Team USA has won the World Championship (a yearly tournament) precisely once since World War II, and Utah Mammoth star Clayton Keller was the captain of that team.
Keller was left off the American roster at the 4 Nations Face-Off last year, but he’ll play for them at the upcoming Olympics in Italy.
Although he never publicly admitted that it bothered him to miss the 4 Nations, his track record against Team USA GM Bill Guerin’s Minnesota Wild does the talking for him: four goals and nine points in five games since the roster was announced.
Among all Americans last season, Keller ranked third in points. He’s an underrated playmaker who makes his line mates better. He’s sometimes overlooked because he’s undersized and he plays in a market that doesn’t get much league-wide attention.
This season hasn’t been quite as strong for Keller: He’s tied for 15th in points among Americans. Understandably, his play seemed to take a downturn after the sudden passing of his father. But his most recent handful of games have more closely resembled the player that Mammoth fans know and love, and Team USA hopes that’s the version of him that they’ll see in Milan.
Part of the reason he was excluded from last year’s team is likely that he’s less versatile than some of his peers: He doesn’t kill penalties and he’s not the first guy over the boards when defending leads. But he does put the puck in the net with the best of them, and ultimately, the Americans fell one goal short last year.
At the World Championship (which doesn’t typically feature most teams’ best players because it happens during the Stanley Cup Playoffs), Keller played on a line with Logan Cooley and Tage Thompson. Cooley didn’t make the cut this time around, but Thompson — another 4 Nations snub — did. And whatever Keller lacks in size, 6-foot-6 Thompson makes up for it.
Thompson also made the Olympic roster.
“I just love the creativity they both have,” Thompson told the Deseret News of Keller and Cooley when his Buffalo Sabres were in town in November. “It’s something that’s really fun to watch and even more fun to be playing with them. ... On the flip side, when you’re playing with them, (they’re) tough to contain.”
The rest of the Olympic rosters will be revealed in coming days. No Mammoth players made Team Canada, but the likes of JJ Peterka, Olli Määttä and Karel Vejmelka have good chances at playing for their respective countries.
