{"id":458873,"date":"2026-02-15T16:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T16:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/458873\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T16:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T16:10:13","slug":"team-usa-is-hardly-playing-sabres-tage-thompson-and-the-numbers-are-confusing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/458873\/","title":{"rendered":"Team USA is hardly playing Sabres’ Tage Thompson, and the numbers are confusing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Team USA is hardly playing Sabres’ Tage Thompson, and the numbers are confusing<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tage Thompson has been one of the best players in the NHL this season for the Buffalo Sabres<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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That apparently hasn’t given Team USA the confidence to play Thompson much at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.<\/p>\n

On Saturday in the 6-3 win over Denmark, Thompson got the least ice time of any of the United States’ active skaters.<\/p>\n

Here’s the breakdown:<\/p>\n

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It’s fascinating in general to see that Kyle Connor, Dylan Larkin and Thompson line essentially utilized as the fourth line even though they would’ve been expected to be the third line coming in to the tournament.<\/p>\n

The Brock Nelson line has shown good chemistry and earned some more opportunities, so it’s a tricky situation.<\/p>\n

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But this is less about the lines and more about Thompson.<\/p>\n

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The quirky part is that that U.S. has Thompson on its top power play line. Clearly, he’s well thought of by the coaching staff.<\/p>\n

Despite that, they haven’t figured out a way to get him out there at even strength more often. Thompson has great even strength stats this season with the Sabres, so it shouldn’t be a concern about that.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of tournament left to figure this out, starting with Sunday against Germany in the final group stage game.<\/p>\n

The sooner the United States can figure out how to maximize Thompson, the better.<\/p>\n

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More Olympics news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team USA is hardly playing Sabres’ Tage Thompson, and the numbers are confusing originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5100],"tags":[3189,1034,1107,229,5133,595,5,1290,21767,4,1108,1712,3255],"class_list":{"0":"post-458873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-sabres","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-brock-nelson","10":"tag-buffalo","11":"tag-buffalo-sabres","12":"tag-buffalosabres","13":"tag-dylan-larkin","14":"tag-hockey","15":"tag-kyle-connor","16":"tag-kyle-cushman","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-sabres","19":"tag-tage-thompson","20":"tag-team-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116075523397010672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}