What We Can Learn From USA Hockey
How to build a winning team by focusing on the basics
I spent Sunday morning the same way most of North America did: glued to the TV, watching the US battle Canada for the Olympic gold medal in men’s hockey.
Spoiler: We won 2-1, thanks to an electric transition goal in overtime from Jack Hughes, whose legend will only grow this week thanks to his missing two front teeth, knocked out by Canada’s Sam Bennett with a high stick in the third period.
If you haven’t seen it yet, his postgame interview (Bloody lip, gap-toothed smile, and pure joy) is a must-watch.
After my wife and I stopped scream-high-fiving and sat watching Team USA accept their gold medals, I started wondering how they put this team together.
It turns out, that’s a hell of a story.
How You Build a Gold-Medal Team
Deep down, I think Team USA coach Mike Sullivan and GM Bill Guerin knew that Team USA wasn’t going to out-Canada Canada.
Canada had Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, and a deep roster of NHL stars, with 22 combined Stanley Cups on the roster and still-fresh international momentum after beating the US 3-2 in overtime last February in the 4 Nations Face-Off.
If Team USA’s leaders tried to win a goal-scoring contest against this group, they were likely to lose. So Sullivan and Guerin decided not to try.
Starting well before the final roster was announced in January 2026, the two leaders of Team USA built their team by asking themselves a counterintuitive question: not who the best players were, but what kind of team it would take to actually beat a roster like Canada’s. Their answer wasn’t about offense firepower. It was about accountability, defensive discipline, and the willingness to do the unglamorous but necessary work that wins close games against elite competition.
Guerin laid out his philosophy plainly when Team USA’s roster dropped in January. Eight of the top fifteen American NHL forwards in points didn’t make the team. Reporters wanted to know why. His answer:
“If you can’t check, you can’t play in the Olympics. This is about building a team, not an All-Star team.”
Sullivan had said something similar at the orientation camp he ran in Michigan the previous August, months before the final roster was even set. He told his players he wanted to build a team “emblematic of the values we hold dear.” He described those values using words like “work ethic,” “commitment,” and “care for teammates.” When Guerin was asked around that time about the qualities most important to him on his defense, he led with “the ability to defend, and the willingness to defend” before mentioning anything flashy or offensively-minded.
Guerin and Sullivan decided early on the kind of team culture they wanted to build. And they were going to be uncompromising about who would help them build that culture.
The Most Telling Roster Decision
The clearest proof-point of their level of cultural commitment was their decision to leave a player named Adam Fox off the roster.
Fox is a Norris Trophy winner — the award given annually to the best defenseman in the NHL. He was healthy. He was playing well. By any conventional measure, he’s one of the best defensemen in the world. And get this, Sullivan is even his coach in NHL.
But Sullivan and Guerin were assessing players on more than just talent. Fox was outstanding at the aspects of hockey that show up on highlight reels and Norris Trophy ballots: the breakout pass, the power play, and the offensive zone read. But what Sullivan and Guerin decided together they needed were players who were great at the things that don’t make the highlight reel. The more defensive aspects of hockey like checking, shot blocking, and penalty kills.
And when you consider that lens on their teambuilding strategy, you can start to understand their decision. Fox had gone scoreless and had been on the ice when McDavid scored the overtime winner in the 4 Nations tournament the year before. Despite his accolades, the questions about the less-visible, more defensive game at the highest levels of international competition outnumbered the answers.
They’d been saying out loud for months exactly what kind of team they were building and the basic techniques they were going to build their culture around. And while Sullivan initially advocated for Fox to make the roster, as the coach and GM weighed Fox against the philosophy they'd committed to together since August, the decision became clear.
They left him home.
Leaving talent on the sidelines because it doesn't fit what you're building is never easy. But Team USA’s commitment to unsexy, winning disciplines over star power, even though it may not have been the obviously right call at the time, delivered.
One specific example of how Team USA’s strategy, focus, and approach to talent helped us win?
