It will not be the 4 Nations tournament that a lot of Edmonton Oilers were hoping to have.
After starting the season with the possibility of having a total of five players on Team Canada’s roster, just one Oilers player will don the maple leaf jersey at the tournament. Edmonton captain Connor McDavid will be the lone Oilers player on Canada’s roster after insiders leaked the lineup on Tuesday.
The four players snubbed include goaltender Stuart Skinner, defenceman Evan Bouchard, and forwards Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
After starting the NHL season with the possibility of having five players on Team Canada at the 4 Nations… leaked rosters have just Connor McDavid cracking it for the #Oilers
Mattias Ekholm and Viktor Arvidsson on team Sweden will make it three EDM players participating
— Preston Hodgkinson (@NHLHodgkinson) December 4, 2024
Outside of Bouchard, all those snubbed players have had tough starts to the season. Nugent-Hopkins has just four goals and 12 points in 25 games, while Hyman is far off the 54-goal pace he set last year with only three in 20 games.
Skinner was seen as a frontrunner for Canada’s starter job to begin the season, but an awful -8.0 goals-saved-above-expected and a sub .890 save percentage was enough to see him left out.
Luckily, it isn’t all bad news for the Oilers. While the team had plenty of snubs from Canada’s roster, they had two players crack Sweden’s lineup with one being a bit of a surprise.
Everyone expected defenceman Mattias Ekholm to pull on a Swedish jersey for the tournament, but the addition of Viktor Arvidsson was a pleasant surprise. The gritty forward has had a tough start to his Oilers tenure with two goals and five points through 16 games, as well as an injury that has left him on the sidelines for the past nine games.
Surprisingly, that will make Team Sweden the roster with the most Oilers at this year’s tournament. It’s a shame there aren’t more Oilers representing Canada but, after the starts they had, it’s completely understandable why they were snubbed.
While Oilers fans will undoubtedly be rooting for McDavid and the Canadians, plenty will also be cheering on Ekholm and Arvidsson on the Swedish side.
The tournament gets underway on February 12 as all three Oilers players will face off in a game between Canada and Sweden at the Bell Centre in Montreal.