{"id":387168,"date":"2026-01-02T16:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/387168\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T16:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:18:09","slug":"team-finland-roster-for-2026-winter-olympics-includes-tolvanen-kiviranta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/387168\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Finland roster for 2026 Winter Olympics includes Tolvanen, Kiviranta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Finland unveiled its roster for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 on Friday, a group that will try to bring the country its second straight gold medal.<\/p>\n<p>Finland, which won gold at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, a tournament that did not feature NHL players, will feature a roster similar to the one it iced at the 4 Nations Face-Off this past February.<\/p>\n<p>The one big difference is that Florida Panthers center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/aleksander-barkov-8477493\" title=\"Aleksander Barkov\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aleksander Barkov<\/a>, Finland\u2019s captain at 4 Nations, is out for the regular season with a knee injury. Trying to help pick up the slack for Barkov, Finland added <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/eeli-tolvanen-8480009\" title=\"Eeli Tolvanen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Eeli Tolvanen<\/a> (Seattle Kraken), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/oliver-kapanen-8482775\" title=\"Oliver Kapanen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Oliver Kapanen<\/a> (Montreal Canadiens) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/joel-kiviranta-8481641\" title=\"Joel Kiviranta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Joel Kiviranta<\/a> (Colorado Avalanche) to its forward group.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nobody can replace Barkov, but we have a lot of different kind of leaders (on the ice and in the locker room),&#8221; Finland general manager Jere Lehtinen said. &#8220;They&#8217;ll bring different kind of leadership to the team.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On defense, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/player\/mikko-lehtonen-8482247\" title=\"Mikko Lehtonen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mikko Lehtonen<\/a>, who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2020-21 season and now plays for the ZSC Lions in the Swiss National League, was added to the group from the 4 Nations Face-Off.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have a very experienced team, a lot of experience in playing for Team Finland,&#8221; coach Antti Pennanen said. &#8220;Forwards that can play in many roles, big-sized defense with one of the best defensemen in the world (Miro Heiskanen). Good goalies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is the first group of NHL players to represent Finland at the Olympics since 2014, when NHL players most recently participated.<\/p>\n<p>The tournament will feature all 12 teams playing three preliminary games in their respective groups.<\/p>\n<p>The three group winners and the best second-place team will get a bye into the quarterfinals; the other eight teams will play single-elimination games to determine the other four quarterfinalists.<\/p>\n<p>The gold-medal game will be held on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Team Finland always aims for a medal, no matter the tournament,&#8221; Pennanen said.<\/p>\n<p>Team Finland, which is in Group B, will open against Team Slovakia on Feb. 11, then play Team Sweden on Feb. 13 and Team Italy on Feb. 14.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the Team Finland roster for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 (in alphabetical order) and a breakdown by NHL.com of each position group:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finland unveiled its roster for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 on Friday, a group that will&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-387168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}