scored the \u201cGolden Goal\u201d<\/a> early in overtime to beat Canada on Sunday afternoon, Guerin leapt out of his chair, began high-fiving and hugging his fellow USA Hockey executive, and started waving his fist toward his family in the crowd as they jumped up and down. Then he sprinted down to the ice to join the talented, balanced roster of players and coaches he assembled.<\/p>\nGuerin has spent seven weeks getting ripped to shreds for leaving goal scorers at home for \u201crole players,\u201d as if it were some dirty term.<\/p>\n
But the decorated former USA Hockey player \u2014 one who took part in three Olympics and was part of the 1996 World Cup of Hockey-winning American roster \u2014 believed wholeheartedly that the way to win at the Olympics was to build a \u201cteam,\u201d not an All-Star team.<\/p>\n
You have to check. You have to be trusted by your coaches. And you have to be able to play in all situations.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why he said Saturday that winning gold would be the \u201chighlight\u201d of his USA Hockey career.<\/p>\n
The Americans have always been close in best-on-best in the Olympics and last year\u2019s 4 Nations. But they always finished second fiddle to Canada\u2019s supremacy.<\/p>\n
Not anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that Billy Guerin and I talked about from the very beginning was trying to build a team in the true sense of the word,\u201d coach Mike Sullivan said. \u201cSo we looked at a deep group of American talent. and these decisions were very difficult. They weren\u2019t easy. You look at how this group is constructed, there was a thought process that we had players that could play in all situations. And maybe the most important aspect of it is just the character of the group, the personality of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team was built with personality in the locker room. We were loaded with personality up and down our lineup. There are whisky drinkers and milk drinkers, and we got a lot of whisky drinkers on this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two of those \u201cwhisky drinkers\u201d are J.T. Miller and Vincent Trocheck, two veterans on a struggling New York Rangers team that isn\u2019t having the greatest of seasons.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re Billy Guerin-type players, and they play for Sullivan in New York. They are two guys Sullivan considered \u201cglue guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reality is, Fox, who is hurt, played himself off the Olympic team with his 4 Nations performance. The brass felt he couldn\u2019t handle the pace, and it wasn\u2019t just because of the mistakes he made before Connor McDavid\u2019s overtime winner. And as much as critics felt Guerin took Miller and Trocheck over Robertson, Caufield and others, that\u2019s not accurate at all.<\/p>\n
They were always coming because of the roles they fill, players who could accept fourth-line and penalty-kill duties.<\/p>\n
The debate for those players surrounded Tage Thompson, Clayton Keller and Kyle Connor, who didn\u2019t have a good 4 Nations and was scratched in the final game. But the United States staff still felt Connor earned the right to be an Olympian as one of the United States\u2019 best scorers. Unfortunately for him, while he did win gold Sunday, he played himself out of the lineup and spent the medal round scratched.<\/p>\n
Thompson scored the \u201cGolden Goal\u201d in the World Championship last May, the United States\u2019 first title there in 92 years. Keller also played in that 1-0 win over Switzerland, so the brass decided he could \u201ccheck.\u201d He replaced Connor in the lineup, played four scoreless games and only one 38-second shift Sunday, but the coaches still liked what he brought in the previous games.<\/p>\n
Thompson scored three goals and an assist in six games and did his job next to Dylan Larkin and on the No. 1 power play terrifically.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to come in here and help in any way I could,\u201d he said. \u201cThe guys in the room there made it really easy for me coming in as a new guy to a pretty familiar roster. And I think that\u2019s why we did so well throughout the tournament is just the group of guys we have in that locker room. The care and the love for one another, just playing selfless, sacrificing yourself for the betterment of the team, and I thought everyone in the lineup did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller and Trocheck were part of this roster because of the type of players they are: gritty, defensive and solid killers.<\/p>\n
And, to be frank, they did their jobs in Milan to perfection.<\/p>\n
They were part of an 18-for-18 penalty kill, including a 1:33 five-on-three in the gold medal game and another penalty kill in the final minutes of a tie game.<\/p>\n
Are they proud?<\/p>\n
\u201cF\u2014ing proud,\u201d Trocheck said. \u201cYeah, we heard all the talk. You know, maybe 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. And we were able to come here, and we had a job to do, and it was to be good penalty kill guys, faceoff guys, character guys. And we took that role and we ran with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Boldy said, \u201cThose guys were huge for us. I think it\u2019s such a tough decision. We\u2019re so fortunate that there\u2019s so many unbelievable American players. But those guys played such a huge role in this tournament. I think from inside our group, and knowing what those guys were capable of, and what they did at 4 Nations, and what we expected them to do, they did that and more. They\u2019re our best players. Finding ways to win faceoffs, get us out of jams and everything, they\u2019re special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the players left off this roster are some of defenseman Brock Faber\u2019s good friends. So he felt for those guys.<\/p>\n
But he felt the flak Guerin was taking from critics was ridiculous. Faber may be biased because Guerin is also his Minnesota Wild GM, but Faber has such trust in the job that guys such as Miller and Trocheck do.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople can say what they want, and most don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about,\u201d Faber said. \u201cWe know the guys we\u2019re talking about, guys like (Robertson and Caufield). They definitely could have been here. We could have a second team of Americans that could have went pretty dang far in the tournament, too, if we made one, right? That\u2019s the depth that we have, but Billy has to make the hard decisions and we just go out and play. But J.T., Vince, those two were unbelievable on the kill. I loved every time I was on the ice with those guys. We didn\u2019t get scored on, and they\u2019re a huge part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 To be clear, Bill Guerin doesn\u2019t need anybody to have his back. From before and after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5118],"tags":[229,147,93,5,54125,161,38,5280,21,35,4,2602,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-467408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-dallas-stars","10":"tag-detroit-red-wings","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-mens-olympic-ice-hockey","13":"tag-minnesota","14":"tag-minnesota-wild","15":"tag-minnesotawild","16":"tag-montreal-canadiens","17":"tag-new-york-rangers","18":"tag-nhl","19":"tag-olympics","20":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116116810977591389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467408","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=467408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}