Nick Suzuki may have helped carry Canada on one of hockey’s biggest stages, but he’s not projected to get the same call for the NHL All-Star Game.
NHL.com’s roster projection has the Montreal Canadiens captain on the outside looking in for this season’s revamped event, which will be run as a mini-tournament with five teams: Team Canada, Team USA, Team Finland, Team Sweden and Team World. The new setup gives players from outside the four featured countries a path into the weekend, and it’s the league’s latest attempt to freshen up an All-Star format that had grown stale.
For Montreal, the projection is a clean miss. No Canadiens player is listed on Team Canada’s expected roster, even though Suzuki stood out for the country at the 2026 Olympics.
He’s not the only Canadian Olympian left off the list. NHL.com’s projection also leaves out Brad Marchand, Sam Bennett, Bo Horvat, Colton Parayko, Devon Toews, Drew Doughty, Darcy Kuemper, Josh Morrissey, Mark Stone, Sam Reinhart, Seth Jarvis, Shea Theodore, Thomas Harley, Tom Wilson and Travis Sanheim.
That kind of crowding is baked into the format. With only two goalies and nine skaters projected for Team Canada, plenty of notable names are going to get squeezed out.
At the same time, the projection points to a shift in who might be featured this time around. Conor Bedard and Matthew Schaefer, both absent from the Olympics, are projected to make the cut.
That makes sense in a system where fan voting will play a major role. The projected Canadian group also includes Macklin Celebrini, Sidney Crosby, Brandon Hagel, Nathan MacKinnon, Mitch Marner, Cale Makar, Connor McDavid, Logan Thompson and Jordan Binnington.
One more name to keep an eye on is Gavin McKenna. If he delivers the kind of season people expect, he could be in the mix as well.
As for Suzuki, missing All-Star weekend would hardly compare to missing the Olympics. And with a little extra rest before the final stretch of the season, he probably wouldn’t mind it much at all.
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