Zizing ‘Em Up: Guerin talks Team USA roots from Miracle on Ice to 4 Nations
GM, inspired by iconic win, dreams of glory after storied career in red, white and blue

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TORONTO -- Bill Guerin is at a loss for words.
Which is the rarest of rarities, the normally-chatty Guerin readily admits.
“I know this never happens with me,” the general manager of Team USA said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I just don’t know what to say.”
He didn’t have to.
The welling up of his eyes said it all for him.
Standing in the Foster Hewitt Media Gondola for a 1-on-1 interview with NHL.com last week, Guerin had just been asked what the moment would mean for him if he and Team USA were to be awarded the 4 Nations Face-Off trophy at TD Garden in Boston on Feb. 20 after the title game.
Or, for that matter, if he and members of Team USA were presented with gold medals at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics, then stood on the ice with their prizes dangling around their necks proudly listening to the Star-Spangled Banner.
A guy can dare to dream, right? Even if you are Bill Guerin, one of the toughest hombres to ever to play in the NHL and a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame’s Class of 2013.
The 54-year-old, who will serve as the U.S.’s GM for both upcoming tournaments, takes a few seconds to search for how to express himself concerning those potential scenarios. He doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. There still is so much hockey to be played before either of those things can morph into reality, so much work to be done.
Still …
“You have to understand what this means,” Guerin says, finally finding a way to convey what he’s feeling. “As a 9-year-old kid growing up in Wilbraham, Mass., Mike Eruzione’s goal that helped beat the Soviets and the whole Miracle on Ice thing at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics in which the U.S. shocked the world by winning the gold medal, it changed my life.
“I wanted to be one of those guys one day. I wanted to be part of a USA team that was the best in the world. So, for me to look back and think what a 9-year-old me would have thought had he’d known he’d one day get shots to do just that like we’re about to, it’s pretty overwhelming.”
He’s had chances to do exactly that.
As a player on the world stage, Guerin wore the Team USA jersey at seven major international events including three Olympic Winter Games (1998, 2002, 2006), two World Cups of Hockey (1996, 2004) and two IIHF World Junior Championships (1989, 1990).
Only once in that time in red, white and blue was he part of a championship team, that coming in the 1996 World Cup when the Americans scored four goals in the final 3:18 of regulation to defeat Canada 5-2 in Montreal and claim the title.
It is the last time Team USA has won a best-on-best competition, a 29-year dry spell that Guerin is determined to help end.
There have been heartbreaks along the way.
He was a member of the 2002 Olympic team that lost 5-2 to Canada in the gold medal game in Salt Lake City, a painful ending to an otherwise successful tournament in which he and his teammates on home soil were forced to listen to fans sing “‘O Canada” as the final seconds clicked off the clock.
Eight years later, watching along with millions of other Team USA supporters, he was gutted, like them, when Sidney Crosby’s so-called Golden Goal in overtime of the title game gave Canada a 3-2 win at the Vancouver Olympics.
“Here’s the thing,” Guerin says. “The silver medal is not the goal. It’s the only medal you get for losing your last game, right?
“It stinks.”
He is getting fired up as he addresses the topic. This is more like the Bill Guerin the hockey world knows.
“You know what close is? What's the old saying? Close is only good in horseshoes and hand grenades,” he continues.
“Listen, it’s important that, as part of USA Hockey, we’ve put ourselves in a position where we are in it all the time, even in best-on-best competitions. We have more depth than we ever have. We have stars like Auston Matthews and Quinn Hughes and Connor Hellebuyck. But none of that matters if it doesn’t translate into on-ice success.”
Starting with the 4 Nations Face-Off, which will be held in Montreal and Boston from Feb. 12-20. The tournament, which features the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland, is the first best-on-best competition since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, and one Guerin wants his team to make a statement in.
“Ya, we’re deeper than we’ve ever been before. But you know what? You can’t just say we’re a great team. I’ve heard that stuff. You have to go out there and play the games, right? You have to prove it.
“We have to get over the hump at some point in time. This is our chance.”

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If Guerin had his way, the 4 Nations Face-Off title game would probably be played Feb. 22, not two days earlier.
