U.S. Olympic men’s hockey roster named, youngest in 28 years

By OlympicTalkJan 14, 2022, 9:30 AM EST

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The U.S. Olympic men’s hockey roster, in the NHL’s absence, is its youngest since 1994, thanks to 15 current NCAA players, including the first teens on the Olympic team in 30 years.

“The thinking definitely wasn’t a keg party at a frat house,” U.S. general manager John Vanbiesbrouck joked. “This is for the here and now. Not once were we thinking of a distant future. We responded quickly [to the NHL withdrawal on Dec. 22], we picked a path and a core group.”

Defensemen Jake Sanderson and Brock Faber, forwards Matty Beniers and Matthew Knies and goalie Drew Commesso, 19-year-olds on the recent world junior championship team, would be the first teens to play for the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team since Scott Lachance and Keith Tkachuk in 1992, according to Olympedia.org.

Beniers will be the youngest man to play for the U.S. Olympic hockey team since 1984, when the roster included future NHL stars Pat LaFontaine (18), Eddie Olczyk (17) and Al Iafrate (17).

Commesso would be the youngest U.S. goalie to play in Olympic history, according to Olympedia.

Forward Brian O’Neill is the lone returnee from the 2018 Olympic team — which also didn’t have NHL players and had four collegians — that lost in the quarterfinals to the Czech Republic. O’Neill has played for Finland-based Jokerit in the KHL since 2016.

O’Neill is among seven players on the 25-man roster who have played in an NHL regular season game, with forward Nick Shore having the most experience (299 games).

Pat Nagle, a 34-year-old goalie for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms of the AHL, is the oldest player on the team. Nagle, who has never played an NHL regular season game, has played for 10 minor-league teams, including the Comets (Utica, N.Y.) and the Komets (Fort Wayne, Indiana), according to hockeydb.com.

MORE: U.S. athletes qualifies for 2022 Winter Olympics

2022 U.S. Olympic Men’s Hockey Team Roster

Goalies: Drew Commesso, Strauss Mann, Pat Nagle
Defensemen: Brian Cooper, Brock Faber, Drew Helleson, Steven Kampfer, Aaron Ness, Nick Perbix, Jake Sanderson, David Warsofsky
Forwards: Nick Abruzzese, Kenny Agostino, Matty Beniers, Brendan Brisson, Noah Cates, Sean Farrell, Sam Hentges, Matthew Knies, Marc McLaughlin, Ben Meyers, Andy Miele, Brian O’Neill, Nick Shore, Nathan Smith

Of the pros, five play in Russia (KHL), two in Sweden, one in Germany, plus two in the AHL.

The average age is 25 years and change, beating the 2010 team as the youngest since NHL participation began in 1998.

Former New York Rangers coach David Quinn was elevated to U.S. Olympic head coach on Dec. 27, replacing Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan after the NHL withdrew.

The NHL announced its withdrawal from Olympic participation on Dec. 22, citing the coronavirus pandemic significantly impacting its regular season. At the time, it had canceled 50 games. It also did not participate in 2018 after a lack of concessions from the IOC, IIHF or the NHL Players’ Association to entice participation in PyeongChang.

The U.S. is the second of the 12 nations to name its Olympic men’s hockey roster after the Czech Republic. It is grouped with Canada, Germany and host China.

The top team from each of the three groups, plus the best second-place team overall, advance directly into the quarterfinals. The rest advance to a play-in game for quarterfinal berths.

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Swiss extend best streak in curling history; Norway continues epic winter sports season

By OlympicTalkMar 27, 2023, 9:37 AM EDT

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Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni extended the most dominant run in world curling championships history, skipping a women’s team to a fourth consecutive title and pushing an unbeaten streak to 36 consecutive games.

Tirinzoni, along with Alina Pätz (who throws the last stones), Carole Howald and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann, beat Norway 6-3 in Sunday’s final in Sandviken, Sweden.

They went 14-0 for the tournament after a Swiss team also skipped by Tirinzoni also went 14-0 to win the 2022 World title. Tirinzoni’s last defeat in world championship play came during round-robin in 2021 at the hands of Swede Anna Hasselborg, the 2018 Olympic champion.

In all, Tirinzoni’s Swiss are 42-1 over the last three world championships and 45-1 in world championship play dating to the start of the 2019 playoffs. Tirinzoni also skipped the Swiss at the last two Olympics, finishing seventh and then fourth.

Tirinzoni, a 43-year-old who has worked as a project management officer for Migros Bank, is the lone female skip to win three or more consecutive world titles.

The lone man to do it is reigning Olympic champion Niklas Edin of Sweden, who goes for a fifth in a row next week in Ottawa. Edin’s teams lost at least once in round-robin play in each of their four title runs.

Norway extended its incredible winter sports season by earning its first world medal in women’s curling since 2005.

Norway has 53 medals, including 18 golds, in world championships in Winter Olympic program events this season, surpassing its records for medals and gold medals at a single edition of a Winter Olympics (39 and 16).

