Canucks At The 2026 Winter Olympics: Lankinen And Finland Suffer Surprising Defeat, Pettersson And Sweden Notch First Victory

NHLers have officially returned to the Winter Olympics. Two members of the Vancouver Canucks organization made their Olympic debuts today at the 2026 Winter Olympics, those being Kevin Lankinen and Elias Pettersson. Here’s how the first day of Olympic hockey went for these two Canucks and their respective teams. 

While Lankinen himself didn’t play today, he did dress as Finland’s backup during their first game of the preliminary round. In what ended up coming as a bit of a surprise, Finland dropped their game by a score of 4–1 to Slovakia. Iowa Wild goaltender Samuel Hlavaj started for Slovakia, making an impressive 39 of 40 saves, while Juraj Slafkovský continued his dominant Olympic play by scoring two of his team’s four goals and assisting on one. Eeli Tolvanen potted the lone goal for Finland. 

Pettersson didn’t register any points in today’s game, though the forward was noticeable on the ice in all circumstances in his team's 5-2 victory against Italy. Offensively, he provided his team with some of their best chances of the game against a strong goaltender in Italy’s Damian Clara. His most notable chance of the game came during a penalty kill, when he deked on Clara off a break, but was unable to put the puck past the goaltender. Pettersson was also on the ice against an empty net and made the move to give Victor Hedman some space and allow Sweden to score their fifth of the game. He finished today’s game with 13:22 minutes played, one shot on goal, and a +2 rating. 

Group B 

Sweden: 1–0–0–0 

Slovakia: 1–0–0–0

Italy: 0–0–0–1

Finland: 0–0–0–1

Czechia vs. Canada: 7:40 am PT 

Latvia vs. USA: 12:10 pm PT 

Germany vs. Denmark: 12:10 pm PT 

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