Canadian fans may not think the best team won gold in men’s hockey at the 2026 Winter Olympics, but the most expensive team came out on top. The Canadian and American teams were stacked with high-paid NHL talent, which has some watchers feeling nostalgic about a time when Olympic hockey was played strictly by amateur athletes.
“There was something really charming about the Canadian teams that played, particularly in the Olympics in the ’80s and ’90s, because these were all sort of amateur college athletes,” said Liam Young, Carleton University communications and media professor.
“They were kind of these ramshackle teams that suddenly got thrust into this international spotlight. And it was really sort of amazing for these athletes that wouldn’t normally have had that opportunity.”
“Obviously, that all goes away once the NHL players come in,” Young said.
The International Olympic Committee removed the ban on professional players in 1986 (although there was no agreement between the NHL and players allowing this until 1995).
In 2026, the Canadian and American men’s Olympic hockey teams were both made up of NHL players. The bronze medal-winning Finnish team had only one non-NHL player, while fourth-place Slovakia had seven NHL players on the roster.
The American team was the highest paid, according to NHL salary information, closely followed by the Canadians.
“In an obvious way, [salary statistics] sort of establish this standard. So for someone like Connor McDavid: He has one of the highest, if not the highest, yearly average salary in the league, and so we expect that he’ll make good on that. On that level of compensation, both in his NHL performance, but also in an international tournament like the Olympics,” Young said.
Ordinarily, Canadian athletes would qualify for a bonus payment, depending on the medal awarded — $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze, but this does not apply to the professional hockey players.
These bonuses would have come from the Canadian Olympic Committee, which is largely funded by the federal government.
Despite not paying NHL players directly, Canadian governments have recently been dipping their toes more heavily into funding professional hockey by way of arenas.
“When a new stadium needs to be built [or] a new arena needs to be built, there’s always some sort of public-private partnership,” said Carleton University political science professor Aaron Ettinger. “And that is one of the classic public policy issues with professional sports teams.”
Government funding of NHL arenas has not been a common until recent years in Canada. The construction of five out of the seven Canadian NHL team arenas were largely if not entirely privately funded.
Not included in the table is the Calgary’s Scotiabank Saddledome, home of the Flames. It is the only entirely publicly funded arena, with the construction cost split between the city, the province of Alberta and the federal government in order to host the 1988 Winter Olympics.
The Edmonton Oilers’ new home, Rogers Place, was heavily funded by the City of Edmonton.
Scotia Place, the long-awaited replacement for the Saddledome is under construction in Calgary. Much like Rogers Place, the majority of funding is coming municipally.
This move toward more government funding is growing. In Ottawa, a new arena in LeBreton Flats, will be home to the Ottawa Senators and is expected to be funded by three different levels of government as well as privately.
“There’s going to be lots and lots of public money that goes into this private enterprise,” Ettinger says of the LeBreton Flats plan. “And why? Well, because for some reason, sports teams are different than other businesses. So there will be millions of dollars in tax breaks and, you know, co-investments and co-pays and all that kind of stuff that go into it.”
NHL teams don’t receive any direct government funding, only the infrastructure, but that almost wasn’t the case.
When Industry Minister John Manly proposed the idea of offering an annual bailout of $2 million for Canadian NHL teams in 2000, he was quickly shut down.
Over two decades later, the construction of two more government-funded NHL venues and talks of a third in key Canadian cities shows that investment into Canada’s hockey infrastructure is not slowing down.
