USA Olympic Men's Hockey Team

With the United States releasing their Men’s Olympic Hockey roster this past week, it got me thinking about how much fun the hockey at this year’s Olympics could have been if NHL players were allowed to go. With that in mind, I’ll be exploring what some of the more impressive rosters could have looked like, starting with the Americans. In doing this, I’ll be adjusting for injuries (for instance, the US roster will not feature Jack Eichel) in an effort to make the rosters as realistic as possible.

The Roster

Analysis

This team is scary good. On paper, they likely won’t appear to have as many superstar forwards as the Canadians, but let me tell you what they do have: goalscoring and goaltending, the latter of which being the potential weakness of the Canadian squad. Up front, they have six of the top 10 goal scorers in the NHL so far this year (Matthews, Kreider, Debrincat, Terry, Connor, Guentzel). Obviously Matthews is the primary threat, but Connor is a sniper on his wing and Debrincat and Kane have proven to be a lethal combination in Chicago. The obvious weakness in the squad is the centermen who come after Matthews - no disrespect to these guys but they’re not as threatening as the secondary centers of some other countries. It certainly hurts the Americans to be missing Eichel (and Pacioretty on his wing) in that regard.

On defense, this team is sneaky strong, with some very impressive scoring ability. The obvious omission from the squad is Quinn Hughes; I just didn’t feel like I needed his passing when the team already had Fox and Carlson to run the power play units, and frankly he can be a defensive liability. The squad’s other defensemen are not as flashy but they all do their jobs and as a unit they possess good speed to jump in on the rush.

The Americans’ true strength in this tournament would have been their goaltending. There are other countries with impressive starters, but no one else possesses a duo that can match Hellebuyck and Gibson in my opinion. I consider both of these two to be top-five goalies in the league when they’re on their game, and having both of them offers the US incredible flexibility in case one of them is not at their best.

Overall, I would go as far as to say that this team would have been a near-lock for a medal, and would have threatened the Canadians more than I care to admit.

*Sources: QuantHockey, NHL.com