‘The biggest thing was hockey sense and versatility’: Inside Team USA’s 4 Nations roster selection process

A few days before Thanksgiving, Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin was in Columbus to scout the Blue Jackets. After the game, he went for dinner and drinks with Chris Kelleher, his assistant general manager.

As the restaurant started emptying out, a few Blue Jackets players walked in, including defenseman Zach Werenski and his fiancé, Odette Peters. The couple said hello before sitting at their table.

“Should we tell him tonight?” Kelleher asked. “We won’t be able to tell many of the guys in person.”

So Guerin summoned the couple back. “I just need you guys to pick up the check, I forgot my wallet,” Guerin joked. “His fiancé was great, she said, ‘I’ll buy your dinner if you put him on Team USA!'”

“All right, you’re buying,” Guerin said. “Because he’s in.”

As Guerin relayed the moment — which was followed by hugs, smiles and Guerin indeed paying his own tab — he couldn’t help but feel sentimental. On Thanksgiving, the Team USA GM made calls to the rest of the players who made the 23-man 4 Nations roster.

Reactions were priceless. Rangers forward Chris Kreider told Guerin he’d do whatever it takes — even scrub the floors. Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin wanted the nod badly but wasn’t sure until he got the call. When Larkin heard he was part of Team USA’s plans all along, the center called it one of the greatest achievements of his career. “Noah Hanifin was like, ‘let’s goooo!'” Guerin said. “He couldn’t believe it.”

Then there was J.T. Miller, who is currently on a personal leave with the Vancouver Canucks.

“He’s working on things,” Guerin said. “But for us to stick with him, I think that meant a lot. It was a great conversation.”

There hasn’t been a best-on-best international tournament with NHL players since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. The 4 Nations tournament in February — replacing the NHL’s typical All-Star Weekend — is an overdue showcase of how much the game has grown, especially in the United States. Cultivating a 23-man roster was no easy task for Guerin’s management team, which worked closely with Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan, who will serve as Team USA coach.

“We have arguably the deepest pool of players in a long time in terms of guys who were in the conversation to make this team,” Sullivan said.

Guerin and Sullivan spoke to ESPN on a Zoom call this week about how they built the USA roster. Many of the decisions were tedious. They needed a roster not only to win a short-order tournament, but also to build chemistry for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan; the first Olympic hockey tournament to feature NHL players in 12 years.

Sullivan stressed that they will only have three practices as a team, which is why the group often used the term “plug and play” in evaluations.

“The biggest thing was hockey sense and versatility,” Guerin said. “There’s hardly any practice time. High hockey sense people. Guys that can play on the first to the fourth line.”

They put a premium on players who could toggle from center to wing, knowing an injury or illness bug is inevitable.

“I would add that competitive spirit was also a high priority,” Sullivan said. “Every team is going to have talent. It’s going to take more than talent to win this tournament.”

Team USA first had to consider the right blend of experience and rising talent.

“We did discuss the Patrick Kanes, the Ryan McDonaghs, guys like that,” Guerin said. “But you know, there’s some accomplished guys on this roster, so we felt like we didn’t really need to do that. The roster spaces were just so precious that hey, look, Jack Eichel has won a Stanley Cup. Matthew Tkachuk won a Stanley Cup. Charlie McAvoy has gone deep into the playoffs every year. So has Adam Fox, so has Jaccob Slavin.”

Sullivan jumped in to mention his former Penguins player, Jake Guentzel, who led Pittsburgh through its 2017 Stanley Cup run with 13 goals, including five game winners in his rookie season.

“These guys are the next generation, and they have won,” Guerin said. “Those are our older guys now, they’re 27 and 28. [Guentzel is] an old man at 30 now, but they have such great experience.”

Leaving off the 36-year-old Kane was especially difficult for Guerin. Kane is considered by many as the all-time greatest American-born player. He’s a two-time Olympian whose many clutch Stanley Cup playoff moments have led to his nickname “Showtime.”

Guerin made a point to meet Kane in person to tell him he wasn’t going to be included. The meeting took place in Detroit within the past two weeks.

“For Patrick, it was especially hard. It was difficult,” Guerin said. “He’s going to be a Hall of Famer, but he’s a Hall of Fame human being, too. He’s smart and understands it and he couldn’t have handled it any better. Very supportive. I can’t say enough about how great he was and that was not a great conversation to have, but I just have so much respect for him. I just hated delivering that news, but he understood.”

Guerin said they were down to about three spots undecided over the past two weeks.

“We wanted to give the last couple guys an extra look,” Guerin said. “To make sure we were making the right decisions.”

They resorted back to the same question: Who is going to make up the best team?

“This is where the hard decisions come in because there are some guys who are having very good years. We easily have just taken the top scorers or whatever trying to put together a team,” Guerin said. “But our staff needed to supply Sully and his staff with the type of players they need to carry out a certain game plan.”