A Canadian team skipped by Kerri Einarson took bronze. Canada has gone four consecutive women’s worlds without making the final, a record drought for its men’s or women’s teams.

A U.S. team skipped by Olympian Tabitha Peterson finished seventh in round-robin, missing the playoffs by one spot.

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Ilia Malinin eyed new heights at figure skating worlds, but a jump to gold requires more

By Philip HershMar 25, 2023, 1:10 PM EDT

At 18 years old, Ilia Malinin already has reached immortality in figure skating for technical achievement, being the first to land a quadruple Axel jump in competition.

The self-styled “Quadg0d” already has shown the chutzpah (or hubris?) to go for the most technically difficult free skate program ever attempted at the world championships, including that quad Axel, the hardest jump anyone has tried.

It helped bring U.S. champion Malinin the world bronze medal Saturday in Saitama, Japan, where he made more history as the first to land the quad Axel at worlds.

But it already had him thinking that the way to reach the tops of both the worlds and Olympus might be to acknowledge his mortal limits.

Yes, if Malinin (288.44 points) had cleanly landed all six quads he did instead of going clean on just three of the six, it would have closed or even overcome the gap between him and repeat champion Shoma Uno of Japan (301.14) and surprise silver medalist Cha Jun-Hwan (296.03), the first South Korean man to win a world medal.

That’s a big if, as no one ever has done six clean quads in a free skate.

And the energy needed for those quads, physical and mental, hurts Malinin’s chances of closing another big gap with the world leaders: the difference in their “artistic” marks, known as component scores.

Malinin’s technical scores led the field in both the short program and free skate. But his component scores were lower than at last year’s worlds, when he finished ninth, and they ranked 10th in the short program and 11th in the free this time. Uno had an 18.44-point overall advantage over Malinin in PCS, Cha a 13.47 advantage.

FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Chock, Bates, and a long road to gold | Results

As usual in figure skating, some of the PCS difference owes to the idea of paying your dues. After all, at his first world championships, eventual Olympic champion Nathan Chen had PCS scores only slightly better than Malinin’s, and Chen’s numbers improved substantially by the next season.

But credit Malinin for quickly grasping the reality that his current skating has a lot of rough edges on the performance side.

“I’ve noticed that it’s really hard to go for a lot of risks,” he said in answer to a press conference question about what he had learned from this competition. “Sometimes going for the risks you get really good rewards, but I think that maybe sometimes it’s OK to lower the risks and go for a lot cleaner skate. I think it will be beneficial next season to lower the standards a bit.”

So could it be “been-there, done-that” with the quad Axel? (and the talk of quints and quad-quad combinations?)

Saturday’s was his fourth clean quad Axel in seven attempts this season, but it got substantially the lowest grade of execution (0.36) of the four with positive marks. It was his opening jump in the four-minute free, and, after a stopped-in-your tracks landing, his next two quads, flip and Lutz, were both badly flawed.

And there were still some three minutes to go.

Malinin did not directly answer about letting the quad Axel go now that he has definitively proved he can do it. What he did say could be seen as hinting at it.

“With the whole components factor … it’s probably because you know, after doing a lot of these jumps, (which) are difficult jumps, it’s really hard to try to perform for the audience,” he said.

“Even though some people might enjoy jumping, and it’s one of the things I enjoy, but I also like to perform to the audience. So I think next season, I would really want to focus on this performing side.”

Chen had told me essentially the same thing for a 2017 Ice Network story (reposted last year by NBCOlympics.com) about his several years of ballet training. He regretted not being able to show that training more because of the program-consuming athletic demands that come with being an elite figure skater.

“When I watch my skating when I was younger, I definitely see all this balletic movement and this artistry come through,” Chen said then. “When I watch my artistry now, it’s like, ‘Yes, it’s still there,’ but at the same time, I’m so focused on the jumps, it takes away from it.”

The artistry can still be developed and displayed, as Chen showed and as prolific and proficient quad jumpers like Uno and the now retired two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan have proved.

For another perspective on how hard it is to combine both, look at the difficulty it posed for the consummate performer, Jason Brown, who had the highest PCS scores while finishing a strong fifth (280.84).

Since Brown dropped his Sisyphean attempts to do a clean quad after 26 tries (20 in a free skate), the last at the 2022 U.S. Championships, he has received the two highest international free skate scores of his career, at the 2022 Olympics and this world meet.

It meant Brown’s coming to terms with his limitations and the fact that in the sport’s current iteration, his lack of quads gives him little chance of winning a global championship medal. What he did instead was give people the chance to see the beauty of his blade work, his striking movement, his expressiveness.

He has, at 28, become an audience favorite more than ever. And the judges Saturday gave Brown six maximum PCS scores (10.0.)

“I’m so happy about today’s performance,” Brown told media in the mixed zone. “I did my best to go out there and skate my skate. And that’s what I did.”

The quadg0d is realizing that he, too, must accept limitations if he wants to achieve his goals. Ilia Malinin can’t simply jump his way onto the highest steps of the most prized podiums.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.

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2022 U.S. Olympic Men’s Hockey Team Roster

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