ARLINGTON, VA — Tom Wilson looked back at his time in Milan with two minds.
There was the good: the 2026 Games marked Wilson’s first Olympic experience, his first time donning the Maple Leaf since he was a teenager. He got to share a team with some of the world’s best players, many of whom he’d faced as opponents for years. And he got to experience it with his family, including his two-year-old son.
But there was also the Gold Medal Game against the United States, 61 minutes of hockey that left Canada with a silver medal and a loss players will bear for life.
“I think that will always haunt me and hurt when you look back on it,” Wilson said.
Wilson carried both sets of memories back with him to DC, each complicating the other.
“It’s tough, right?” he said. “It’s one of the best experiences of your life, and then also one of the hardest outcomes. So however long it takes, I’ll always think very fondly of the time, but it’ll always hurt. Which — that’s life, I guess.”
Thirteen seasons into his NHL career, Wilson is no stranger to playing alongside greatness. He’s had a front-row seat to Alex Ovechkin’s storied career, often sharing a line with the league’s greatest goal scorer. He was the last to touch the puck before Ovechkin’s record-breaking 895th goal last spring. He hoisted the Stanley Cup for the Capitals in 2018, and he’s the heir apparent to the team’s captaincy.
The Olympics, however, were a different beast. Canada has won three of six Olympic tournaments with NHL participation and came into Milan as the favorite, with a stacked roster that included Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, and more.
Wilson, who has worked to be a thorn in those players’ side for years, relished the chance to fight for a common goal. Old enmities thawed easily — even longtime rival Crosby had become “Sid” by the end of the tournament.
“Truly an incredible, remarkable locker room. You had to sit there at some points and just look around and realize the greatness that is sitting beside you,” Wilson said. “It starts with Sid — he’s such an incredible leader — and right down through Connor and Nate, and even the young kid, Macklin (Celebrini), you just realize why they are great. They work so hard, and it’s contagious.
“I learned a lot. I tried to soak up all I could from those guys. It’s a short tournament, you don’t really know those guys at first, but it’s the biggest tournament of our lives…We’re darn close now. You’re almost family by the end of the tournament. It’s pretty special. So it was a sad day, leaving those guys and knowing that we were so close. But like I said, I’m proud of the group and proud of the team for how we played.”
Outside of Washington, Wilson is still best known for his physicality, and that was certainly on display at the Games. He lived up to his reputation of big hits, set a Canadian record for Olympic penalty minutes in a tournament with NHL involvement, and even recorded what appears to be the first-ever Olympic Gordie Howe hat trick — a moment the team commemorated with a signed fedora postgame.
But Wilson wasn’t in Milan to be a mindless bruiser. He’s shown with the Capitals that he can be a legitimate scoring threat, recording a career-high 65 points (33g, 32a) in 2024-25 and 49 points (23g, 26a) in the first 50 games of this season. Team Canada head coach Jon Cooper put Wilson on the top line for much of the tournament alongside McDavid and Celebrini, though he also played on the so-called “Fine Line” with fellow rabble-rousers Brad Marchand and Sam Bennett.
Wilson called his experience on McDavid’s wing a “highlight of my career” at the time, a sentiment he reiterated back in Washington.
“The first day, you get put on a line with Conor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini, and you’re like, ‘Holy smokes, this is going to be, A, a lot of fun, B, I’ve got to be good to keep up with these guys,’” he said. “So you push yourself as an individual, as an athlete, outside your comfort zone, and you want to be as great as you can…Macklin, he’s a kid right now, but he’s going to be an incredible star in this league. And Connor, obviously, is the best player in the world. It’ll be cool one day to look back at those photos, lining up with those two guys.”
Off the ice, too, Wilson forged close-knit bonds with his newfound teammates, even with such limited time together. Those quieter moments, like taking the metro on a group trip to watch speed skating, lingered with Wilson as much as anything he did on the ice.
“I’ll look back so fondly on all those little things, walking the streets of Italy with the guys, getting on the metro, and just the day in and day out of being a family, everybody from the trainers, the coaches, the management,” he said.
Wilson will go right back to seeing his Olympic teammates as an opponent when he returns to play on Friday, facing Mitch Marner, Mark Stone, and Shea Theodore when the Capitals play the Vegas Golden Knights. That doesn’t mean the team’s newfound relationships will fade entirely, however.
“I might have to give some of those guys the benefit of the doubt on some hits,” Wilson joked when discussing his Olympic teammates.
Unlike the usual patter of an 82-game NHL season, the Olympics compressed a career-defining run into a two-week, six-game tournament that had little time to slow down. Wilson and his fellow Canadians came to Milan with the weight of a country on their shoulders, a nation that almost took success as a given. From the very start, the players held themselves to the same standard.
“That was probably one of the craziest, coolest parts of it all, is every single detail, the focus, the determination of the minute we came together as a group at the airport until the final buzzer,” Wilson said. “Everything was important. Every detail, every conversation, every practice, every drill, you realize how dialed in everybody is.
“And our country expects nothing but the absolute best. When you pull on that Canadian jersey, there’s a pressure that every single person in the world is coming for you and wants to take what’s ours. The way that some of those stars and leaders on our team carried that, and the way that our team carried that, I’ll always be proud of. But from practice, to all the systems, to every conversation leading up to that, Hockey Canada demands perfection, and we were pretty close, and that’s what will always hurt.“
Canada had a perfect record going into the Gold Medal Game, outscoring opponents 27-8 in its first five games. Facing the rival USA for gold, Canada held a 42-28 advantage in shots and controlled play for much of the game, but a phenomenal showing from American goaltender Connor Hellebuyck left the score tied 1-1 at the end of regulation.
Just 1:43 into overtime, Jack Hughes delivered the United States the game-winning goal, snapping Canada’s 15-game win streak in best-on-best Olympic games and ending Wilson’s dream of winning gold.
Wilson looked back at the game with a more balanced perspective in the days after the loss, but in some ways Canada’s strong play only made the final result harder to stomach.
“I think we played almost a perfect Gold Medal Game,” he said. “In the second and third, we dominate. Call a spade a spade: we played incredible hockey, and we just didn’t capitalize on our chances, and they did, and they beat us. That’ll always hurt, knowing we were so close, but our team played extremely well, and that’s hockey. That’s why everyone loves the game. It’s anyone’s game once you get to the finals.”
Still, Wilson was able to take pride in what he and his team did accomplish, even if it wasn’t quite what they were hoping for. It’s a bittersweet memory, sure, but one he’ll not soon forget.
“It’s not the outcome that we wanted, but for the game of hockey, for kids in the US and Canada and the next generation, and when you look at the game in a big picture, it’s a pretty special event to be a part of,” Wilson said of the Gold Medal Game. “I’ll always be very proud of being Canadian and bringing a silver medal home. We all wanted gold, and that’ll hurt forever, but it’s something that I’m very, very proud of, to go to the Olympics and play for Team Canada, and come home with our head held high.”
