The United States can compete in four nations “against any team,” Sullivan says

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. – The United States expects to compete well with Canada, Finland and Sweden when full rosters for the four-nation clash are announced on Wednesday.

“As far as the type of team you’re going to see, it’s going to be very talented,” coach Mike Sullivan said Tuesday. “It will be a talented group that I think can compete against any team in any environment. There is speed. There is skill. There is greatness. There is aggressiveness. There is defensive conscience. There are dynamic offensive players.”

“But as I’ve always said, every team is going to have talent. Talent alone won’t win the tournament, we don’t believe, and that’s why I think our challenge is to become a team.”

The United States named forwards Jack Eichel, Auston Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk and defensemen Adam Fox, Quinn Hughes and Charlie McAvoy as each team announced its first six players on June 28.

Each team had until Monday to submit the rest of their 23-man roster.

Finland and Sweden’s rosters will be announced on Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET during a live show produced by NHL Network and made available worldwide. ESPN will announce them during the 2 p.m. ET edition of “SportsCenter.”

The Canada and United States rosters will be announced Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. ET during live pregame shows on Sportsnet and TNT.

The seven-game tournament – the first best-on-best since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey in Toronto – will be played February 12-20 in Montreal and Boston.

The United States has a chance to win a best-on-best tournament for the first time since the 1996 World Cup.

“If you look at the potential pool, the players that were potentially available for this team, it could be one of the deepest groups of players the U.S. has ever had, and I think that’s a tribute to the evolution of the sport “Hockey in the United States,” Sullivan said. “This roster will feature players from all parts of the United States, not just what we would consider the hockey hotbeds of the United States, where hockey has deep roots. “

Sullivan praised the NHL’s expansion, USA Hockey’s American development model and grassroots initiatives across the United States.

USA Hockey has also led the U.S. National Team Development Program in Michigan since 1996. Every player added to the roster on June 28th has come through the program, and many more alumni are likely to be added to the roster. Will that give the United States an advantage as they try to work together as a team in a short tournament?

“Whether that’s an advantage or not, I think if you look at the core of the best players in the United States, there’s certainly a familiarity there,” Sullivan said.

The talent pool in the United States is so large that general manager Bill Guerin and his staff have had to cut stars from the roster. However, there are still more than two months left until the tournament and some of these players may still be needed.

“These are the difficult decisions that Billy had to make with the help of the rest of us, and that’s why it would be a better question for Billy than for me,” Sullivan said. “But what I can tell you is that this group talked about how to handle situations like this and how important it is to be respectful of these players and what they have accomplished in the NHL and in their previous work.”

“None of us have a crystal ball. We cannot say what will happen between the formation of the squad and the actual staging of the tournament. Something could change due to injuries or similar things. “But this.” would be the next step that our group has already discussed. It’s just a matter of implementing the game plan.

Sullivan, who won the Stanley Cup as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017, has been a part of USA Hockey as a player and coach for five decades. This is the first time he has led the United States in a best-on-best tournament. He will also coach the United States at the 2026 Olympics in Milan and Cortina.

“I am incredibly honored to be the coach of this team and am very excited for the opportunity to compete with these guys,” he said.