U.S. men’s hockey roster is set, and Bill Guerin won’t be second-guessing any decisions – The Athletic

Over the past few days, Bill Guerin’s entire management team converged on Minnesota in the middle of a blizzard to make the final decisions on the men’s hockey roster for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.

Asked how big the debates were or if everybody was pretty much in lockstep, the American general manager and U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer deadpanned, “Well, … we are now.”

After a hearty laugh, Guerin, who doubles as GM of the Minnesota Wild, told The Athletic in all seriousness, “The reason I have the guys that I have on staff is because even if they agree with me, they challenge me. We all think in different ways. We all have different ideas. And it’s like, ‘Hey, I agree with you, but let’s think of it this way or let’s think of this.’ And that helps make the decision. And I valued every single one of their opinions. And they pushed me where we feel that we’re in a good place heading into the Olympics.”

Guerin’s management team includes USA Hockey executive director Pat Kelleher and assistant executive director John Vanbiesbrouck, as well as Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman, New York Rangers GM Chris Drury, New Jersey Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald, Wild assistant GM Chris Kelleher and Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito. Rangers coach Mike Sullivan, who will coach the Americans in Italy, also had a giant say.

The roster deadline to submit teams is Wednesday. And while Hockey Canada will call players in the morning and announce its team at noon (ET), the United States’ team will be announced on NBC’s “Today” show on Friday morning.

Guerin will begin calling the players who made the team and didn’t make the team on Wednesday morning.

The Americans already have several players expected to be on the Olympic team banged up, guys such as anticipated captain Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Zach Werenski and Jaccob Slavin. But with so much hockey still left to play in January and early February before NHL players head to Italy, Guerin knows that the players named to the roster Friday won’t all necessarily be healthy in five weeks. So a big part of his conversations Wednesday with the players who didn’t make the initial list of 14 forwards, eight defensemen and three goalies will be to lift their spirits and inform them they could be first out of the bullpen if there’s an injury.

“I know I’m going to be delivering disappointing news to some people, but I need to be honest with them and communicate the truth and what reality is,” Guerin said. “There’s a lot of hockey between now and then, we just don’t know what’s gonna happen and just ‘be ready.’ That’s all I can really say to them, and I will.”

When you have such a large pool of terrific players to choose from, there will be snubs and there will be plenty of second-guessing.

It’s expected that really good players and even star goal scorers may be left off the roster in lieu of checking forwards who may be better suited for bottom-six, more defensive and penalty killing roles. The Americans loved how they played during the 4 Nations Face-Off last February, where they lost in the championship in overtime to Connor McDavid and the Canadians.

And in Guerin’s mind, if you can’t check, you can’t play in the Olympics. This is about building a “team,” he says, not an “All-Star team,” and when he sees the level of how players such as McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar are performing this season on their NHL teams, it reaffirms to him the need to check and try to slow opposing stars down.

“I’m a firm believer in building a team,” Guerin said. “It’s not like we’re gonna go out and take a bunch of fourth liners. You know what I mean? These are all very good players. But you need players to play a role. You need your top players to be able to check. Just look at the 4 Nations. Matthews, Eichel, MacKinnon, McDavid, (Sidney) Crosby, the Tkachuks, they were all checking. It wasn’t like this wide-open pond hockey. They were all playing like that and I just don’t think it’s going to be much different. I really don’t.”

When Guerin accepted the job to stand atop the U.S. management team for the 4 Nations and 2026 Olympics, he knew there would be hard decisions and criticisms after the fact.

So he expects critics to take issue with some of the Americans’ decisions.

“Listen, I make my decisions and I move ahead,” Guerin said. “I don’t care what people say on social media. I don’t care what the experts say. All I care about is the team. I have a job to do, I’m doing it to the best of my ability. If I’m right, I’m right. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and we think we have put together the best team we can to help bring us a gold medal.”

With that said, we’re not expecting many changes from the 4 Nations Face-Off roster.

On Dec. 23, we published a story explaining the debates we felt the American staff was having.

A week later, this is our projected Team USA roster:

Forwards

Already named to the roster (4): Likely captain Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Brady Tkachuk and Matthew Tkachuk

Rest of our projected forwards (10): Matt Boldy, Kyle Connor, Jake Guentzel, Jack Hughes, Clayton Keller, Dylan Larkin, J.T. Miller, Brock Nelson, Tage Thompson and Vincent Trocheck

4 Nations subtraction: Chris Kreider

Not on 4 Nations: Keller, Thompson

Notable omissions: Kreider, Jason Robertson, Cole Caufield, Patrick Kane, Alex Tuch, Alex DeBrincat, Matthew Knies, Logan Cooley, Troy Terry, Cutter Gauthier

If this is right, as electrifying a scorer as Caufield can be, the largest scrutiny will come with leaving Robertson off. Boldy leads all American-born NHLers with 25 goals, but Robertson is second with 23 and leads all NHL players with 20 in 23 games since Nov. 11.

Just gonna go ahead and leave this here. pic.twitter.com/CahQfXtVw2

— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) December 29, 2025

Defensemen

Already named to the roster (2): Quinn Hughes, Charlie McAvoy

Rest of our projected defensemen (6): Brock Faber, Noah Hanifin, Seth Jones, Jake Sanderson, Jaccob Slavin, Zach Werenski

4 Nations subtraction: Adam Fox

Not on 4 Nations: Jones

Notable omissions: Fox, Lane Hutson, John Carlson, Jackson LaCombe, Alex Vlasic

We think Jones has earned a spot, so if that’s the case, it was likely Hanifin vs. Fox for the eighth defense spot, even though the brass loves LaCombe, and Hutson and Carlson have had strong seasons. Fox making the team makes sense because it would give the United States a fourth right-shot defenseman as insurance, but there’s no doubt the brass was concerned about pace of play being an issue for Fox at the 4 Nations. And even though he was in the midst of a better season before getting hurt Nov. 29, we just think that the lasting impression of that tournament and specifically McDavid’s winning goal is embedded in the minds of the key decision makers. So we’ll see who landed the spot, but obviously with Sullivan, Drury and assistant coach David Quinn all part of the Rangers, this is a touchy subject if Fox doesn’t make it.

Goalies

Our projected goalies (3): Connor Hellebuyck, Jake Oettinger, Jeremy Swayman

4 Nations subtraction: None

Notable omissions: Thatcher Demko, Spencer Knight, Dustin Wolf

We don’t think any of the three goalies from the 4 Nations have provided any reason to make changes.