Is USA’s Olympic men’s roster deep enough to win Olympic gold?

To say that the United States have received some backlash for their roster selections is an understatement. While the Americans have traditionally shied away from taking the most talented possible roster to international tournaments, often leaving some offense on the table to add tougher and more defensive-minded options to the team. However, this tradition has never worked, as the United States have only silvered twice at the Olympics in five attempts with NHL players.

It doesn’t help that this year’s team saw some particularly questionable omissions, including their second-best defenseman in Adam Fox and three of the top four American goal scorers in the NHL this season in Jason Robertson, Cole Caufield and Alex DeBrincat.

Will the USA still have enough depth to go toe-to-toe with a team like Canada? Pete Blackburn breaks down if the Americans made the right choices for their roster, and if they can square up to Canada in the Milan Games Men’s Hockey Roundtable.

Pete Blackburn: I think it’s a bit twofold. No. 1, will they have enough scoring punch up front? The question that everybody’s gonna come back to at the end of this tournament is whether or not Bill Guerin made the right decision to go the route that he did, which surrounds not bringing guys like Cole Caulfield and Jason Robertson, who have been super productive offensively, but for some reason may not fit with the group that Guerin wanted to put together.

What’s gonna be lingering through the end of this tournament is gonna be leadership, and that’s not something that fully shows up on paper. But when you talk about USA closing the gap between Canada and what we saw at 4 Nations is – is there enough leadership on this USA group? Because when I look at Canada’s roster, there are probably like five guys that would be more in line to captain Team USA over the No. 1 guy to captain Team USA (Auston Matthews).

So I really think that the talent gap may have been closed there, but is there’s still that sizable gap between experience and leadership that may end up making a difference at the end of the day between two close teams.

You can watch the full episode here…