That would, after all, be the 45th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, one of the biggest upsets in sports history in which Eruzione’s third-period goal proved to be the difference in a 4-3 victory by the United States against the Big Bad Soviets. It’s a moment that would inspire Guerin for the rest of his life to this day.
Feb. 22 will also be his daughter Grace’s 26th birthday.
Notice some symmetry here? Guerin certainly does.
“Imagine that,” he said. “Having a daughter born on the date that had such special significance in my life.”
When Grace was young, her dad would have fun with that. Whenever Feb. 22 would come around, he’d reminder her what day it was.
“I’d go wake her up on her birthday and say: “Gracie, Happy Miracle on Ice day!””
Wee Grace would get mad. She didn’t find humor in her father’s schtick.
“She’d be like, ‘Dad, come on, it’s my Birthday!’” Guerin recalled with a chuckle. “I’d be like, “Oh yeah, well, Happy Birthday.”
Three years later there was another significant Feb. 22 moment in Guerin’s life. On Feb. 22, 2002, he scored the opening goal in a 3-2 victory by Team USA against Russia in a semifinal matchup at the Salt Lake City Olympics, helping propel the Americans to a berth in the gold medal game against Canada.
“Here I am, on Gracie’s birthday, on the anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, against the Russians, scoring a goal at the Olympics against them to help beat them,” he recalled.
“It was such a cool day.”
Just like it had been 22 years earlier.
On Feb. 22, 1980, Guerin, like so many other American kids, was at home glued to the TV for the Team USA-Soviet Union game in Lake Placid, which was shown on tape delay rather than live in the U.S. No matter. From that moment on, young Bill was determined to represent his country one day on the sport’s biggest stages.
“The second the Miracle on Ice happened, that was it for me,” he said. “Listen, I loved the Bruins and always wanted to play for them. I always wanted to be an NHL player. I wanted to be the next Terry O’Reilly, the next Rick Middleton … well, I didn’t have the talent to be the next Rick Middleton, but I loved watching him play.
“But the Miracle on Ice was a different type of inspiration for me. It was just so big, so impactful. That was it. And to put on that USA jersey one day became a goal.”
He would achieve that less than a decade later with the Team USA side that would compete in the 1989 IIHF U-20 World Junior championship in Anchorage, Alaska.
“It was the first time I ever put on that jersey with USA on the front,” Guerin said. “It was a dream come true.”
There was more to come.
The Americans, who featured future NHL players like Mike Modano, Tony Amonte and John LeClair, had a training camp in Lake Placid to prepare for the tournament. Included on their schedule were a pair of tune-up games against the Soviets.
“I scored a couple of goals in the first game there. And I mean, man, I thought it was the greatest thing,” he said.
“Doing that in the same rink as the Miracle on Ice took place. Against that team. I mean, it was still fresh. It was only eight or nine years before that the Miracle happened, and I'm there playing in that rink for Team USA against Russia. It was big. I thought at the time it was the greatest thing in the world.”
Seven years later, he and the Americans would be on the top of it as part of the 1996 World Cup. There, he was reunited with Amonte, Modano and LeClair to help Team USA win the tournament at the spiffy new Bell Centre in Montreal, less than six months after its opening.
Never did he think it would be the last best-on-best tournament Team USA would win for almost three decades.
“That was the best, fastest, most skilled, dirtiest hockey I had ever been involved with,” Guerin recalled. “It was unbelievable. We knew we were going into the lion’s den. Canada was loaded and we had a ton of respect for them, but we knew we had a group of guys that had some serious swagger. It didn't phase us.
“I’ve been told by younger players that that 1996 team encouraged an entire generation of American kids to want to play hockey, much like the Miracle on Ice team in 1980 did for us. And that’s great. We just haven’t been able to get over the finish line since. The 2002 Olympics, Canada was just better than us. They were so good. And 2010, we all know what happened there.”
In 2010 Guerin was with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the final season of an illustrious career in which he had 856 points (429 goals, 427 assists) in 1,263 regular-season NHL games with the New Jersey Devils, Edmonton Oilers, Boston Bruins, Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues, San Jose Sharks, New York Islanders and Penguins. Crosby was his teammate with Pittsburgh at the time, and Guerin playfully let him know he wasn’t happy the way Sid the Kid had shattered American dreams with the Golden Goal.
