{"id":469435,"date":"2026-02-12T04:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T04:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/469435\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T04:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T04:13:07","slug":"ex-vancouver-canucks-player-gets-completely-shafted-in-his-olympic-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/469435\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Vancouver Canucks player gets completely shafted in his Olympic return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailyhive.com\/vancouver\/how-many-canadians-italys-olympic-hockey-roster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Dreams came true<\/a> on Thursday for NHLers at the Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>However, those dreams were realized on varying levels.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time in 12 years, NHL players were back at the Olympics. While many of them were making their debuts, some were returning players.<\/p>\n<p>One of those returning players included Oliver Ekman-Larsson.<\/p>\n<p>The former Vancouver Canucks defenceman played for Team Sweden at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Back then, the 22-year-old defenceman registered three assists in six games as Sweden finished as runner-up to Canada in the gold-medal game.<\/p>\n<p>His return to the Olympics in Milan went a little differently.<\/p>\n<p>Ekman-Larsson didn\u2019t see a single second of ice time for Sweden in their 5-2 win over Italy on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he stayed stapled to the bench, acting as a cheerleader for his team in a game they won, but that was much closer than most expected.<\/p>\n<p>Sweden and Italy were tied until the latter stages of the second period, when William Nylander gave them the lead. They then held just a one-goal advantage until two late goals secured the victory.<\/p>\n<p>None of that was thanks to the contributions of Ekman-Larsson.<\/p>\n<p>Now 34-years-old, Ekman-Larsson worked his way onto Team Sweden after reinvigorating his NHL career. Since being bought out by the Canucks back in the summer of 2023, Ekman-Larsson has won a Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers, and he\u2019s been a mainstay in the top four on defence for the Toronto Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n<p>Entering the Olympics, he was tied for third in NHL points among Swedish defencemen, trailing only Erik Karlsson and Rasmus Dahlin.<\/p>\n<p>Heck, if he was still on the Canucks, he\u2019d be tied for the <a href=\"https:\/\/dailyhive.com\/vancouver\/highest-scoring-canucks-player-payroll\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">team-lead in points.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But on Wednesday, clearly, that didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n<p>He wasn\u2019t the only player who was stapled to the bench during Sweden\u2019s victory. Perhaps more surprisingly, Filip Forsberg played just one first-period shift for Team Sweden in the win. Both of them were seen on the broadcast sitting side-by-side in the middle of the bench.<\/p>\n<p>Sweden\u2019s men\u2019s ice hockey team plays its next Olympic game on Friday, Feb 13 at 3:10 a.m. PT versus Finland, who lost 4-1 to Slovakia earlier in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dreams came true on Thursday for NHLers at the Olympics. However, those dreams were realized on varying levels.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-469435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}