{"id":33759,"date":"2026-05-06T04:13:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/33759\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T04:13:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:13:20","slug":"team-canada-notes-bouchard-nurse-mckenna-whitecloud-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/33759\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Canada Notes: Bouchard, Nurse, McKenna, Whitecloud \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n By Ethan Hetu<\/a> |
\n at May 5, 2026 4:55 pm <\/p>\n

A pair of Edmonton Oilers defensemen are going to represent Canada at the upcoming IIHF Men\u2019s World Championships: Evan Bouchard<\/a> and Darnell Nurse<\/a>. (Reported by TSN\u2019s Darren Dreger<\/a>) The addition of Bouchard gives Canada a player who could very well end up the top offensive defenseman at the tournament. The 26-year-old is coming off of a season where he scored a career-high 21 goals and 95 points. The addition of Nurse gives Canada another NHL top-four defenseman with extensive playoff experience. Nurse averaged 20:58 time on ice per game this season, No. 2 on the Oilers.<\/p>\n

Bouchard has yet to represent Canada as a professional, but represented his country in international tournaments in junior hockey. He was part of Team Canada at the World Juniors in the 2018-19 season though his team lost in the quarterfinals. Nurse, on the other hand, has represented Canada at two World Championships: 2018 and 2019. Canada lost the bronze medal to the United States in Nurse\u2019s first trip to the tournament, and won a silver medal in his second.<\/p>\n

Other notes from around the hockey world:<\/p>\n

Top 2026 NHL draft prospect Gavin McKenna<\/a> will not join Team Canada for the upcoming tournament, reversing earlier reports<\/a> that indicated he would. TSN\u2019s Darren Dreger\u00a0<\/a> reported the decision as a group choice meant to allow McKenna to focus his attention on the upcoming scouting combine. McKenna has long been considered the front-runner to go No. 1 overall at this year\u2019s draft, though Corey Pronman of The Athletic<\/a> recently characterized the race for No. 1 as being more wide-open.
\nAnother defenseman will join the Canadian entry into IIHF Worlds: Calgary Flames blueliner Zach Whitecloud<\/a>, as reported by Sportsnet 960\u2019s Pat Steinberg<\/a>. This won\u2019t be the 29-year-old blueliner\u2019s first trip to the World Championships. He represented Canada at the 2022 tournament, scoring four points in 10 games for a Canada team that fell in overtime in the gold medal game against Finland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ethan Hetu | at May 5, 2026 4:55 pm A pair of Edmonton Oilers defensemen are going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1611,17,947,263,464,1225,4912,2023,4922,15044,2022,6895],"class_list":{"0":"post-33759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-calgary-flames","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-darnell-nurse","11":"tag-edmonton-oilers","12":"tag-evan-bouchard","13":"tag-gavin-mckenna","14":"tag-hockey-canada","15":"tag-iihf","16":"tag-snapshots","17":"tag-world-championship","18":"tag-world-championships","19":"tag-zach-whitecloud"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}