Wherein I throw some cold water on the prelim results for the US hockey team.
Three exhibition games, two wins over quality opponents. A 4-2 win against Canada and a 3-2 nail-biter against Finland packed around a 5-2 loss to Canada. 2-1 in those three games? Good news, right?
Well, maybe.
The underlying stats are, how you say, not kind. In three games, the US team was out-shot 113-77, never out-shooting their opponent in any of the three games. I haven’t yet found specific faceoff stats for each game, but the US only won more faceoffs in one of those three games: Finland.