Team Canada’s head coach, Jon Cooper, may have found a new secret weapon during Friday’s semifinal matchup with Finland at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Cooper, trying to spark some offense, shifted around his forward lines and created a three-headed monster that would give the NHL’s Department of Player Safety nightmares.
The new trio united Tom Wilson, Sam Bennett, and Brad Marchand as what some are now calling the “Fine Line,” given how often the league takes from their wallets for on-ice actions. The three pests paid dividends almost immediately for Cooper, helping create the game-tying goal in a dramatic 3-2 victory over the Finns.
“I mean, I think it’s clear when we get put together what our job is: to create chaos,” Wilson told NHL Network’s Jason Demers. “You know our wallets are, all three, pretty light from our time in the NHL. We wanted to go out there and be ourselves.
“When we got put together as a line, there’s no guessing. It’s predictable. Straight lines. It’s hard. It’s making the other team’s life difficult. So it was fun to play with those guys. I think when we all got the call, we were excited to play together, so it was one of those, you know, third period, it was great to go out there and chip in on a big goal.”
Wilson started the game back on the team’s top line with Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini, but, as has been common throughout the tournament, Cooper eventually moved Nathan MacKinnon up to the right wing of that trio. MacKinnon has struggled to find chemistry with players lower in Canada’s lineup, forcing Cooper to go to the “nuclear option” of playing three of the NHL’s top four scorers together.
While the move may be a demotion for Wilson, the 31-year-old winger admitted that he felt more back to his typical play style with his new “controlled chaos” line.
“It’s such a tough thing,” Wilson told The Athletic’s Arpon Basu. “Sometimes you don’t want to be too physical, you don’t want to take a penalty. I thought I let the Czechs off the hook a little bit. I wanted to play smart, and I passed up on a couple of hits. I wanted to go in tonight, just playing really, really physical and play my game. Don’t think too much, just play hard, straight lines, finish checks.”
The rough-and-tough new combination may be especially important when Canada faces Team USA in the gold-medal game on Sunday. The Americans have regularly deployed a top line of Brady Tkachuk, Jack Eichel, and Matthew Tkachuk that has been terrorizing lesser opposition throughout the tournament. The Tkachuks were also two of the three Americans who got into fights in the first nine seconds of their first game against Canada during the 4 Nations Face-Off.
With Wilson, Marchand, and Bennett on the ice, the Tkachuks may have to think twice about post-whistle scrums and their usual trash-talking antics. With the new line showing immediate chemistry, Cooper now also has a second line he can likely depend on, especially if captain Sidney Crosby is out due to injury again.
“They impact the game in an entirely different way than the ‘Three Macs’ do, but they’re both massively effective,” Cooper told Basu. “I think everybody in the big picture’s expecting one line to score all the time and the other one not to, and it’s only fitting that the work ethic of that other group was the line that scored the goal for us. It’s just lines that can tilt the ice; they just tilt the ice in different ways.
“Everything’s not always about what you put in the net and how many scoring chances you have. Some of it’s about intimidation, leaning on teams, making them think, making them tired, and setting up shifts for the next group. That’s what that line was fabulous for.”
Team Canada and Team USA are set to do battle at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on Sunday at 8:10 am ET. The matchup is the first between the two rivals for gold since the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and the Americans have never previously beaten Canada in a final.
