Hockey Sense Roundup: Latest on men's Olympic team; 2022 NHL Draft notes from the road

Plus: Quick-hitter thoughts on Central Scouting's mid-term rankings

Photo: USA Hockey

The U.S. Men’s Olympic Team will be announced this evening on ESPN2. All of the invitations are out. A large number, if not all, have already been accepted and the team that will compete for an Olympic medal is essentially built. There is still the pesky business of staying healthy for the next three weeks before arriving in the Beijing bubble.

The challenge of building a team from scratch, with only weeks to spare is one that I hope we’ll get a better feel for after all is said and done. When you think back to 2018 and the years before NHL players went to the Olympics, the process was much more measured and drawn out. Even in 2018, then GM Jim Johannson was able to build a team and even get in a test event — the 2017 Desutschland Cup — where a large chunk of Team USA’s roster, along with then coach Tony Granato were able to see what they had.

Prior to 1998, Olympic preliminary rosters were built in the summer and cut down over the course of the season. That’s still how it goes for the U.S. Olympic women’s team. Before Nagano ‘98, men’s Olympic candidates played a full schedule as a team and players had to sacrifice a season of collegiate eligibility or a year of earning money in pro hockey while working toward the ultimate goal of competing at the Olympics.

There is none of that for this team. What I find kind of fascinating about it is that there’s no time to overthink, no time to overanalyze. There’s not a ton of time to sit and watch video from all corners of the world. That’s part of why you are going to see an awful lot of very recent World Junior Championship attendees on the roster. They’re known commodities to this staff to some degree.

Mike Hastings and Brett Larson, just named to the Olympics staff have been part of recent World Juniors — Larson as an assistant in 2020 and Hastings as the head coach in 2019. John Vanbiesbrouck, Team USA’s general manager, has been the GM of the junior team since 2019, taking over for Johannson who unexpectedly passed away the year before. Marc Boxer, Team USA’s assistant GM, is USA Hockey’s manager of junior hockey and was often charged with helping build the World Junior A Challenge rosters, which deepens the well a little bit on players with prior U.S. national team experience and some extra track record outside of IIHF events. That extends to veterans now playing overseas, too. Players with international track records often get preference, but that’s not 100 percent the case this time around. There’s a lot of input from a lot of different angles.

Hastings and Larson also should have a relatively good handle on top college players to target from previous games this season. The staff has also spent time canvasing the hockey world from scouts, to team execs, to everyone that might have some friendly advice to share.

It has to come together quickly and based on what I know about this staff, no one wants to leave the Olympics with any excuses. They’re playing to win no matter how far-fetched that sounds. Their strategy of targeting youth may end up paying off, but there’s no doubt there is an uphill climb to gold, especially when they run into Russia’s team of KHL all-stars which will include a lot of 2018 gold medalists and recent or future NHL standouts.

Only Czechia has named its men’s roster yet for the Olympics, so it’s hard to even know what the U.S. will be up against today. Many of the other countries have centralized senior national teams for a number of tournaments including the recent Channel One Cup where even Canada iced a team. That may give them an advantage in familiarity, but I don’t think the talent edge those rosters had are as severe as you might expect. They’re all more experienced, but I don’t know if they’re necessarily altogether better or more talented top to bottom.

The other thing that I do think will happen in the hasty rush to build a roster is there will probably be a few mistakes here or there in terms of roster decisions. To be honest, I think it’s going to be hard to know for sure if other options would work better than what they bring. Also, there’s a lot of other things that have to be considered when building this team in order to be cleared for participation at the Olympics. Things like vaccination status, recent infections and any other medical clearances necessary have to be vetted in extremely short order. If you’re not vaccinated, you can’t go to China. All of that is a big reason why I don’t think the staff should get crushed too hard publicly if certain players are left out, at least not until or if we ever find out the full rationale for why Player X made it and Player Y didn’t.

I still think any criticism will have to be measured and viewed through the prism of the unprecedented process by which this team had to be put together.

Speaking of players, here are some more updates on the Olympic roster, some already reported and some that I’m reporting now.