U.S. says ‘it’s our time’ to win Olympic gold medal at Milano Cortina 2026

The opening ceremonies for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 will be held on Feb. 6.

Six days later, 25 American NHL players will take the ice in Italy with one ambitious, yet formidable, goal.

“We’re going over there to win gold,” Boston Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy said, “and anything other than that won’t be successful.”

McAvoy said this in August at the United States Men’s Olympic Orientation Camp in Plymouth, Michigan, where U.S. Olympic hopefuls gathered to hear about logistics and discuss the mission once the puck drops at the Olympics.

“I don’t think we’re dancing around it, either,” McAvoy said. “I think we’re pretty comfortable talking about how it’s our time. We have an expectation amongst our group here. All [the] guys that are here, everybody understands the message, which is we’re going to win gold.”

It’s a prize the United States men’s team has been unable to capture since the “Miracle on Ice,” nearly 46 years ago in Lake Placid, New York.

Explore NHL.com's Coverage of the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026

The players on that 1980 team will never be forgotten, even though only a few of them made much of a dent in the NHL. Still, Disney made a major Hollywood movie about them. Mention the name of captain Mike Eurizione to hockey fans, and they will know exactly who he is, what he did and where they were when he did it.

And that is exactly why U.S. coach Mike Sullivan believes that when his team opens play against Latvia on Feb. 12, there will be more at stake than a shiny piece of gold to wear around each player’s neck.

“If you win a gold medal, that's legacy stuff,” Sullivan, the New York Rangers coach, said at the orientation camp. “And I think as a player, that's how you build your legacy. We say in the NHL all the time, what separates the greats of the game is the legacy. Where you build your legacy is not the regular season. Nobody cares how many points you get. It's how many Stanley Cup rings you have.

“So when you think about Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux and Mark Messier and guys like that, you think about Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and these guys now, it's all about winning Stanley Cups. That's their legacy, right? Well, gold medals are in the same category, right? That's their legacy also.”

It’s a challenge the players fully embrace.

“The expectations are high, and that’s what we expected as players coming in,” Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman said. “We understand that we have a job to do when we get to Milan. It’s to win a gold medal. And you know, there's a reason why we're not being quiet about it, because we know that we have something to prove.”

What they want to prove is that the United States is the best hockey-playing country in the world. It stems from the belief that the group that heads to Milan in February will be the most talented U.S. men’s hockey roster of all time, and from their painful, yet exhilarating, near miss in the 4 Nations Face-Off in February.

In that tournament featuring the best NHL players from the U.S., Canada, Finland and Sweden, the U.S. reached the championship game, losing 3-2 in overtime to Canada on a goal by Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers.

That loss was a catalyst for Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin to call for more of his countrymen to play for the U.S. the following spring in the 2025 IIHF World Championship in Stockholm to “prove themselves and play for their country.”

Reflecting on those comments in August, Larkin, who was injured and couldn’t participate in the Worlds, said he didn’t mean to challenge his fellow Americans to play in the event, but rather that it was a call to all that it was time for the U.S. to start winning.

“I felt like Canada always wins these kinds of games,” Larkin said at the orientation camp about the 4 Nations final, the fourth straight best-on-best international tournament won by Canada. “You know, it’s as tight as can be, one shot and they won, and I felt we deserved better.

“We need to start finding a way to win and do that.”

The U.S. roster for the Worlds, which coincides with the Stanley Cup Playoffs, was a mixture of established stars like Swayman, Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski (who each played in the 4 Nations) and Nashville Predators defenseman Brady Skjei, and rising stars hoping to play in Milan, like forwards Clayton Keller of the Utah Mammoth, Matty Beniers of the Seattle Kraken, Shane Pinto of the Ottawa Senators, Conor Garland of the Vancouver Canucks, Frank Nazar of the Chicago Blackhawks, Tage Thompson of the Buffalo Sabres and Will Smith of the San Jose Sharks.

