{"id":378632,"date":"2025-08-27T21:31:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T21:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/378632\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T21:31:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T21:31:10","slug":"united-states-determined-to-get-over-this-hump-win-olympic-gold-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/378632\/","title":{"rendered":"United States determined ‘to get over this hump,’ win Olympic gold medal"},"content":{"rendered":"

PLYMOUTH, Mich. —<\/strong> Gold or bust? Bill Guerin didn\u2019t put it like that. But the general manager of the United States men’s Olympic hockey team made his expectations clear at the team’s orientation camp this week ahead of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to reach our ultimate goal,\u201d Guerin said Wednesday. \u201cThat\u2019s it, and we\u2019re going to do whatever we have to, to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s got great careers going on, and [you] play a big role on your team and this and that. It\u2019s not about [that]. It\u2019s about our flag, it\u2019s about our colors, and it\u2019s about our country. That\u2019s it. We\u2019re playing for our country, and that\u2019s the most important thing. Just keep thinking of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to make a push to get over this hump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States hasn\u2019t won Olympic gold in men\u2019s hockey since 1980 and a best-on-best men\u2019s tournament since the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. But it took Canada to overtime in the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game last season, after defeating Canada in Canada earlier in the tournament.<\/p>\n

It has a chance to prove something and leave a legacy in the Olympics.<\/p>\n

The big questions: Considering how close it was to winning the 4 Nations and how tight the margins are, how much needs to change to put it over the top? What specifically?<\/p>\n

The 4 Nations was an intense tournament, and the executives, coaches and players jumped back into the NHL season immediately afterward. They needed time to decompress and process everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cIt was hard. That was emotional. I was [messed] up for a couple days. It was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guerin, also GM of the Minnesota Wild, said the executives had a long dinner together at the NHL GM meetings in March. He said they asked each other, \u201cWhat do you think we could have done differently, better? What\u2019s got to change, or did we do a pretty good job?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was extremely happy with the coaching staff,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cI was out-of-this-world happy with how the players performed. I don\u2019t have any complaints. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud of the way everybody worked and played and all that stuff. But we missed, and that\u2019s where we have to find an edge. That\u2019s where we can\u2019t just sit here and say, \u2018Hey, great job. It was close.\u2019 That\u2019s just not good enough. We have to figure a way out to get over the hump, and we\u2019re looking at a lot of different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coach Mike Sullivan — then the coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, now the coach of the New York Rangers — said he asked his staff to jot notes while their feelings were fresh and then let the emotions settle. The coaches met at orientation camp here Tuesday and talked a lot about the process they implemented ahead of the 4 Nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas there anything we would do different?\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cDid we like it? Everything from how we communicated with our players and some of the things we did to roll out our team concept with them to our roles and responsibilities as a coaching staff, what we were all responsible for and how that went.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan tried to keep things in perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat [championship] game was very evenly matched,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cI mean, we had, for example, three Grade A scoring chances before they scored in overtime, and we had it on the sticks of guys that, if we could select the guys to have the opportunities, we would want those guys to have them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you know, I think sometimes we\u2019ve got to be careful that we don\u2019t overthink stuff. That team performed extremely well. In one game, anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States named the first six players to its roster June 16: forwards Jack Eichel<\/a>, Auston Matthews<\/a>, Brady Tkachuk<\/a> and Matthew Tkachuk<\/a>, and defensemen Charlie McAvoy<\/a> and Quinn Hughes<\/a>. The first five played in the 4 Nations. Hughes did not because of injury.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a sheer identity standpoint and style of play, we\u2019re trying to implement a game plan to set our core group of players up for success,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThat core group is going to be the core of the Olympic team also. They\u2019re America\u2019s best players, and you know the guys that we\u2019re talking about, right? I think from that standpoint, you\u2019re going to see a similar team.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a personnel standpoint, will there be some change? Possibly. I think a year in hockey is a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States brought 44 players to orientation camp (Matthew Tkachuk did not attend). Sullivan said he wanted the takeaway to be that they are in the running to make the team.<\/p>\n

Guerin said the executives and coaches have \u201cidentified a number of players that we\u2019ve got to really kind of get eyes on early and often\u201d during the first half of the NHL season. Players can emerge, and injuries can occur before the 25-man roster is named in early January. The tournament will be Feb. 11-22.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, the guys that played in [the 4 Nations] did a great job, but we have to go back to the drawing board and start over again,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cGuys have to be playing well. They\u2019ve got to be healthy. So it\u2019s really tough to say, like, \u2018How much is the roster going to change?\u2019 I don\u2019t know, and we\u2019ll see as time goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guerin said the United States will not try to assemble the 25 best players. It will try to build the best team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a full-time team,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cYou don\u2019t get all these practices and this and that, so you\u2019ve got to have guys buying into roles and positions and things like that. I mean, every guy downstairs is on their first power play or their first penalty kill or whatever (on their NHL teams), and that\u2019s just not the case when it comes to teams like this, so you need the chemistry. Player-wise, we could just pick, but you have to make sure it really fits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The good part is, the United States has developed so much depth, it feels it could ice two or three competitive teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [tough] part about it is, you\u2019re going to disappoint some people, and that\u2019s tough,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cThose are brutal phone calls to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan said Milan represents a chance to prove the United States is at the pinnacle of hockey. It also represents a chance for these players inspire a generation the way the 1980 and 1996 teams did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they did it already at the 4 Nations, but if you win, you win a gold medal, that\u2019s legacy stuff,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThey all have a unique opportunity to put their stamp on history, to write their own story, both as individual players but also maybe more importantly as a team, and that\u2019s what\u2019s at stake. So from that standpoint, yeah, the stakes are high. They don\u2019t get higher.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut how much fun is that? That\u2019s the way I look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLYMOUTH, Mich. — Gold or bust? Bill Guerin didn\u2019t put it like that. But the general manager of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-378632","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115102869070992646","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}