Should the United States have dominated more in the preliminary round?
The United States’ men’s hockey team defeated Germany 5-1 on Sunday in the final game of the preliminary round of the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics.
While the U.S. finished 3-0-0-0 with a plus-11 goal differential, clinching first place in Group C, some are wondering if they played as well as they could, as each game was closer on the ice than it appeared on the scoresheet.
On Sunday’s post-game show with Jonny Lazarus, NHL Network’s E.J. Hradek stops by to discuss Team USA’s preliminary round and if they have more to give as we enter the medal round.
Jonny Lazarus: For Team USA, this is now a larger conversation. I don’t know what you were saying going in, but I know I was saying the U.S. was going to breeze through the preliminary round with opponents like Latvia, Denmark and Germany, who are not the strongest.
Despite what the scores say, I wouldn’t say they breezed through it. Saturday’s game was a little bit of a sweat, and today’s game wasn’t exactly the easiest 5-1 win. Is that a good thing that they didn’t breeze through? Did you expect more dominance?
E.J. Hradek: I did, I think we have high expectations for both Team USA and Team Canada when you look at the depth of rosters they both have. Did I agree with you? I didn’t think it was the strongest pool; in fact, I thought it was the weakest pool. I thought they’d win by larger margins.
But it just goes to show you that the games are played on the ice and that Team USA is trying to come together. I think, also, that these guys understand that no one is going to be eliminated in these first three games. At the end of the day, they did really what they were supposed to do: They won all three games, they won by a wide enough margin.
The problem for Team USA isn’t so much how they played, but that they’re likely going to play Sweden, who I think when I look on paper, they probably have the third-best roster of players.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…