“I didn't talk to him for a couple of weeks,” Guerin laughed.
Guerin turned the page on that long ago. Now he’s focused on what lies ahead.
“Now we have a chance to make our own history, both at 4 Nations this year and the Olympics next year,” he said. “We’ve never had a more talented pool of players to pick from. But you don’t win games on paper. You win them on the ice.”

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Guerin, now the GM of the Minnesota Wild, said he and the Team USA staff had some hard choices to make when it came to selecting the final roster. Such is the cache of elite talent USA Hockey now has at its disposal.
There were calls to the likes of Tage Thompson of the Buffalo Sabres, Cole Caufield of the Montreal Canadiens and Jason Robertson of the Dallas Stars, just to name a few. Legitimate candidates all. Sorry, they were told, we just decided to go in a different direction.
“Those conversations were difficult but necessary, because they legitimately could have been there,” Guerin explained. “But we had to make tough decisions.
“Those conversations suck. They really do. But you do what you have to do. And let me tell you, those guys handled it great. They were disappointed, obviously, but they were respectful and supportive and ready to go if we need them down the road.”
On the other hand, informing those players fortunate enough to have made the team that they’d done exactly that proved to be enriching, none more so than with Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski.
Guerin and one of his assistants were in Columbus on a scouting assignment late last year and happened to be in a local restaurant when a number of Blue Jackets players, including Werenski and his fiancé, walked in. The Blue Jackets were making their way to the back of the establishment where they were about to have dinner.
“Do you think you should tell him?” the assistant asked Guerin. “You’re not going to be able to tell many guys in person that they made the team.”
Guerin thought it was a great idea and asked one of the attendants to get Werenski and his future wife to come to the front of the restaurant. When the couple heard the news, they were overwhelmed.
“Pure, pure joy,” Guerin recalled. “His fiancé’s name is Odette and she said, ‘You know what? This is all we’ve been thinking about, from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to bed. This is a big one.’
“That type of stuff really means a lot. It shows you how much our guys want this.”
So, to no one’s surprise, does Guerin.
“I can’t wait to watch the first practices of all the teams,” he said. “A lot of these guys, they’ve never been involved in a best-on-best like this because there hasn’t been one in almost 10 years. And it’s going to be awesome to watch. The talent level of players now is crazy, it’s never been better.
“Having said that, it’s our goal to win. It’s important to me. USA Hockey is important to me. It just always has been. I'm a proud American. I love our country and everything about it.
“There’s a lot of different ways to be able to represent your country. Well, this is mine.”
QUOTE/UNQUOTE
“He’s so hard to get a beat on. You never know what he’s going to do when he’s coming in on you. I’m so happy he’s going to be my teammate at 4 Nations so I don’t have to face him. I’m glad he’s on our side.”
— Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson after Toronto Maple Leafs forward William Nylander scored once and hit the cross bar in Minnesota’s 3-1 victory in Toronto on Wednesday. Nylander and Gustavsson will be teammates with Sweden at the upcoming 4 Nations tournament.
THE LAST WORD
With 4 Nations rosters revealed, we're taking a weekly look until the start of the tournament at one player from each country who's on a roll with his respective NHL team.
Dylan Larkin (United States): The Detroit Red Wings forward has 20 points (10 goals, 10 assists) in 16 games since Jan. 1.
Kevin Fiala (Sweden): The Los Angeles Kings forward showed tremendous individual quality on both goals he scored in his team’s 4-2 victory against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday.
Sidney Crosby (Canada): The Pittsburgh Penguins captain, who will also wear the ‘C’ for Team Canada, is on an NHL-high four-game goal-scoring streak and has five goals in his past six games.
Mikael Granlund (Finland): The veteran forward went from being the leading scorer on the team with the fewest points in the NHL (15 goals, 30 assists, 45 points in 52 games with the San Jose Sharks) to a key cog with the Stanley Cup contending Stars after being traded last week.