Team USA ran back its Olympic room, and left college home

USA Hockey picked the right 25 for Denmark, and it wasn't close. It also picked a team with exactly one college player on it, and that's the part worth watching long after this tournament ends.

The roster came out Saturday. Twenty of the 25 won Olympic gold in Milan, and 24 play in the PWHL.

The lone exception is Ohio State forward Joy Dunne, and she plays for the best college team in the country: the Buckeyes sit No. 1 in the USCHO women's poll at 9-1-0 with all 20 first-place votes.

Running it back is the right call

The Americans won eight straight over Canada before this week, then took the two-game tune-up 7-5 on aggregate after losing the first one. You don't break up that room three weeks before a world championship, and Katie Million didn't.

Hilary Knight is back for a record 16th Worlds. Aerin Frankel, Gwyneth Philips and Callie Shanahan are the goalies. The blue line is Caroline Harvey, Megan Keller, Lee Stecklein, Cayla Barnes, Haley Winn, Laila Edwards, Rory Guilday and Emma Peschel.

"We're confident in the group we've selected," Million said. John Wroblewski kept it simpler: the goal is gold.

The six who didn't make it

Thirty-one players went to camp. The six left off were Wisconsin goalie Ava McNaughton, Wisconsin defender Laney Potter, Sydney Morrow, Britta Curl-Salemme, Sloane Matthews and Kendall Coyne Schofield, who is taking the PWHL season off.

Curl-Salemme is the cut I'd have argued about, because she's an established pro and the forward group could use a little more sandpaper. But Janecke, Dunne, Simms and Bilka scored the four goals in Plymouth, and that's a hard argument to lose.

The November problem

Here's the catch. Moving the Worlds to November put the tournament in the middle of the college season, and the college kids paid for it. Two Badgers went to camp and went home. Dunne is the only NCAA player left.

By our count, five PWHL clubs supplied at least three players each: Detroit and Minnesota with four apiece, Las Vegas, New York and Boston with three. That's a pro team in every way that matters, and it should win.

But the old calendar let college stars grow up on this stage. Tessa Janecke won two Worlds golds while she was at Penn State and scored the overtime winner in 2025. A tournament that leaves the college kids home every fall delays the next one.

Canada went the other way on Oct. 19, naming six first-timers without Marie-Philip Poulin, who's recovering from knee surgery. One country is reloading. The other is defending.

What's next

The U.S. opens Group A against Switzerland on Nov. 6 at 1 p.m. ET on NHL Network. Austria, Czechia and Germany fill out the group. The tournament runs through Nov. 16 in Herning and Esbjerg.

The W read: The Americans win all four group games and don't allow more than two goals in any of them. The real test comes in the bracket, and if the seeding holds, it's Canada again on Nov. 16.