The result was the U.S. winning its first gold at the Worlds since 1933, and more importantly, adding to the growing momentum of USA Hockey and the feeling that the Olympics in Milan will be the next logical step in that story.

“It can't be the pinnacle without all the other events USA Hockey is a part of,” Swayman said. “And that's a big thing, is that whenever I put on the USA jersey, I know that we're representing, and we have to represent the USA the right way.

“And in order to get to the Olympic level, we have to do it at every level prior to that. So that's something that I hold true to myself, that this has been a process and a long time coming, and that's why I'm so grateful to be a part of this next chapter.”

* * * *

The 2026 Olympics will be the first with NHL players since 2014 and sixth with League participation. And though Sullivan described the challenge as fun, the results of those tournaments have been anything but. Frustrating is more like it.

The first foray into the Olympics with NHL players was 1998 -- two years after the U.S. won the World Cup of Hockey -- and it was a rough one for the Americans. The U.S. won once and lost three times in four games in Nagano, Japan, getting eliminated with a 4-1 loss to the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals.

In 2002 in Salt Lake City, the U.S. reached the gold-medal game but lost to Canada 5-2. At the Torino Olympics in Italy four years later, the U.S. again lost in the quarterfinals, this time 4-3 to Finland.

The biggest heartbreaker came in 2010 in Vancouver. The U.S. again reached the gold-medal game but lost to Canada 3-2 in overtime on Sidney Crosby’s Golden Goal. In 2014 in Sochi, Russia, Canada finished off the U.S. again, winning 1-0 in the semifinals. The U.S. lost the bronze-medal game 5-0 to Finland, finishing without a medal.

No Olympic gold since a bunch of then-no-name college kids stunned the Soviet Union and the world in upstate New York in February 1980, then defeated Finland for the gold.

That has to change, United States and Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin said.

“We're just trying to reach our ultimate goal. That's it, and we're going to do whatever we have to, to do it,” Guerin said. “Everybody's got great careers going on, and, you know, play a big role on your team, and this and that. It's not about that, it's about our flag. It's about our colors and it's about our country. That's it. We're playing for our country, and that's the most important thing. Just keep thinking of that.”

But Guerin, who played for the U.S. in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 Olympics, knows just wanting to win gold means nothing. Everyone wants to win gold. It’s how you prepare and approach the task at hand that could make the difference in winning and losing.

“We need to go through the process,” Guerin said. “We need do the right things and be the right kind of team to give ourselves a chance. If we just go, ‘Gold or bust’ in there … No, let's go at it the right way, with the right mentality, the right attitude. Play the games. Let's go through the hard things, and we'll get there.”

Guerin and Sullivan each used the word “process” when talking about the 4 Nations Face-Off experience and what lessons the U.S. could learn from that tournament when it heads to Milan.

Each agreed the 4 Nations came and went in the blink of an eye. And with the NHL playing regular-season games up until Feb. 5, there is not a whole lot of time to establish chemistry with the roster.

Which is why they said to expect a good chunk of the players who donned the U.S. sweater for the 4 Nations to be in Milan.

But not all. In fact, until the rosters are named around Jan. 1, U.S. players in the NHL are looking to show they belong in the Olympics.

Six players -- forward Jack Eichel (Vegas Golden Knights), defenseman Quinn Hughes (Canucks), forward Auston Matthews (Toronto Maple Leafs), McAvoy, and forwards Brady Tkachuk (Senators) and Matthew Tkachuk (Florida Panthers) -- have been named to the preliminary roster, which was announced June 16. Each of the Tkachuk brothers is out with a long-term injury but is expected to be ready for Milan.

“Nothing is written in stone,” Guerin said. “We have to take the players that are going to form the best team. And a big part of that is the chemistry, the personalities, how everybody matches, how everybody bought in. That's a really big part of it.

“Because it's not a full-time team. You don't get all these practices and this and that. So you have to have guys buying into roles and positions and things like that. I mean, every guy is on their first power play or their first penalty kill or whatever and, like, that's just not the case when it comes to teams like this. So you need the chemistry.”

