Avalanche players will have hearts broken in Olympic showdowns no matter what

When it is all said and done, there will only be three hockey teams heading back to North America from Italy with a medal. The fun of it all is to find out which teams step up to the task under the biggest pressure.

Here are the upcoming matchups set for the semifinals on Wednesday:

First place Canada takes on eighth place Czechia. In that game, four Avalanche players take the ice—Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, and Devon Toews vs Martin Necas. The second game features the USA (Brock Nelson) vs Sweden (Gabriel Landeskog). Slovakia and Germany face off, too, but neither team has aany current Avalanche players. Lastly, No. 4 Finland (Arturri Lehkonen) takes on Switzerland.

Of those games, the first two will guarantee that at least one Avalanche player will go home empty-handed. That’s just the way that it goes in these types of competitions. The silver lining, however, is that it’s an honor to be participating in these games. No matter if you win a medal or not, these players will still head home with the amazing experience from the past couple of weeks.

The overall game results so far haven’t been too surprising. As for player results, there is a bit of surprise. For one, Martin Necas is tied for second in the entire tournament in terms of points as of Tuesday night (seven). Necas has some pressure on himself in the tournament, as do the other Avs players, though he is doing great.

MacKinnon is tied with several players with five points; Lehkonen and Makar have four points; Nelson and Landeskog have three each, while Joel Kiviranta has two.

Makar was surprisingly the last of the Avalanche players to score their first goal of the entire tournament.

Additionally, Avalanche players have had plenty of success at power play goals in the tournament. Necas has two, while MacKinnon, Landeskog, and Makar each have one. That’s more power play goals than the Avalanche have in the 2026 calendar year.

The good thing, perhaps, is that each of these players could come together and discuss what they saw on the power play and maybe they can translate that into NHL power play success once they all return as teammates.

But for now, we’ll continue to hope that each power play unit consisting of Avalanche players continues to put the pressure on penalty kills as they look to secure the ultimate prize: A gold medal at the 2026 Olympics in Italy.