{"id":476142,"date":"2026-02-13T00:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/476142\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T00:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:02:07","slug":"josh-morrissey-leaves-canadas-group-stage-win-over-czechia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/476142\/","title":{"rendered":"Josh Morrissey Leaves Canada’s Group Stage Win Over Czechia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Team Canada has had a few years of crushing defeats to the Czechs at the junior level. The senior team responded today with a 5-0 drubbing in its Group A opener at the 2026 Winter Olympics, but lost star Jets defenseman Josh Morrissey<\/a>\u00a0in the process.<\/p>\n

Morrissey left at the first intermission with an undisclosed and unapparent issue. He tried to return later in the game but \u201ccouldn\u2019t,\u201d head coach Jon Cooper said, although it\u2019s unclear whether that was Morrissey\u2019s own decision or the medical staff\u2019s (via Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Olympic injuries are precarious for multiple reasons. With only a handful of games left until the trade deadline on the other end of the break and only a quarter and change of the schedule remaining for most teams, a multi-week absence for a key player \u2013 especially for a bubble team like the Jets<\/a> \u2013 is incredibly difficult to work around. They\u2019re also pressing for the national team if they pile up quickly early in the tournament. Unlike at the World Championships or other IIHF events, teams cannot name injury replacements to their roster after playing their first game. If Morrissey is out the rest of the way, Canada will only have seven defensemen available.<\/p>\n

Morrissey, 30, has erupted into a bona fide top-10 defender in the league in his prime. He\u2019s finished no worse than seventh in Norris Trophy voting in every year since 2023 and, at the time of the break, was amid another standout offensive campaign. His 10 goals and 42 points in 56 games have him 12th in league scoring among defenders and fourth overall on the Jets. He\u2019s also tied with defensive partner\u00a0Dylan DeMelo<\/a>\u00a0for a team-high +10 rating on a Jets team with a -15 goal differential this season.<\/p>\n

Behind Morrissey, the Jets\u2019 left-side defense is thin. They\u2019ve enjoyed something of a breakout performance from third-pairing fixture\u00a0Logan Stanley<\/a>\u00a0but trusting him enough to elevate into top-four minutes with any consistency is unwise given his spotty record of possession play. Shutdown dynamo\u00a0Dylan Samberg<\/a>\u00a0remains a strong second-pairing option but, with only nine assists in 40 games on the year, can\u2019t do much of anything to replace Morrissey\u2019s lost point production if he misses time on the other side of the break.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Canada has had a few years of crushing defeats to the Czechs at the junior level. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,203786,10232,575,10018,85,6000],"class_list":["post-476142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-josh-morrissey","tag-newsstand","tag-nhl","tag-olympics","tag-sports","tag-winnipeg-jets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476142","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=476142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}