Some Thoughts on Olympic Rosters and How Decisions Get Made

Seems like a whole bunch of cooks in a kitchen

Well, it’s official: Jake Oettinger is going to the Winter Olympics, along with a lot of other players who were also on the second-place team at Four Nations last year. Jason Robertson was not among them.

The reveal was done in true USA Hockey fashion, which is to say they found the least impressive way you could possibly imagine to do it. Check it out here:

This is basically how I send video messages to people when I’m traveling abroad: “Hey, check out this cool place I’m at right now. Lots of stuff, right? Well…gotta go.”

As for the names on the USA roster itself, there were no surprises. Adam Fox and Jason Robertson weren’t deemed to be The Right Kind Of Players, while J.T. Miller and a few other notable names are still viewed as indispensable. As Bill Guerin told Michael Russo, they are building a team, and they want players who can “check.” Because after going 2-2 in four games in February, Team USA believes they have cracked the code.

But there’s not much else to say about Team USA as a whole that we haven’t covered here already, or that Sean didn’t succinctly describe this morning in his must-read piece:

Jason Robertson never really had a chance to make Team USA

Jake Oettinger will have a legitimate chance, I believe, to grab the number one job in net for the USA. And if Oettinger were to have a standout performance in Milan, he could well return to the NHL in the best form we’ve ever seen.

After outdueling Connor Hellebuyck in the playoffs last spring, everything has lined up for him to show that he can handle the pressure of big games on the biggest stages, no matter what criticisms have been leveled at him in the past. That can only be a good thing for Dallas, if it breaks that way.

Guerin declined to discuss players not selected to the roster in today’s media availability, but he did have this response when asked if Adam Fox’s omission was related to his mistake on the winning goal for Canada last February: