NEW YORK – The roster for the 2014 U.S. Olympic men's hockey team is still very much up in the air, but we know two shoo-ins will be the Wild's Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.
They were two players on the 2010 team that won the silver medal in Vancouver.
"When we put together that team, our hope was that those players would mature, and in 2014, we'd have a good nucleus. That's exactly the way it's played out," said David Poile, Team USA's general manager who doubles as Nashville's GM. "Parise and Suter are arguably two of the best players in the NHL.
"Ryan in a 48-game schedule with a no conference crossover was top three for the Norris and arguably if other people would have seen him could have been the Norris Trophy winner. Zach Parise is on everybody's All-Star team. So those are two good guys to start with."
Poile, his large management team and Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma, who will coach the Americans in Sochi, Russia, were introduced Saturday morning at a news conference in Manhattan.
They made clear that winning gold is the expectation. The Americans won silver in 2002 in Salt Lake City and in Vancouver. They didn't medal in Nagano in 1998 or Turin in 2006. Poile said the Americans have to put together the proper roster to succeed on the larger 200-foot-by-100-foot international rink.
"In 2010, you heard [then-GM] Brian Burke using words like truculence," Poile said. "I'm not saying that's not important, but that may be less important in 2014. Skating is important."
The United States will hold an orientation camp Aug. 25-29 at the Washington Capitals' Iceplex in Arlington, Va. The Wild's Jason Pominville might earn an invite, although Poile wouldn't confirm. Though born in Canada, Pominville has dual citizenship because his mother is American. He played for the United States in the 2008 world championships.
