Who should be Team USA's GM at the 2022 Olympics?

Stan Bowman, Bill Guerin among favorites; Plus: Abby Roque makes her Beijing case

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With arguably the greatest talent pool in 20 years, the U.S. Men’s Olympic Team roster is going to be really interesting and probably awfully fun to put together. Who gets the honor of being the architect of that squad remains unclear, but Team USA’s general manager position is sure to be a coveted one.

After a disappointing showing at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey where the U.S. went winless in its worst performance in a best-on-best since the 1976 Canada Cup, it’s been a long wait to see what kind of progress has been made. With no NHL players at the Olympics in 2018, the six years between best-on-best has given the U.S. a chance to build upon some of its most promising birth years providing a better top end of talent and greater overall depth.

The NHL, IIHF and IOC have not yet announced a formal agreement among those parties to clear the way for NHL players to participate in the Olympics, but that appears to be a formality. Whether it’s a given or not has not made USA Hockey overly anxious to name their management team for the highly-anticipated 2022 Winter Games. Once that’s official, the expectation is USA Hockey will announce its management team.

That decision belongs largely to a quartet of decision makers at the top of USA Hockey. That includes executive director Pat Kelleher, president Jim Smith, assistant executive director for hockey operations John Vanbiesbrouck, and international chair Gavin Regan. The field is largely narrowed down for them already as USAH will certainly choose a GM from its national team advisory group which includes all of the American GMs in the NHL. As of right now that’s Stan Bowman, Jeff Gorton, Bill Guerin, Bill Zito, Lou Lamoriello, David Poile, Don Waddell, Tom Fitzgerald and Kevyn Adams. Chris Drury should also be thrown into that mix as he has already served as men’s national team GM for the Men’s World Championship once and will do so again in 2021.

Waddell, Poile and Lamoriello have all served as a GM for either the Olympics or World Cup of Hockey, which doesn’t eliminate any of them, but makes it less likely. Also, Adams is in his first year in NHL leadership, so I don’t think he’d get a particularly long look for the top job but will be part of the process for the first time. Brian Burke being in a leadership role in the NHL likely puts him back in the USA mix in some role, not that he’d ever be far from it anyway, but you’d have to think USA is going in a different direction for the GM position as Burke already served in that role to near-golden success in 2010.

The generation of Poile, Lamoriello, Waddell, Burke, and you can throw in Ray Shero and Dean Lombardi have been part of the process for decades now. Their input will continue to be valued, but the 2022 management team has a chance for this group to pass the torch to a younger generation of executives who may do things a little differently, may have a different perspective and may help USA Hockey get over the hump. Regardless of who runs the team, you can believe that the elusive Olympic gold is on every one of these executives’ minds.

Timing is everything and whoever gets to be the 2022 GM will have the talent to at least contend. The Americans will not be the favorite so long as Canada has its player pool, but the talent deficiency is not nearly as dramatic as it has felt in 2014 and 2016.

With that in mind, here’s a look at the most likely candidates to run the U.S. team in Beijing:

Stan Bowman, Chicago Blackhawks

Bowman is the longest-tenured member of USA Hockey’s advisory group who has not already served as GM of the Olympic or U.S. World Cup team. Bowman was, however, the co-GM of Team North America at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, which is another feather in his cap for taking on this job. Basically, it’s his turn if we’re going off of the rotation, which shifts as GMs get hired and fired.

With all due respect to Blackhawks fans who have been frustrated with their general manager over recent years, loudly so, at times, there are few more qualified candidates for the job of Team USA GM. With three Stanley Cups and co-architecting that Team North America that far exceeded expectations at the tournament and played an exceptionally fun brand of hockey, the resume speaks for itself.

The fact that it’s “his turn” is probably the biggest reason he gets the nod. That’s just kind of how things work. But I think there’s a good case for him being the best person for the job, too.

