If you thought the criticism of the Olympic selection was already getting ridiculous, it somehow got worse. Much worse for fans of the Edmonton Oilers. Forwards Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman didn’t just miss Team Canada for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics — they weren’t even a success Matt Larkin’s Olympic All-Snub Team for Daily Showdown. Sure, it’s just one writer’s opinion, but what the hell are we doing here?
Larkin’s All-Snub exercise was meant to be fun, and to his credit, it contains many glaring omissions. Connor Bedard. Seth Jarvis. Jason Robertson. Adam Fox, and even Evan Bouchard from Edmonton. All defensible choices. But when you take a step back and look at who didn’t even make the roster for a fake team made up entirely of players who don’t have a real Olympic roster, the absences of Nugent-Hopkins and Hyman jump off the page.
Why no Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?
Nugent-Hopkins isn’t flashy. He’s not the sexy choice. What he is is one of the NHL’s more elite two-way centers, who can also play alongside the best player in the world. His numbers are excellent, he kills penalties, can be the swingman in the NHL’s top power game, is absolutely loved by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and plays every role you ask of him at a high level.
He is versatile enough to play on any line for Team Canada, can play in all situations and is defensively responsible enough to be trusted in tight games. If Team Canada wanted a Swiss Army knife for its Canadian roster, RNH is basically the prototype. You don’t leave that out with your second best version of this team.
But because he is older, has had seasons where he wasn’t a point-per-game player and is on a team with McDavid and Draisaitl, his impact is often overlooked.
Why not Zach Hyman?
Zach Hyman is somehow still treated like a system passenger, even though he is one of the most reliable scorers in the NHL. Hyman scores five-on-five. He scores on the power play. He wins puck battles, goes to the dirty areas and plays with an edge that Canada supposedly values in international tournaments. Do you want chaos on the net and the ultimate team man? That’s Zach Hyman’s entire brand.
Why might he not be named to the all-snub team? Maybe it’s because McDavid wouldn’t have been on that roster, and one of the reasons Hyman would have been considered for the first team is to give McDavid his linemate and winger to get McDavid going on offense.
Larkin’s All-Snub team just snubbed the Oilers
While five different writers form their own stupid team, you get five different rosters. In Larkin’s case, though, the crazy part is that Larkin’s stupid team features a lot of players with legitimate warts — injury concerns, defensive issues, or perceived stylistic flaws. Yet two of the league’s most consistent, playoff-proven forwards didn’t even get an honorable mention. At some point it stops being about roster suitability and starts to become a sense of reputational inertia.
Best-on-best hockey is back, and that’s great. But if players like Nugent-Hopkins and Hyman can’t even make a hypothetical list of “players we messed up by staying away,” it begs a bigger question: Is there a bias against the Oilers and how close they’ve come to being in the NHL but not being able to win it all?
Because if those two aren’t even worth a censure, something has gone wrong.
Next: The Oilers Might Be Quietly Building a New “Kid Line”
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