{"id":456343,"date":"2026-02-13T02:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/456343\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T02:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T02:16:12","slug":"team-canada-never-doubted-jordan-binningtons-most-legendary-olympic-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/456343\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Canada never doubted Jordan Binnington’s most legendary Olympic quality"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN \u2014 If and when Jordan Binnington is picked for Team Canada at the 2028 World Cup of Hockey at age 34, don\u2019t bother questioning it. Don\u2019t bother caring about his regular-season numbers either, whatever they are.<\/p>\n

Because one year after making all the stories questioning Canada\u2019s goaltending look silly at 4 Nations, Binnington did exactly the same thing in his country\u2019s Olympic opener on Thursday, a 5-0 win over Czechia<\/a> that was nowhere near as easy as it looked on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n

Actually, if it wasn\u2019t for Binnington\u2019s superb performance in nets, the Canadians may well have been in trouble. For chunks of this game, including much of the first period, Czechia looked like it was on even footing with the gold-medal favorites, holding up to Canada\u2019s physicality and generating chances. Even after Macklin Celebrini scored late in the first settling Canada\u2019s nerves, the Czechs kept on coming.<\/p>\n

The turning point wasn\u2019t until early in the second, when Binnington turned aside terrific look from David Pastrnak off Tomas Hertl\u2019s rebound 3:30 into the second\u00a0\u2014 one of a handful of grade-A chances Czechia\u2019s best player couldn\u2019t convert \u2014 and Sidney Crosby\u2019s line promptly went down the other way. A few dominant Canada shifts later it was 2-0, Mitch Marner to Mark Stone, and the Czechs never looked like they were in the game again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 If and when Jordan Binnington is picked for Team Canada at the 2028 World Cup of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5120],"tags":[71,19,5,4,2602,43,350,336,534,84,5285,5284,2787,31286],"class_list":{"0":"post-456343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-blues","8":"tag-blues","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-olympics","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-columnists","15":"tag-sports-plus","16":"tag-st-louis","17":"tag-st-louis-blues","18":"tag-stlouis","19":"tag-stlouisblues","20":"tag-winter-olympics","21":"tag-winter-olympics-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116060919128989120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456343","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=456343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}