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There was a personality to those teams, they were beloved, and they were hon- ored to don the A merican colors. "Salt Lake was great. I mean, they're all great. They really are," Guerin said. "But it's just being able to play in your home country. That was really spe- cial. Before the gold-medal game against Canada, we're sitting there getting ready for warm-ups and you can already hear the USA chants, things like that. And I always thought just being the village, being in the dining hall and all the athletes from all over the world and just kind of coming togeth- er, it's just really cool. "It's what sports is all about because there are some athletes that they know they're not going to win a medal. But they train just as hard as everybody else. They go to compete, and they go to be Olympians, and that's how special it is. And I just think that's really great. It's an awesome event. I've been so fortunate to be in as many as I have been." Guerin is in it to win it. " W hy go if you're not?" Guerin said. "I think the player pool in the United States just keeps getting better. It keeps getting deeper and deeper. A nd I just think USA Hockey 's done a tremendous job over the past 20 years of really kind of rebooting things and just developing players and making the sport popular, making it accessible to so many more people so we get those great players. " You see players coming from every- where. We didn't have anybody from California. I mean, look at Auston (Matthews). He's from A rizona. Like, nobody came from A rizona. A nd now we have one of the best players in the world, one of the best A merican players ever. He's from A rizona. "It's great. I think it's fantastic." Michael Russo writes for The Athletic. He's in his 17th season covering the Wild and 27th covering the National Hockey League. He hosts the Straight From The Source podcast on the Athletic and co-hosts the Worst Seats in the House podcast on the Talk North Podcast Network. Both pod- casts can be heard wherever you get your podcasts. Russo can be heard weekly on KFAN (100.3-FM) and seen throughout the hockey season on Bally Sports North and the NHL Network. Follow Russo on Twitter and Instagram at @RussoHockey. To sub- scribe to The Athletic at a discount, go to theathletic.com/straightfromthesource. P R E S E N T E D B Y Russo's Rants Photos / USA Hockey, Getty Images M H J ON L I N E . C O M | J A N / F E B 2 0 2 2 30 St. Paul's Ryan McDonagh played in the 2014 Winter Olympics and won two Stanley Cups with Tampa. Since 2013-14, only Patrick Kane is the only American that has produced more points than Plymouth's Blake Wheeler.