Said Sullivan: “It has to be built like that. I think that's where in the past when teams, Olympic teams or whatever, have been built like that, you just take the best players, but you don't communicate with them in what this actually is, what role they're going to be [in], how they have to embrace it, then it can be really tough expecting to go in and fly. But if you can get the best and have them play roles and have them buy into what they're doing and know that their role is important. And then that's when you have something.”

* * * *

New York Rangers defenseman Adam Fox was one of the first six players named for the 4 Nations roster but wasn’t on the same U.S. list for the Olympics. So even a Norris Trophy winner and a player considered one of the top U.S. defensemen in the NHL today knows nothing is guaranteed.

“If you’re not in that first six, nothing is given to you, for sure, no matter who you are,” Fox said. “I think everyone here (at orientation camp) has an argument to be on the team. That’s why they are here.”

Having to make really hard choices when it comes the Olympic roster may cause sleepless nights for coaches and executives alike, but for the United States, it’s a nice problem to have.

In fact, Swayman said he’s heard from past U.S. hockey greats that this current crop of American players may be the most talented of all time.

“It really rings true when we have USA legends talking to us, that this really is some of the [best] talent that they’ve even seen with USA Hockey,” Swayman said. “It’s humbling to hear because we’ve always looked at those guys. It’s been really incredible to have their impact on us.”

Just how talented are these U.S. Olympic hopefuls?

Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets has won the Vezina Trophy as best goalie in the NHL three times, including each of the past two seasons (also 2019-20). Last season, he also won the Hart Trophy as the NHL MVP. Hughes (2023-24) and Fox (2020-21) have won the Norris as the best defenseman in the NHL. Matthew Tkachuk is a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Florida Panthers, having won it the past two seasons. Eichel won the Cup with the Golden Knights in 2023. Matthews won the Hart in 2021-22 and, since his rookie season in 2016-17, has the most goals in the NHL (405) and the ninth-most points (732).

“I think everyone realizes how good of a hockey pool we have and how many good players we have around,” Hellebuyck said. "And the guys who get selected, they have to bring it every single day.”

Matthews is perhaps the embodiment of why USA Hockey has taken some huge steps during the past decade, a kid who grew up in a nontraditional hockey market in Arizona and became one of the best players in the NHL. The talent pool is no longer just drawing from traditional U.S. hockey markets like Massachusetts and Minnesota.

“Nobody ever thought of a player coming from California or Florida or Texas or Phoenix,” Sullivan said. “Nobody played hockey there. So the growth of the sport has been tremendous in the United States. And I think that's something that we're all proud of. These events give us the opportunity to say, ‘We feel like the United States is at the pinnacle of the sport. We are every bit as good, if not better, than any country that competes at this game.’ These events give us the opportunity to prove it. So from that standpoint, the stakes are extremely high.”

It's not unrealistic to say they have never been higher. Neither have the expectations. When Canada won the Olympic gold medal in 2002, 2010 and 2014, and won the World Cup of Hockey 2016, it was somewhat expected. It’s Canada, after all. Hockey is the national sport there. But the 4 Nations Face-Off was a toss-up, with the U.S. winning the first matchup 3-1, but Canada winning the championship game in overtime.

And when things start in Milan, there will be a sense that the U.S. and Canada are co-favorites, with superstar NHL players dominating each roster.

Sullivan believes it’s time.

“The expectation as an American is that we expect to win. We don't expect to participate. There's a difference. And I think that's what's changed,” Sullivan said. “And these guys, these players, they have an opportunity to prove that. And at the same time, they have an opportunity to put their stamp on the game, the history of the game.”

And that, again, is where the legacy of winning a gold medal comes in.

“They all have a unique opportunity to build, to put their stamp on history, to write their own story, both as individual players, but also maybe more importantly as a team,” Sullivan said. “And that's what's at stake. So, from that standpoint, yeah, the stakes are high. They don't get higher.”