The United States men’s hockey team may be light on years, but it’s heavy on determination.
The squad competing at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is one of the youngest rosters the national team has put on the ice since 1994. The team is comprised of mostly college players after the NHL pulled its players out of the Olympics due to COVID-19 concerns.
The team features 15 college students and five teenagers, but they’re not letting a lack of international experience deter them from focusing on their own “Miracle on Ice, a reference to the squad that took down heavily the favored Soviet Union in 1980.
University of Michigan sophomore Matt Beniers, who, at 19, is the youngest player on the team, says age is not important.
“I don’t think people really look at ages. You’re here to do a job and you got to get it done no matter if you’re 19 or you’re 40,” he told TODAY.
The team is also aware of the 1980 hockey team, whose story was chronicled in the 2004 Kurt Russell movie “Miracle.”
“We believe 100% that we can win a gold medal.
Team USA Defenseman brock faber
“Every single really hockey player in the in the United States has watched that movie and kind of knows what, you know, that team had to go through,” Brock Faber, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota, told TODAY.
While the focus may be on the players’ ages, Beniers says there are also veterans whose experience can only help. Forward Brian O’Neill, for example, is the lone player who competed in the 2018 Olympics.
“You got older guys, and they’ve been around the block. I think it also brings a nice calming presence on the ice and in the locker room,” Beniers said.
Both Faber and Beniers think this U.S. team can take home the gold medal.
“We believe 100% that we can win a gold medal, for sure,” Faber said.
The quest for this squad to make its own miracle on ice gets underway Thursday when it faces in China.