The US males’s Olympic hockey crew goes to enter the event in Italy subsequent month as a medal contender. It’s a excellent crew on paper, and probably the greatest they’ve ever despatched to the Olympics.
The issue is the roster is not so good as it could possibly be, or maybe must be, because the mind belief behind it continued to get caught in the identical outdated mindset that has restricted them in so many best-on-best tournaments.
The most important challenge the Individuals have in these tournaments is that they will by no means rating sufficient objectives in an important video games when the competitors is at its greatest. It occurs repeatedly. Previously, a shallow expertise pool was simple in charge for at the very least a part of that.
That’s not the case because the American expertise pool is deeper than it has ever been, however administration refuses to totally faucet into it.
As an alternative of merely taking their greatest, most proficient gamers, they proceed to attempt to construct their roster like it’s an NHL crew with NHL constraints. As an alternative of taking high goal-scorers like Jason Robertson (Dallas Stars), Cole Caufield (Montreal Canadiens) and Alex DeBrincat (Detroit Red Wings) for this 12 months’s crew, they took function gamers and “glue guys” like New York Rangers teammates J.T. Miller and Vincent Trocheck.
They appeared like unhealthy choices on the time. These choices proceed to look worse because the Olympics get nearer.
Workforce USA roster snubs making administration look unhealthy
Whereas probably the most controversial inclusions on the roster, particularly Miller and Trocheck, proceed to battle for a Rangers crew that is without doubt one of the worst within the NHL, a few of the largest snubs are shining.
On Friday evening, Robertson scored his thirtieth aim of the season for Dallas. That not solely retains him atop the goal-scoring checklist amongst American-born gamers, however it additionally ties him for second in all the NHL. His omission stays one of the gorgeous ones since NHL gamers began taking part in within the Olympics on the 1998 Nagano video games.
On Saturday, Caufield recorded a hat trick to present him 29 objectives on the season. That places him into the highest 5 in all the NHL. He and fellow Workforce USA snub, defenseman Lane Hutson, additionally simply placed on a present this previous week towards the Minnesota Wild, teaming up for a spotlight reel game-winning aim within the third interval. Wild common supervisor Invoice Guerin can also be the final supervisor for Workforce USA and had a front-row seat for it.
Together with these performances, DeBrincat additionally scored his twenty seventh aim of the season on Saturday evening for the Purple Wings. That additionally locations him within the top-10 within the league.
All of which means that as of Saturday, 5 of the top-10 goal-scorers within the NHL are American-born gamers.
Solely two of them (Tage Thompson of the Buffalo Sabres and Matt Boldy of the Wild) are on the Olympic roster.
There isn’t a approach to sugarcoat how unhealthy that appears for the American team-building course of. Administration higher hope they win, as a result of in the event that they lose as soon as once more as a consequence of a scarcity of goal-scoring, they’ll have some critical inquiries to reply.
