Misha Donskov’s preparation hopes to lead Canada back to international ice hockey glory
In many ways, Misha Donskov and Hockey Canada needed each other at the same time.
While Canada was still winning medals in best-on-best competition at the international level, including the 2025 Four Nations Face-Off, the men’s program at the other annual competitions was falling short by lofty Canadian standards. The Under-20 team placed fifth in 2024 and 2025, and the senior national team failed to medal at the 2024 and 2025 IIHF World Championships.
For Hockey Canada, that was a flashpoint. A reason to reassess how things were run and to work on creating better consistency for both those tournaments, with a particular aim at fixing any problems before the 2027 World Junior Championships on home soil in Edmonton.
Donskov, who had spent the past decade in the NHL working for the Vegas Golden Knights and then Dallas Stars in both coaching and management roles, was looking for a new challenge, an opportunity to again blend those parts of his résumé into one.
That’s why in the spring of 2025, after the NHL Playoffs and third straight trip to the Western Conference Finals with the Stars, Donskov was named Hockey Canada’s vice president of Hockey Operations and the men’s national team coach.
The 2025-26 year was a hybrid launch. Donskov was an assistant coach on the Canadian Olympic Team, which took silver, an associate coach on Dale Hunter’s World Junior Team, which won bronze, and then the head coach of the senior national team at the World Championships.
This season, he’ll be the head coach of both the World Junior team and the World Championship roster, while also working in management roles supporting the Under-18 team at various tournaments.
“It’s been outstanding. There’s multiple parts to it. It’s a big preparation job, where I work closely with others to get ready for long- and short-term goals,” Donskov said. “It’s something that, for me, has been an incredible opportunity.”
And preparation is something Donskov has become known for in his coaching career, both on the individual and team level. Working his way from youth hockey to the OHL and then national team programs before his time in the NHL, Donskov has carved out a career in game prep and connecting with players. Stars general manager Jim Nill said in 2025 that Donskov was the best one-on-one coach he’s worked with, and at the Four Nations Face-Off and Olympics, Donskov was the most direct conduit to the players when it came to short-tournament game planning on Jon Cooper’s staff.
Why is that?
Talking to players who have played with Donskov at various levels, it’s his communication and ability to share data quickly and efficiently. Players in Dallas, which really ramped up its usage of day-to-day analytics the past few seasons, credit Donskov with making that transition go more smoothly.
For Donskov himself, it’s all about earning the player’s trust.
“I think that’s the foundation. You know, today’s generation of players are different. You have to find different ways to build trust with players on a group and individual level,” Donskov said. “And I don’t think, if you don’t have that, the communication will never work. So you have to know your players, know who and what they are as people, and build that into everything.”
It’s one of the things that Hockey Canada is hoping Donskov can bring to the World Junior team this winter on home soil. Donskov started laying the groundwork for that in late July at the Summer Showcase, which he said will be a huge building block for December’s camp.
Donskov said that’s one of the reasons he also built his staff with representation from each of the CHL leagues – Drew Bannister, Brad Lauer, and Jim Hulton – so there are better ongoing touch points in-season for a majority of the roster.
“We met in Calgary almost a month before we went to Windsor. We spent two days together, going through everything from soup to nuts,” Donskov said. “Looking at the foundation pieces, all the job descriptions, the philosophy of how we want to play, and how we plan to roll everything out.”
The proof, as Donskov admits, will be in how his teams perform on the ice in December and January. But for now, it’s all about finding the right preparation.