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}