If you were frustrated by how U.S. teams were picked in 2014 and 2016, Bowman provides a difference on a number of fronts. The 47-year-old Bowman has often been the youngest person in the room. His approach is different than those who have held his job most recently. As such, I don’t think there’s as much romanticism for him for the past U.S. teams and what was done in the past. Stylistically, the teams that Bowman helped build in the heyday of the Blackhawks, played a brand that can still work today.

Those teams won with exceptional skill, speed and defensemen who were aggressive in keeping the pressure on the other team. You look at the player pool that Bowman has to work with and all of the pieces to building a similar team are there to do the same kind of thing.

Plus, he got to see first hand this current generation of top American NHLers take their first significant steps in altering the trajectory of the league. Team North America was proof positive that the game is going to belong to that generation if it doesn’t already. The U.S. is going to have to lean more heavily from players born in 1993 or later.

Chicago’s current woes have come largely due to salary cap constraints created in the wake of winning Stanley Cups. There have definitely been mistakes in terms of big contracts handed out that won’t meet their value and trades here and there that were a bit lopsided. That said, Chicago is far exceeding expectations this season as Team USA lock Patrick Kane continues playing at an MVP level.

Bowman’s not a hot name due to the Blackhawks’ downward trend in recent years, but you can’t say he doesn’t understand how to build a winning roster. And there’s no salary cap at the Olympics.

If we simply look at track record over the entire body of work as an executive, no one else in this group comes close. USA Hockey has to turn the page and I think Bowman is the guy who can help them turn it, but he’s not the only one vying for the job.

Bill Guerin, Minnesota Wild

One of the wrinkles in the decision process this time is that there is a former Olympian among the pool of candidates. There is a lot of allure to including a player that was part of the previous golden generation of American talent that won the World Cup in 1996 and finished with a silver medal in 2002. He’s seen first hand what it takes to win in best-on-best tournaments and came close enough to Olympic gold as a player that there’s no doubt the competitor in him wants another shot at gold on the management side.

Guerin is in his second season as GM with the Minnesota Wild, but was AGM in Pittsburgh for back-to-back Stanley Cups and won two as a player as well. Being such a decorated player in USA Hockey’s past and U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer gives him a different kind of cachet. If anyone were to “jump the line” so to speak in the rotation of GMs it would be him.

Given his relative inexperience as a GM, however, I think the more likely role for Guerin is to be Team USA’s assistant GM, which still gives him a huge hand in the process and direct contact with the player pool. He’s got to be on the staff one way or another.

Jeff Gorton, New York Rangers

Closing in on 30 years in a variety of rolls in NHL front offices, the Rangers GM is one to watch. He’s been part of USA Hockey’s advisory group for multiple years and has been involved in the process before. Having a deep scouting background helps, too. That’s probably the biggest reason he’s got a shot at having an outsized role in this process. Gorton has a proven track record of identifying and evaluating talent.

It’s been a bit of a wild year in New York and Gorton has shown he won’t shy away from making tough decisions and being pragmatic about things. That steadiness is certainly a welcome trait in a potential GM.

Bill Zito, Florida Panthers

Having served as a GM at the 2018 Men’s World Championship while an AGM with Columbus, Zito has gotten his in with USA Hockey. He’s also helping transform the Florida Panthers into a noise-maker in the Central Division. Zito also has had a knack for talent identification and a lot of experience in international hockey primarily as a player agent.

As an agent, Zito represented some top American players including Brian Rafalski, who was named the best defenseman of the 2010 Olympics. On the team side, Zito was the GM of the Lake Erie Monsters when they won the Calder Cup. He also was GM for the U.S. Men’s National Team in 2018, when the Americans won bronze led by a group that included likely Olympians Patrick Kane, Dylan Larkin, Quinn Hughes, Charlie McAvoy and Johnny Gaudreau. I still think Zito being a relatively new NHL GM makes him a longer shot, but can’t be counted out since he’s been tapped by the organization before.

