Whitefish’s Jake Sanderson Selected for USA Olympic Hockey Team
The Ottawa Senators defenseman will be among the few with Olympic experience as NHL players participate in the Winter Games for the first time since 2014
By Lauren Frick
Whitefish native Jake Sanderson will be one of only two players with Olympic experience on Team USA Hockey’s roster when the team heads to Italy next month.
Sanderson, 23, is the second youngest of the 25 players announced by Team USA on Friday who will look to capture the United States’ third-ever men’s hockey gold at the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
This will be the Ottawa Senators defenseman’s second-consecutive Winter Games following his Olympic debut in Beijing in 2022 where the United States suffered a heartbreaking quarterfinal loss to Slovakia following undefeated group play that included a win over rival Canada.
Sanderson was born in Whitefish and raised there until his family moved to Calgary, Alberta when he was 12, and his parents still own a home in Whitefish. His father Geoff Sanderson is a retired Canadian hockey player whose NHL career spanned 17 seasons. Jake Sanderson was taken by the Ottawa Senators fifth overall in the 2020 NHL draft out of the University of North Dakota.
The Senators defenseman has recorded eight goals and 21 assists in 40 games so far this season. He has 33 goals and 123 assists in his 276 career NHL games.
Sanderson is one of the 21 players on the 2026 Olympic roster who participated in the NHL’s inaugural best-on-best international tournament format — the 4 Nations Face-Off Tournament.
Although Sanderson was named to the roster as an injury replacement for Vancouver Canucks defenseman Quinn Hughes, he proved to be an important piece as he scored a goal in the United States’ 3-2 loss to Canada in the championship game in early 2025.
While this 2026 roster lacks Olympic experience, there’s no shortage of professional experience as NHL players will feature in the Winter Olympics for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Games. This will be only the sixth time NHL players will participate in the Olympics, starting with 1998 in Nagano, when the Czech Republic won the gold medal.
The International Ice Hockey Federation in July announced an agreement to send NHL players to the Olympics for the first time in 12 years following a meeting at its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, that featured representatives from the NHL, NHL Players’ Association and the International Olympic Committee.
The agreement “contemplates” but currently does not guarantee NHL player participation at the 2030 Olympics in the French Alps, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly had said, according to NHL.com.
More than 130 NHL players are expected to participate in the 2026 edition of the Winter Games, with the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lighting leading the way with nine players each selected to represent their respective countries.
The Milano Cortina 2026 Games begin Feb. 4, with the men’s hockey tournament beginning Feb. 11 and running through the gold medal game on Feb. 22, which will also be the final day of Olympic competition.
The U.S. will open Olympic competition against Latvia on Feb. 12 at 9:10 p.m. local (1:10 p.m. MST) in preliminary round play.