From medals and flag-bearers to viral sensations: Winterhawks leave a stamp on 2026 Winter Olympics

The Portland Winterhawks’ 50th season has had plenty of cause for celebration.

As the team looks back on a half-century of developing NHL talent- picking up three WHL Championships, two Memorial Cups, and countless other memories along the way- the team has also left its mark on the Olympic stage.

The Winterhawks led all CHL teams with seven alumni participating in the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy, including Canadian silver medalist Seth Jarvis and Finnish bronze medalist Henri Jokiharju.

Former Portland alternate captain Nino Niederreiter and Simon Knak suited up for Switzerland, while 2013 WHL Champion Oliver Bjorkstrand and 2019 WHL Player of the Year Joachim Blichfeld represented Denmark.

Rihards Bukarts also made his second trip to the games with Latvia.

Another two Winterhawks alumni, USA’s Seth Jones and Latvia’s Rodrigo Abols, were initially named to their respective national teams, but were ultimately unable to participate in the tournament due to injury.

Winterhawks President and General Manager Mike Johnston, who transitioned away from a dual GM/Head Coach role in 2024-25, coached every one of Portland’s graduates at the Olympics.

“It’s really special,” Johnston reflected. “You’re taking them in at 16, and they’re really immature players, they’re immature off the ice, and then they really grow into young men, and you see them- like Seth Jarvis winning a silver medal and Henri Jokiharju winning a bronze medal and playing on the biggest stage.”

Niederreiter, who served as flagbearer for Switzerland in the opening ceremony, became the first Swiss player to surpass 1,000 NHL games earlier this season.

But as Johnston recalls, the speedy forward was considered an unconventional pick when he was called second overall in the 2009 CHL Import Draft.

“That was (my) first Euro pick ever,” Johnston explained. “At that time, most teams were going for Russian players, Czech players. They were trying to get Swedes and Finns. I had coached internationally for several years, so I had contacts in different countries. I’ll never forget it- a friend of mine in Switzerland just said, ‘Hey, I know you’re going to look to the limelight of some of these bigger countries, but we have some really good Swiss players that are coming up’. And he mentioned Nino Niederreiter. The second player he mentioned was Sven Bartschi. So we took Nino the one year, and we took Bartschi the next year. We kind of went off the map a little bit. Then we went to Denmark and took Björkstrand. They weren’t the glamour countries that everybody was looking towards, but I knew that the Swiss kids and the Danish kids were real quality people, and if they could be a top player with their country, then I knew they’d probably do well in our league.

When I think of that, I think, wow, time has gone by fast, because I remember his (Niederreiter’s) parents coming over, and they were really naive to the NHL and WHL and the hockey path in North America. It was a big leap of faith for them to send him over here, because there weren’t a lot of Swiss players coming over at that time.”

That natural trepidation also rings true for hockey families across Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

If you want to see how much a young player can grow up through their time in the league, Johnston believes you don’t need to look any further than Winnipeg’s Seth Jarvis, the 4 Nations gold medalist who has become a fan-favourite for his agile play with the Carolina Hurricanes- and his offbeat, headline-grabbing interviews.

“I saw Seth as a 14-year-old playing in Winnipeg in the summer, and I knew at that time, a year before our draft, that that was a player we were going to try and get,” Johnston added. “When he first came (to Portland), most of the guys in the room, if you asked them about Seth, they’d say, ‘Oh, he’s really quiet. Doesn’t say very much’. But the one thing about Seth was, as he started to get more mature and get more comfortable in the league, his personality came out. He is who he is. He’s not scripted, and that’s why people take to him. He’s just a genuine person, and teammates, coaches rally around those types of guys.”

Jarvis went on to win the Brad Hornung Memorial Trophy as the WHL’s Most Sportsmanlike Player in 2019-20. His time in the Rose City also saw him overlap with Blichfeld, Jokiharju and Knak.

With the 2026 Winter Olympics in the books, the Winterhawks are focused on another postseason push after two consecutive deep playoff runs.

And as fans continue to pack the glass palace, you can’t help but wonder which of the Hawks of today could represent their countries in the future.

Winterhawks join forces with Canada’s sweetheart

Like millions of other people across the world, Winterhawks Manager of Community Relations and Communications Alyssa Mehalovich was locked in to the daily Olympic action.

She was glued to alpine skiing when she caught an interview with two-time Canadian Olympian Cassidy Gray, who revealed that the Canadian athlete she most wanted meet was Jarvis.

“Me watching that, the lightbulb went off in my head immediately,” Mehalovich said. “I was like, Okay, we have to do something with this.”

Jarvis and Gray had already been going viral at the games for reasons unrelated to their performances on the ice and snow.

Gray quickly popped off as an online sensation for her blunt, hilarious social media stories and behind-the-scenes look at life at the games, while cheekily dubbing herself Canada’s Sweetheart.

Jarvis’ motley crew of best friends from Winnipeg captured hearts of their own in 2025 after driving 30-plus hours from Manitoba to Boston to watch Jarvis compete in the 4 Nations Face-Off Final.

Naturally, when Jarvis was named as a replacement for the injured Brayden Point, the gang was flown out to Italy.

Within two hours of Gray’s initial interview shouting out Jarvis airing, Mehalovich and the Portland staff reached out to Gray and had a custom Winterhawks Jarvis jersey freshly pressed and in the mail- along with a surprise to unbox.

Anything for Seth’s best friend 🤗 pic.twitter.com/ffssQa3T6q

— Portland Winterhawks (@pdxwinterhawks) February 21, 2026

“We only have about three of those Seth Jarvis bobbleheads left in the whole organization,” Mehalovich laughed. “I figured this would be a good time to give one of them away, so we included that in there as kind of a little special gift.

She was on board for it, and we sent her the jersey about an hour later, and she got to wear it for the gold medal match… She has a really good kind of vibe about her, and it’s very similar to Seth’s.”

It’s super nails bestie 🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️ pic.twitter.com/J5UkNXDIOJ

— Portland Winterhawks (@pdxwinterhawks) February 22, 2026

Naturally, Gray and the self-dubbed Good ole Canadian boys met up for one of the most chaotic side-quests of the games- and she even got to meet Jarvis!

The introduction we NEEDED🤩 pic.twitter.com/3pHC3vpZUz

— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) February 17, 2026

While Jarvis ultimately left Milan with a silver medal, the social media saga made for some golden memories- and the Winterhawks hope to team up with Gray again in the future.