That meant leaving off 23-year-old Cole Caufield, who ranks third in the league this season with 16 goals. Buffalo’s Tage Thompson, who has 13 goals through 20 games, was also left out. Both will still be in consideration for the 2026 Olympic team in Milan.

Team USA kept its selection process secretive, and Guerin’s work isn’t done.

“After the announcement, I’ll start reaching out to some players because we’re going to need some guys to be ready [as injury replacements],” Guerin said. “I think there’s some players that really have earned that phone call and explanation of why you’re not on the team.”

Guerin said there were a couple of players who were on the bubble from the start that “exploded into great years, and really just forced themselves on to the team, which we love.”

When asked for an example, Guerin didn’t hesitate: Winnipeg Jets wing Kyle Connor.

“We didn’t know if we had that type of player already; could we get that from another player?” Guerin said of Connor. “And he just absolutely took off and it was a no-brainer.”

One player who didn’t appear on many mock rosters was the New York Islanders‘ Brock Nelson. But Sullivan called Nelson someone who “personifies versatility.”

“Sully and I went to the world championships together this past May and he was on the team and just talked about it,” Guerin said. “He’s a Swiss Army knife. He could do everything. He can play center, he can play wing, he can take faceoffs, he can kill, he can power play.”

The roster ultimately features two players from Guerin’s Minnesota Wild team: 22-year-old defenseman Brock Faber and 23-year-old winger Matt Boldy.

Guerin said there’s a “maturity” to Faber that’s hard to describe. He competed at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing as a college player and led Team USA in ice time. Boldy burst onto the radar because of his performance at last spring’s World Championships.

“Matt played on a line with Johnny Gaudreau and Brock Nelson, and ended up leading the tournament scoring,” Guerin said. “Then he came back to Minnesota and had a really good start to his year. But at some point in time too, as we kept getting down to it, he stayed on the list. [Team USA management team] Chris Drury, Billy Zito, Tom Fitzgerald and Chris Kelleher, all guys that are not afraid to speak their mind, they’re not afraid to challenge me and they all think differently and that’s why I have them on the staff. I said, ‘Guys, come see our games. Tell me I’m not doing this just because they’re my players.’ And they’re like, no, we don’t need to. They’re on.”

The team features two sets of brothers — Matthew and Brady Tkachuk and Jack and Quinn Hughes.

“It’s a great story for American hockey and a great story for families,” Sullivan said. “None of us get here alone, and the people who support us most are our families.”

The tournament will also be the first time Sullivan gets to coach his son-in-law; McAvoy is married to Sullivan’s daughter, Kiley. “I’d much prefer to be playing [with] him on my bench than playing against him,” Sullivan said.

Speaking of families, the team will have decals on their helmets honoring Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, who tragically died in August. Johnny had competed for several USA Hockey teams, including at the World Championships in May.

As for the plan on net, Guerin said “whoever gives us the best chance to win will get the net.” Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck, Dallas’ Jake Oettinger and Boston’s Jeremy Swayman were near unanimous decisions — it would have been a bigger debate had Vancouver’s Thatcher Demko started the season healthy. (He has yet to play this season with a lower body injury.)

Sullivan said performances leading up to the tournament will dictate the goaltending plan. But it’s widely believed that Hellebuyck has the inside track to be the U.S. starter — though anything could change in two months.

The U.S. will open with a game against Finland on Feb. 13 before a much-anticipated prime-time showdown with Canada on Feb. 15 at the Bell Centre in Montreal, broadcast on ABC. Group play concludes against Sweden on Feb. 17. The championship is on Feb. 20 in Boston.

“I think in the past there’s been this whole focus, ‘We got to beat Canada.’ We don’t want to think like that,” Guerin said. “There’s four teams in the tournament. We have to play three other teams. We need to just worry about us and our game and carry out our game plan. And that in my mind, that’s what’s really going to give us success.”

Sullivan had a Zoom call with his coaching staff — John Tortorella, John Hynes and David Quinn — on Monday and gave them a homework assignment: formulate line combinations and a reasoning for why. “We’ll have that discussion,” Sullivan said. “I have my thoughts on it, but what I will tell you is just like here in Pittsburgh, we might start out with certain line combinations, but those things are sketched in pencil, not pen.”

Sullivan wants the team to play a speed game. That doesn’t necessarily mean just skating; speed to Sullivan also means ability to move the puck quickly and change the point of attack.

Sullivan and Guerin both have an infectious enthusiasm when talking about the potential of their team.

“We all feel a certain responsibility to bring our very best because these types of events don’t come around very often,” Sullivan said. “To represent your nation as an incredible honor. I also think the culmination of this group of players is a tribute to a whole lot of volunteer people around the country who have helped these guys along the way get to where they’re at. And those are thankless jobs and there’s a lot of people in rinks all over the United States right now that are doing the same thing for the next generation. And I don’t think they get the credit they deserve.”