captured gold Sunday<\/a> at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, however, the chosen players sure made Guerin look good.<\/p>\n2026 WINTER OLYMPICS<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty f\u2013king proud, I\u2019ll be honest,\u201d said Vincent Trocheck, who had the gold medal hanging around his neck after he finished second in faceoff win percentage on the team (66.67) and third in the entire tournament. \u201cYeah, we heard all the talk, that we shouldn\u2019t be here. Listen, I\u2019m not naive. I know that there\u2019s players that have more skill to be in the NHL. We were able to come here and we had a job to do, and it was to be good penalty kill guys, face-off guys, character guys. We took that role and we ran with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That penalty kill was key for the Americans throughout the whole tournament, but especially in the gold medal game.<\/p>\n
Fending off a 5-on-3 power play for 93 seconds against the most dangerous five-man unit assembled maybe ever for Canada on Sunday, Trocheck and Rangers teammate J.T. Miller capped their Olympic debuts at the heart of a perfect 18-for-18 penalty kill unit.<\/p>\n
Team USA general manager Bill Guerin (back, center) after winning the Olympic gold medal on Feb. 22, 2026. Getty Images<\/p>\n
JT Miller (10) and Vincent Trocheck (16) during Team USA\u2019s win over Canada on Feb. 22, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n
\u201cJust commitment,\u201d Miller said of the PK. \u201cIt\u2019s really easy to get off course with a group like that. They can do stuff that\u2019s a little more abnormal to make you kind of get off the game plan and do something you normally wouldn\u2019t do. I just think we trusted our instincts. Our chemistry is really good as a unit even though we\u2019ve only played two tournaments together now. Just so thankful and lucky, and I can\u2019t believe it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was a carefully constructed lineup. Players who are used to top-line minutes and power play roles accepted fourth-liner work with smiles on their faces.<\/p>\n
Everyone had a job, and played it to perfection. For the players, a gold medal was their reward.<\/p>\n
For Guerin, the prize is some well-deserved confirmation that he was right.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe the most important aspect of it is just the character of the group, the personality of the team,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cAs I said to the players \u2014 you guys are probably going to laugh when I say it \u2014 but the team was built with personality in mind. We are loaded with personality up and down our lineup. There are whiskey drinkers and milk drinkers, and we\u2019ve got a lot of whiskey drinkers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 Billy Guerin knew exactly what he wanted to do with the first NHL-studded United States men\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[5,2685,3328,35,5190,5193,4,2602,36,43,422,3042,2787,31286],"class_list":{"0":"post-467362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-rangers","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-j-t-miller","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-rangers","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkrangers","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-olympics","16":"tag-rangers","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-usa-hockey","19":"tag-vincent-trocheck","20":"tag-winter-olympics","21":"tag-winter-olympics-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116116661448866227","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467362","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=467362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}