“It’s basically a full season condensed into two weeks. So right now, we got through our exhibition season and training camp, now it’s the start of the regular season, and you hope that by playoff time or the medal round, that you’re peaking and you’re the best version of yourself as a team. And to me, that starts in the locker room, and that starts with the culture and how tight those guys are as a unit.”
One thing that Noreen stresses is having everyone adhere to the team-first concept, especially because the players usually have to accept lesser roles than what they’re used to playing on their USHL squads.
“The biggest challenge for us as a staff is, how do you take a group of great players and turn them into a great team in a short amount of time?” Noreen said. “And the biggest key to that is, you’ve got guys who are coming from teams where they’re all on the power play, and they’re all on the first line or the first D pair and they’re all playing a ton of minutes. And at the end of the day, the biggest thing for us is there can’t be any personal agendas. It’s got to be what’s best for the team at all times and the sooner we can get to that as a group and stick to that, you give yourself a chance.”
Miller, who is from Sylvania, Ohio, acknowledged that it’s not such a difficult notion to sacrifice individual accolades for the team’s benefit.
“I think the guys are handling it well,” he said of adjusting to new roles. “We’re here for one reason and one reason only, to win the gold medal, so I think everyone knows their role. If they’re not playing as much, I think they understand, just because as a team, we want to win the gold medal. It’s not about us [individually].”
While Team USA enjoys its status of gold medal favorites as the defending champions, and because they’ve won gold in this tournament five times in the previous seven years (eight times overall), the players don’t feel additional pressure. They welcome the high expectations.
“I don’t feel pressure, it’s just a good test for us,” Miller said. “I think we definitely have the group and the skill and definitely the coaches, but I don’t think it’s pressure. I think as long as we play our game and become close as a group, I think we’ll do fine.”
Team USA continues the preliminary round on Wednesday night against Canada East. They round out preliminary play on Friday against Russia, with the semifinals taking place Saturday, Dec. 14 and the gold medal game on Sunday, Dec. 15.
Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.
