Best-on-best hockey returns this February in the form of the 4 Nations Face-Off! This event will pit teams representing Canada, the United States, Finland and Sweden head-to-head to see which will reign supreme heading into the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The rosters for the four national teams were announced last week. But if you’ve followed Canadian history at all, you’ve probably noticed that Alberta marches to the beat of its own drum. So what would happen if Alberta decided to send its own team to this type of event?

We took our stab at putting together a 23-man roster – three goaltenders, seven defencemen and 13 forwards – with all the coaches and players hailing from Alberta. (In situations where players were born in Wild Rose Country but represent another nation internationally, such as William and Alex Nylander, we graciously allowed them to represent their other country instead.)

Let’s dive in. Everyone’s listed with their NHL club and hometown included. (Stick-taps to OilersNation’s Zach Laing for the idea.)

As general manager of Team Alberta, I’ve opted to pull in coaching expertise in various roles from throughout the league. Craig Berube (TOR/Calihoo) is our head coach, supported by assistant coaches Jeremy Colliton (NJD/Blackie), Ryan McGill (NJD/Sherwood Park) and Rocky Thompson (PHI/Calgary), and goaltending coach Robbie Tallas (FLA/Edmonton).

Alberta has three goaltenders in the NHL this season, so they’re on the team by default. A Skinner/Thompson tandem is admittedly kind of fun to think about, and we would probably lean on Thompson as the starter right now given he’s having a better season than his Edmonton counterpart.

This is a surprisingly stacked defensive group. Here are our proposed pairings:

Morrissey-Makar
Mahura-Parayko
Middleton-Spurgeon
Zellweger

We don’t have many qualms about this group. There are good shutdown guys. There are good puck-movers. It’s a nice mix.

We like this forward group, but we don’t love it. On one hand, we can produce some pretty balanced forward lines:

Hall – Point – Gallagher
DeBrusk – Dach – Guenther
Holloway – Krebs – Neighbours
Howden – Steel – Aube-Kubel
Greig

On the other hand, aside from perhaps Point, is there any scary-good, elite skill on this forward group the way there is on the defensive group with Makar or Morrissey? We don’t think so, and as a result the team’s pretty reliant on scoring-by-committee… and on making sure their goalies and defence can bail them out from time to time.