It’s how amazingly well this team handled penalty kills in this Olympics.
18 for 18
Penalty killing is the most thankless job in hockey. You’re on the ice for two minutes at a time, a man down, structurally disadvantaged and exhausted while you defend against the other team’s best offensive players, who have the time and space they need to pick you apart. A good penalty kill seldom makes the highlight reel. Executing one requires a particular mindset more than elite skill: guys who are willing to sprint back, clog a shooting lane, and throw their body in front of a one-timer without thinking twice. You can’t coach someone into wanting that.
When you successfully kill a penalty, you don’t just neutralize the other team’s advantage. You take something from them. A team that fails to convert a power play doesn’t just reset and keep playing. They come off the ice deflated, the game’s momentum visibly shifted. The penalty kill is one of those beautiful moments in sports where doing your job correctly is also actively demoralizing for the other side. It’s a little unflashy thing that, when executed well, makes a huge difference.
Team USA finished the Olympics 18 for 18 on the penalty kill. That is a ridiculous stat. In the gold medal game, the U.S. killed a 93-second 5-on-3 (at a huge disadvantage with two of their players in the penalty box simultaneously) against Canada’s #1 power play unit. This was one of the most dangerous offensive lines in international hockey history, with a two-man advantage, and all the time they needed to put Canada ahead. And they still couldn’t score.
That’s what tough decisions like leaving Fox home bought Team USA. Not a flashy highlight. A perfectly-disciplined penalty kill at a moment and in the game that mattered most.
ESPN, in their preview of the gold medal game this morning, turned out to be pretty damn prophetic:
“The U.S. left some dynamic scoring at home because it wasn’t looking for the best players or an All-Star team; it wanted the right players for any situation. And many of those glue guys show up here on the penalty-kill.”
Yep. That’s right.
What’s Your Penalty Kill?
Mike Sullivan and Bill Guerin had a special kind of conviction when they assembled their roster. They decided early on the kind of culture they wanted to build and the basic disciplines that would underpin it. They made the hard calls to build a team committed to those disciplines, and they didn’t apologize for leaving otherwise-great talent on the sidelines when it didn’t quite fit.
The result: a workmanlike team identity, a group of players with a uniquely close connection, and the first Olympic gold medal in men’s hockey in 46 years.
If you’re reading this and thinking about how this applies to your work, I’m willing to bet you already know what your version of the penalty kill is. You know the basic, unglamorous discipline that (if you tightened it up, focused on it, and if you only hired and developed people who were committed to running that part of your business the way it’s meant to be run) could meaningfully change things for you.
The hard part isn’t identifying what that is for your business. The hard part is committing to it. The hard part is making it the thing you build everything else around. It’s about declaring that even though it’s not the most exciting part of what you do, it’s what matters to your team. It’s about making the tough personnel calls when someone can’t commit to it or just doesn’t fit. And it’s about staying focused on it when the people around you start chasing something flashier or more exciting.
Sullivan and Guerin did that. And it worked.
When you do that, good stuff happens.
When you do that, you win.
I wrote more about what it takes to win and how to make it happen for your business last year.
If this article resonates, I hope you’ll check out “What It Takes To Win” at the link below.
Oh yeah, and one more thing: U-S-A, baby.
My hubby ( who’s an ex-college hockey player & Red Wings fan) was just as furious & disgusted as I was at the USA men’s hockey behavior after their win. They not only disrespected the women’s hockey team, who ALSO won GOLD in a far more DOMINATING FASHION, it was also them partying w/ the freakin’ FBI Director who used our tax dollars to go & get drunk w/ the team like a pathetic loser who finally got power & can do whatever he wanted. The team treated him like some god. Wtf???
No longer have any desire to watch professional men’s hockey. In fact my husband, parents, in-laws all decided from this point forward we’ll be only supporting women’s hockey. I’m so fortunate to have men in my life treat women w/ respect, dignity, autonomy, & equality. I worry for the women connected to these hockey players.