The Winter Olympics are finally upon us, with two weeks of intense competition ahead on the ice and the slopes of Milan & Cortina in Italy. But one of the biggest stories leading up to the games is the much-anticipated return of NHLers to hockey, after a 12-year hiatus from the best-on-best competition.

The NHL’s participation at the Games is still a relatively new concept, with the practice only starting at the 1998 Games in Nagano. This will mark the sixth time NHL players will play in the men’s tournament, and the Vancouver Canucks will be sending a relatively large contingent of players to Italy. Seven Canucks (from both the NHL and AHL) representing five different countries will be taking part, including Sweden’s Elias Pettersson, Czechia’s Filip Hronek and David Kampf, and Finland’s Kevin Lankinen. Teddy Blueger (Latvia), Anri Ravinskis (Latvia), and Lukas Reichel (Germany) will also be competing for their countries.

The last time NHL players went to the Olympics, the Canucks had just six players in the competition, but a very similar franchise outlook.

In 2014, the Canucks were in the middle of a franchise-altering collapse that would see them miss the playoffs for the first time in six years. The John Tortorella experiment wasn’t going well, and an aging core was seeing its contention window close in real time. But the bones of the roster were still made up of core players whose skills were sought after by their respective nations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Two Canucks got the call for Team Canada: Roberto Luongo, playing in his third Olympics, and Dan Hamhuis, playing in his first. Hamhuis played five games for Canada en route to the gold medal, while Luongo started one game as the backup to Carey Price, a 6-0 shutout against Austria.

The biggest contingent of Canucks that were invited to Sochi was courtesy of Sweden, who planned to bring Henrik and Daniel Sedin, as well as Olympic newcomer Alex Edler. But Henrik missed the tournament due to a rib injury sustained during the season, leaving his brother as the sole Sedin to make the trip to Sochi. Daniel led all Swedish forwards in points with five in six games, while Edler potted a pair in four games. The Swedes would make it all the way to the gold medal game, where they lost to Canada.

Two more players also got the call from their respective countries. Ryan Kesler made his second Olympics for Team USA in Sochi, scoring four points in a fourth-place finish for the Americans. And defenceman Yannick Weber made four appearances on the blue line for Team Switzerland in his second of three Olympic tournaments.

After the Games and with a fresh gold medal on his shelf, Luongo remained a Canuck for just a few short weeks before being traded to the Florida Panthers ahead of the NHL trade deadline. Kesler would be traded to the Anaheim Ducks in the offseason by a brand new Canucks front office headed by Jim Benning, the Sedins retired in after the 2017-18 season, and Alex Edler would remain a Canuck until 2021, when he became a free agent and signed with the LA Kings.

How long after the Milano Cortina games the current crop of Canucks will remain in Vancouver is anybody’s guess.

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