Canada’s para hockey team eyes Paralympic revenge on the U.S.

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Author of the article:

Dan Barnes • Postmedia”

Published Mar 07, 2026 • 6 minute read

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Greg Westlake, left, of Canada and Brody Roybal of the United States battle for the puck during their para ice hockey finals match at the 2022 Winter Paralympics. Photo by Dita Alangkara /The Associated PressArticle content

If Canada’s Paralympic Games hockey team needed an external focus or extra motivation, and that seems doubtful, it nonetheless came to them as they gathered in Milan en masse to watch the Olympic men’s gold-medal tilt with the U.S.

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Many of the 17 para hockey players have felt what Connor McDavid, Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon and 22 other Team Canada athletes did that day; immediate shock, then the emptiness that inevitably accompanies such a heartbreaking loss to a heated rival on one of the sport’s biggest stages. That the same thing happened to the Canadian women’s team at Milano Cortina days earlier meant the psychic wound was even deeper.

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You see, the U.S. has essentially owned Canada at the Winter Paralympic Games too, though the sample size is small. The two nations have played for a Paralympic gold medal just twice, in 2018 and 2022, and the U.S. won both games, 5-0 in 2022 and 2-1 in overtime in 2018. The U.S. also posted a 3-0 win over Canada in the semifinals in 2014, as well as a 5-1 preliminary round win in 2002. Canada’s only measure of accomplishment against the U.S. came in a 1-1 preliminary round tie in 1998, well before any of the current players were on the squad.

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Conversely, there are 10 holdovers from the 2022 Paralympic Games team, and they didn’t need a reminder of what the silver medals felt like, dangling from their necks while the strains of the Star Spangled Banner filled the stadium in Beijing.

“I’ve been on that side of the coin when you lose in overtime in a gold-medal game, and it’s devastating, it’s heartbreaking,” said Greg Westlake, a wily veteran playing in his sixth Paralympics. … “We had a great three-team camp in August with a lot of the men’s team and the women’s team, so we got to know a lot of the players on both those teams. When you see people who are so supportive of your program not reach their goal, you just feel disappointment for them. But ultimately, our team is our team, and we’re on our own journey here. I think every guy on the team is going to get a lot of messages like, ‘hey, we need you guys now,’ so we’re just trying not to add any extra pressure, honestly.”

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While many observers would size up the two competition pools for Milano Cortina 2026 and pencil in another Canada/U.S. gold medal final for Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena. Not Westlake, who took off his assistant coaching hat to rejoin the player pool for one last run at the podium’s top step. He is too experienced and too savvy to jump to any conclusions.

“I’ve played a long time, and before Vancouver 2010 I could have said, ‘hey, it’s going to be us and the U.S. in the final. We lost in the semis, we didn’t even medal. Sochi 2014, there was an upset on the other side, and we ended up having to play the U.S. in the semifinal, and we didn’t get to the final. I’ve been around long enough to know that so many wonky things can happen in a short-term, one-game (elimination) tournament.”

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Play begins on Saturday

Team Canada opened its Paralympic Games tournament against Slovakia on Saturday and will meet Japan and Czechia before the elimination phase officially begins. But head coach Boris Rybalka said the team adopted a clear mindset for every game.

“We’ve tried to just focus on ourselves and what I mean by that is we know every game we play as we’re going into it is a game seven and it doesn’t matter who it is because we don’t want to look ahead to another opponent. As you know, when you cover sports, when you look ahead, that’s sometimes when trouble comes. So game seven to us is against Slovakia, and game seven then is against Japan and then game seven is against the Czechs and then game seven will be the playoff round. So that’s our focus right now as a team and they’ve done great and we’re going into the Paralympic Games with that focus.”

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Preparing this team is unlike anything Rybalka has done through a long, successful career in junior hockey in Alberta. The 17 players first came together on Aug. 24 at the national teams camp in Calgary, and spent about two weeks every month together, and the other two weeks at their respective homes across Canada. With the Games on the near horizon, they got together Feb. 5 and won’t disperse until after the Games end on March 16. It’s also different because the competition schedule is particularly light between tournaments. Prior to a couple of pre-Paralympics exhibition games in Milan at the end of February, the team last played in early December in Dawson Creek, B.C. during the Para Cup. There were six games in October before that.

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“So the only other way for us to get better is to play against each other in practice,” said Adam Dixon. “So in terms of getting intense, it definitely does. It’s kind of your job to play as hard as you can to make the guy beside you better. And that results in some temper sometimes. It’s kind of funny. We’re all doing it for the betterment of each other, but in the moment you forget that. Some guys flip out, which is always enjoyable. We’ve had a couple of practice fights this year. Nothing too crazy, just getting some steam out. Just being in a hotel for two weeks alone would do that. But putting yourselves on the road for two weeks and then asking yourselves to compete as hard as possible for a couple of hours a day, that’s going to bring stuff out.”

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The benefit of that much practice time, at least from a coaching perspective, is an ability to focus on systems.

“What we as a staff learned is we’re starting to become a well-tuned machine and what I mean by that is from defensive zone to neutral zone, the forecheck, the power play, the penalty kill, that is something that put a smile on our faces as a coaching staff,” Rybalka said at the end of February.

Loads of heart, drive and speed

All that aside, he thinks the team’s biggest weapons are heart, drive and speed.

“We have a never quit attitude and that’s something that we worked on all year. We’re on the puck.”

The team will be led by veterans like Westlake, captain Tyler McGregor, Dixon, Dom Cozzolino, James Dunn and Liam Hickey. They will help rookies Shawn Burnett, Vincent Boily, Auren Halbert, Mathieu Lelievre and Micah Kovacevich make their way through a pressure-packed Games debut.

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“They have talked to these young guys and said ‘yes it’s gonna be exciting, there’s gonna be nervousness, but make sure you enjoy the time because it goes by quick and remember why we’re here,” said Rybalka. “We’re here to win a gold for Canada and that’s our number one goal.”

Chances are, the U.S. will stand in their way at some point. In the semis? In the final? Who knows?

“No matter what, we’re going to have to go through each other to get to a gold medal,” said Dixon. “Our ultimate goal is being Paralympic gold medalists, so we’re going to have to attempt to break their hearts and destroy their goal. … We’ve definitely been on the other side of it. Whenever we’ve come up successful, it’s been a world championship event. We’ve not been able to have the right game at the right time at the Paralympics, but I think Boris has done a really good job of getting us to that point.

“We are coming in with a ton of confidence and belief that we can get it done.”

dbarnes@postmedia.com

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