Tom Fitzgerald, New Jersey Devils

While Fitzgerald was never an Olympian like Guerin, he does offer another former player who’s worn the USA crest at the World Championship, who is incredibly well respected within USA Hockey. There’s a good chance he’s in the mix as a key decision maker for this team. Fitzgerald has done a really nice job taking over in New Jersey rebuilding on the fly. Like Zito and Adams, he may still yet be a little too new for his role for USA to comfortably select him, but he definitely deserves consideration.

Chris Drury, New York Rangers

I don’t think Drury will be in the mix for GM since USA will almost certainly go with a current NHL GM, but he absolutely should be for an assistant general manager or senior advisor type position. As an assistant GM with the Rangers, he’s involved in everything with the team and is helping oversee the development of the team’s robust prospects pool.

Drury appears to be on the fast track to leading an NHL club. He was reportedly in the mix for the Penguins GM job before taking his name out to stick with the Rangers. It’s not hard to imagine him in the top role there one day.

Drury’s reputation as a player speaks for itself as he was a winner at just about every level. That still carries a lot of weight. One place he didn’t win as a player was the Olympics as he was part of three Winter Games and took silver twice, in 2002 and 2010. The way he played in the 2010 Olympics should be part of his overall legacy as a player because that was a guy at the tail end of his career who laid it all on the line. Even if it’s just to be around the team, that’s a guy you want on staff. He’s not all that far removed from being a player and has been on the ice for some of the greatest Olympic games of the NHL era. That’s experience uniquely his own.

Stray Thoughts

One thing that I hope happens this time around is that the general manager and the management team as a whole is kept relatively tight. As much as I think there should be some advising from USA Hockey’s comprehensive advisory group, nine (or more) people is too many to be involved in picking this team. Once the GM is selected, he can and should seek out input from all of those individuals, but the GM has to be the one to set the vision for the team and make the decisions within that vision.

I had advocated in print after the World Cup that USA Hockey disband the advisory group and start from scratch. I remember one USA Hockey executive taking exception to that pretty significantly because of the respect he had for the men that are part of that process. I respect that group a hell of a lot too and I know they all want to win, which was never in question for me, but the process absolutely had to be revamped or at least tweaked.

There is a lot of institutional knowledge and understanding of the game in that group and while I’ll readily admit I don’t know anywhere close to as much as they do, they don’t need to bend over backwards to make every voice heard. It hasn’t worked in the last two major events, so why keep going back to it? Keep the staff tight and make sure the decisions being made are coming from one central philosophy to eliminate noise.

That’s another reason I think Bowman makes a lot of sense. He’s not as beholden to the process of old. This management team is also dealing with an entirely different group of players than the one they had to work with at the World Cup and in Sochi.

Thinking back to when the Blackhawks were getting ready to go on their run of Stanley Cups, they were young, fresh and played the brand of hockey they were built to play. Fast, skilled, aggressive and at times overwhelming without any fear or reverence to their more experienced, more physical and sometimes better opponents.

That’s this group of Americans. There’s the veterans who can still do the job like Patrick Kane, but there’s going to be a reliance on Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Seth Jones, Zach Werenski, Charlie McAvoy, and on and on that have routinely won at other levels with Team USA. They’re used to going into tournaments as the best team or at least with the idea that they’re going to be tough to beat.

Everyone on the planet knows that Canada is the team to beat in any and all Olympics, but one of the key differences between this generation of U.S. players and all of their predecessors, especially their most immediate ones, is that there is no reverence for the mystique of Canada. They’ve beaten Canadian teams at other levels enough to know that they can and I’m sure they believe they will.

One of the biggest mistakes of the 2016 World Cup was that the team was the hyper-focus on building a team that could specifically beat Canada. USA felt they needed heaviness, physicality and grit to do it. There wasn’t as much of an effort to fight fire with fire, which is probably the only way to stand a chance anymore. That’s not to say you can’t find gritty players to play a role, but they have to be good, too.

