Dallas Stars forward Wyatt Johnston remains hopeful he will be included on Team Canada for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.
The roster needs to be finalized by Dec. 31, leaving Johnston just over a month to make a final impression on Canada’s management group.
The 22-year-old centre is doing his part this season, scoring 12 goals and 25 points in 24 games this season, third in team scoring behind Jason Robertson (31 points) and Mikko Rantanen (28 points).
“Growing up watching the ‘Golden Goal’ from Sid [Sidney Crosby] and watching the NHL players at the Olympics, it would be amazing to go,” Johnston told NHL.com. “For me, it’s just trying to do the best I can to try and help the Stars win and that will also help my chances trying to make that team as well. That would be awesome, and a huge honour.”
Since being drafted 23rd overall by Dallas in 2021, Johnston’s development has taken off.
Johnston did not play his entire draft year after the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the full 2020-21 Ontario League Hockey season.
When he did return to play in 2021-22 with the Windsor Spitfires, Johnston led the OHL and CHL in scoring with 124 points in 68 games and led all OHL players in playoff scoring with 41 points in 25 games.
He cracked the Stars roster in 2022 and put up 41, 65 and 71 points the past three seasons and has yet to miss a game in his NHL career.
“He’s a young player, very crafty, and is a very coachable young man,” Gulutzan said. “When you get the hockey IQ in those young players, it pops out at you. If you look at his skill set, he has a great shot, he doesn’t need much space to shoot. He’s not an overly fast player, he’s not an overly big player, but he’s a very, very effective player in the NHL and it just speaks to his hockey intelligence.”
Johnston, who was among the 42 players invited to Hockey Canada’s Olympic orientation camp in Calgary at the end of August, has a lot of competition to make Team Canada this year.
Canada locked in forwards Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, Brayden Point and Sam Reinhart as well as defenceman Cale Makar as the first six players named to the roster in June.
MacKinnon leads the league in scoring with 39 points in 23 games while McDavid is third with 34 and Makar is ninth with 30 and leads all defencemen.
Johnston’s biggest competition, however, is the likes of Connor Bedard (33 points) and Macklin Celebrini (34 points), who have both exploded offensively this season as the two former No. 1 overall picks are firmly near the top of the NHL’s scoring race.
Johnston is 11th among all Canadian skaters in NHL scoring this season. The Toronto, Ont., native last represented Canada at the World U18 Championship four years ago, winning gold alongside Bedard.
Stars captain Jamie Benn, who won Olympic gold with Canada in 2014, cites Johnston’s ability to play at both ends of the ice as a strength.
“He’s a guy that can dominate a game by himself,” Benn said. “He plays a 200-foot game and plays it well and you don’t see that too often in young kids early on when they come into this league, and he has it and has had it since Day 1.”
