{"id":467833,"date":"2026-02-23T06:47:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/467833\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T06:47:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T06:47:18","slug":"connor-mcdavid-shares-his-honest-assessment-of-team-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/467833\/","title":{"rendered":"Connor McDavid shares his honest assessment of Team USA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Connor McDavid knows it is not going to be a walk in the park for Canada in the gold-medal match against Team USA.<\/p>\n<p>Canada and the United States are the last two teams standing in the men\u2019s hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics, and they are on a collision course in a massive showdown for the gold on Sunday at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan.<\/p>\n<p>McDavid praised Team USA\u2019s talent ahead of the big game but remained confident in Canada, which is also loaded with elite players from top to bottom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey look very strong,\u201d the three-time Hart Memorial Trophy winner said, via <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Michael_Traikos\/status\/2025208325416140844\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Michael Traikos of The Hockey News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey have a very good back end, they\u2019ve got a great goaltender, they\u2019re strong up front. It\u2019s Team USA. They\u2019ve got great players everywhere, and so do we. It\u2019s going to be a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both Canada and the United States parade many of the best players in the NHL today, including none other than McDavid, who is widely regarded as the top hockey talent in the world. <\/p>\n<p>Alongside the Edmonton Oilers star are the likes of Macklin Celebrini,\u00a0 Nathan MacKinnon, Mitch Marner and Mark Stone.<\/p>\n<p>Team USA, on the other hand, features a lineup including Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel and brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, but their defense could be the key to topping the Canadians. <\/p>\n<p>Connor Hellebuyck leads all goalies in the 2026 Olympics with a 1.23 goals-against average, while the Americans\u2019 blue line has Quinn Hughes, Charlie McAvoy, Jaccob Slavin and Zach Werenski, among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Connor McDavid knows it is not going to be a walk in the park for Canada in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5125],"tags":[3189,155,198,146,5300,5,4,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-467833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-connor-mcdavid","10":"tag-edmonton","11":"tag-edmonton-oilers","12":"tag-edmontonoilers","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-oilers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116118607952700310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467833","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=467833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}