The building blocks are in place to build a balanced, talented team that is both hard to play against and super fun to watch. Whoever gets the nod to be the GM of this team will have all the tools right there to put a winning product on the ice.

News and Notes

Abby Roque has arrived

I was on scouting trips Saturday and Sunday and wasn’t able to watch the PWHPA’s Dream Gap Tour games at Madison Square Garden on TV, but one of the things I heard and saw coming out of the weekend was how good Abby Roque had played. Her’s is absolutely a name to know for Beijing as she could end up playing an outsized role for Team USA in their quest to repeat gold.

Roque has been on the radar for years, but has not yet made her women’s senior national team debut though played on the women’s U18 team twice. The Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., native really took a big step at Wisconsin last season, finishing with 58 points in 36 games, but didn’t get to complete her senior season thanks to the pandemic shutting everything down. One big step Roque made was in goal scoring last season, scoring 26 after having 30 in her previous three seasons combined.

Over the two games this weekend, she scored three goals and added four assists in her first real showcase against the best of the best. There was a lot of hype surrounding her as a youth player and she was a top NCAA recruit, but her development has been more gradual. She’s hitting her stride at the absolute right time as she makes her case for her Olympic debut.

Women’s Olympic Prep

We still don’t know much about the 2021 Women’s World Championship which is supposed to be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia sometime in the spring. Halifax county, however, just announced renewed coronavirus mitigation restrictions that has shut down team sports once again. Indoor gatherings cannot exceed 100 people as of right now.

The Canadian maritimes have had some of the most stringent restrictions, which makes planning an international event near impossible. The players have expressed their frustration publicly, and rightfully so. There has been no public word of a contingency plan or an alternate location.

The IIHF and USA Hockey worked together to relocate the 2018 Men’s U18 World Championship to Texas as it was not going to be feasible to hold the tournament at USA Hockey Arena as previously planned given more stringent restrictions in Michigan. There’s a bit of a hybrid bubble kind of situation developing for the tournament in Texas, but there’s still a lot to be learned about how that all will actually work.

Moving that tournament, however, showed that the IIHF and its governing bodies will be flexible if they need to be. The 2021 Women’s World Championship is a critical event for Olympic preparation. If they can make the men’s U18s work, they can and. should certainly do it for the elite women who have already been robbed of the event one year and have been left in limbo for even longer.

All of that aside, sources say the USA-Canada series that is often held over the course of the season prior to the Olympics is going to happen next season. Somewhere around nine games between the rivals will be played in various spots across North America in the buildup to Beijing. Odds are most, if not all of those games are going to be televised as well. Hopefully they’ll be able to squeeze in a four nations and get some of the top European teams a chance for some pre-Olympic reps as well.

Men’s U18 World Championship

With the recent announcement that the Dallas Stars have partnered with USA Hockey to hold the men’s under-18 championship in Frisco and Plano, Texas, things are starting to take shape. There are hopes to sell tickets to the tournament and NHL scouts will be allowed to attend, unlike the World Juniors this year.

It sounds as though there will be a hybrid bubble type situation with players isolated from non-essential personnel. It might be more like the NCHC’s Pod in Omaha in December than the World Junior bubble in Edmonton. Additionally, it sounds like rosters will be expanded to 25 players, similar to the World Juniors. The IIHF often allowed 20 skaters and three goalies. That will be 22 and three now.

The tournament is set to run April 26-May 6, the latest this particular event has ever been staged. We’ll have plenty of coverage of the buildup of that event which will feature dozens of top players for the 2021 NHL Draft.

Coming Wednesday:

I spent the weekend at the first two live hockey games I was able to attend since the pandemic began. I got a chance to see the Chicago Steel against the Waterloo Black Hawks and the U.S. U18 Team take on the Dubuque Fighting Saints. I’ll share some of my reports from what I saw as well as a ton more on various prospects that played.

That will also be the first post that is exclusive to our paid subscribers. If you liked what you read from the free posts over the last week, I hope you’ll consider taking the next step and becoming a paid subscriber.