For years, it seemed like the Norwegian national team was getting older and older, and it was only a matter of time before the team would no longer be able to compete with the world’s elite. However, they’ve had a bit of a youth movement of late, and the Olympic qualifying team announced on Monday contains eight players born in the 21st Century.

Five of those eight players have been drafted by NHL teams – Mathias Emilio Pettersen (Dallas Stars), Emil Lilleberg, Noah Steen (both Tampa Bay Lightning), and the two teenagers who both play in the SHL, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård (Detroit Red Wings) and Stian Solberg (Anaheim Ducks).

Of course, the team also has 36-year-old winger Mats Zuccarello of the Minnesota Wild and 40-year-old captain Patrick Thoresen, who recently announced that the upcoming season would be his last. At this spring’s IIHF World Championship in Prague, the two veterans played on the top forward line with Brandsegg-Nygård and they showed great chemistry together, so it would seem logical that we’ll see them together again this weekend.

There are still nine players on the Norwegian national team that played in the team’s last Olympic appearance in 2018. In the last Olympic cycle, Norway hosted the final qualifying tournament in Oslo but lost the decisive game to Denmark, who went on to play in its first-ever Olympics. 

This time, the Norwegians will attempt to repay the favor in Aalborg, with the Danes hosting. Those two teams will meet in the last game of the tournament, but neither team will want to look past Japan or Great Britain in their two games before that. In a pre-tournament game, the Norwegians belted France 9-0, so they seem to be ready.

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