Denmark already achieved what some consider its equivalent of the \u201cMiracle on Ice\u201d at the 2025 IIHF World Championship last May. Now, it heads to the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 hoping to somehow top that.<\/p>\n
Defeating Canada in the world championship quarterfinals was one thing, though that team had its share of NHL stars such as Sidney Crosby<\/a>, Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> and Macklin Celebrini<\/a>. Pulling off a similar upset at Milano Cortina, the first Olympics to include NHL players since the 2014 Sochi Games, will require something even more special from Denmark, which plays its preliminary round opener against Germany on Feb. 12 (3:10 p.m. ET; Peacock, CBC Gem, TSN).<\/p>\n \u201cThe win in the quarterfinals in May was incredible,\u201d Carolina Hurricanes forward Nikolaj Ehlers<\/a> said. \u201cThis is, obviously, going to be a little different because now you\u2019re playing against the best of the best. We\u2019re going to really have to play the game well and play the full 60 minutes to be able to do something good, but, of course, it\u2019s going to be really hard.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, we\u2019re going to go there and try to do our best and, hopefully, we can have some fun games.\u201d<\/p>\n Simply competing at the Olympics will be significant for Denmark hockey. From a population of approximately 6 million, it has 6,110 registered hockey players and 29 indoor rinks, according to the IIHF.<\/p>\n Denmark has had 19 players make it to the NHL, including seven who have played in the League this season. All seven are on the Olympic roster: goalies Frederik Andersen<\/a> (Hurricanes) and Mads Sogaard<\/a> (Ottawa Senators) and forwards Ehlers (Hurricanes), Lars Eller<\/a> (Senators), Oliver Bjorkstrand<\/a> (Tampa Bay Lightning), Oscar Fisker Molgaard<\/a> (Seattle Kraken) and Jonas Rondbjerg<\/a> (Vegas Golden Knights).<\/p>\n Andersen, Ehlers, Eller and Bjorkstrand are the only players on Denmark\u2019s roster who have played more than four NHL games this season, though.<\/p>\n There have been 31 players born in Denmark selected in the NHL Draft, according to NHL Stats. The most recent was Mads Kongsbak Klyvo<\/a>, a forward who was taken by the Florida Panthers in the fourth round (No. 112) of the 2025 NHL Draft.<\/p>\n Defenseman Poul Popiel<\/a>, who was not drafted, was the first player from Denmark to play in the NHL, breaking into the League with the Boston Bruins in 1965-66.<\/p>\n \u201cGetting more draft picks into the NHL, even if you don\u2019t make it all the way, I think we\u2019ve kind of grown in that area,\u201d said Bjorkstrand, a 30-year-old Herning, Denmark native who was selected by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the third round (No. 89) of the 2013 NHL Draft. \u201cSo, overall, I think we\u2019re developing good players to either play in the NHL or the AHL or the top leagues in Europe. So, I think in that sense, I think we\u2019ve taken a big step, which is positive.<\/p>\n \u201cYou want to see more exposure in different leagues.\u201d<\/p>\n The hope is that the exposure of playing in the Olympics, coming on the heels of a fourth-place finish at the world championship (Denmark\u2019s highest since earning promotion the top division in 2002), will spark more interest and participation in the sport in the country. This is the second time Denmark will play in the Olympics and the first including NHL players.<\/p>\n Ehlers recalled how, \u201cguys were crying,\u201d following a 2-0 victory against host Norway in the qualifying tournament for the 2022 Beijing Games that clinched Denmark\u2019s first Olympic berth. NHL players ended up not going to Beijing, though, because of the COVID pandemic. Denmark, which was coached by Ehlers\u2019 father Heinz at the time, finished seventh in that Olympic tournament after losing 3-1 to the Russian Olympic Committee team in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n Denmark hosted its qualifying tournament for the 2026 Olympics in Ehlers\u2019 hometown of Aalborg from Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2024, and defeated Great Britain 3-1 and Japan 3-2 in overtime before clinching its spot at Milano Cortina with a 4-1 win against Norway.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an early time for playoff hockey, but it was fun to win that,\u201d said Andersen, who stopped 60 of the 64 shots he faced in the three games (3-0-0, 1.31 goals-against average .938 save percentage). \u201cJust the excitement and buzz in the city during that weekend was cool, so to come through and punch that ticket was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Eller, who had four points (two goals, two assists) in the tournament, remembers experiencing a combination of pride, joy and relief in the aftermath of the victory against Norway. He experienced similar when he became the first player from Denmark to win the Stanley Cup with the Washington Capitals in 2018, scoring the Cup-winning goal in the clinching 4-3 victory against Vegas in Game 5.<\/p>\n Eller noted that the celebration after winning the Cup went on much longer, \u201cso winning the Stanley Cup is another level,\u201d but earning Denmark\u2019s spot in its first best-on-best Olympics was still a feeling of great achievement.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember watching the Olympics on TV as a kid,\u201d said Eller, a 36-year-old Rodovre native who is the only player from Denmark to play 1,000 NHL games (1,159). \u201cI remember the first time I watched was in (Nagano) Japan in 1998 and I watched every other Olympics after that and now I finally get to play in one myself and it\u2019s going to be all the best of the best representing their national teams.\u201d<\/p>\n The level of competition will be step up from the world championship, when the participating countries don\u2019t have many of their best players available because they are playing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Canada\u2019s lineup for the world championship quarterfinal was almost entirely made up of NHL players, though, with the exception being forward Porter Martone<\/a>, who was selected by the Philadelphia Flyers with the No. 6 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft and is playing at Michigan State this season.<\/p>\n Conversely, Ehlers was on the lone NHL player in Denmark\u2019s lineup for its 2-1 victory that day in Herning.<\/p>\n \u201cThat game was insane,\u201d said Ehlers, who scored the tying goal with 2:17 remaining before Nick Oleson scored the winner with 49 seconds left. \u201cYou play at home in front of Denmark, in front of family and friends and you\u2019re able to beat Canada who has the best player in the League right now on that team, MacKinnon, and Crosby was the best player in the League for years. We were playing against a pretty good team, so to be able to win that game, that\u2019s probably the coolest thing I\u2019ve ever experienced in hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n Drawing parallels to the United States\u2019 upset of the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, it was dubbed by some as the \u201cDanish Miracle on Ice.\u201d Denmark also defeated Canada 3-2 in the 2022 IIHF World Championship, but that game was in the preliminary round, Canada\u2019s lineup was not nearly as star-studded and Denmark did not advance past group play in that tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Denmark already achieved what some consider its equivalent of the \u201cMiracle on Ice\u201d at the 2025 IIHF World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-1524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denmark","8":"tag-danmark","9":"tag-denmark"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}