STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Before the Buffalo Sabres season ended in April, Tage Thompson told me that he accepted his invitation to play for Team USA at the World Championship because he wanted to show that he belongs on the U.S. Olympic Team.
On Sunday, Team USA went to overtime 0-0 against Switzerland in the Gold Medal game and it was Thompson who netted the Golden Goal to give Team USA its second ever World Championship Gold Medal and first since 1933.
Thompson and Cole Caufield of the Montreal Canadiens were the leading U.S. born goal scorers in the National Hockey League when the 4-Nations Faceoff roster was announced and neither one made the team.
Team USA General Manager Bill Guerin of the Minnesota Wild and Assistant GM Chris Drury of the New York Rangers had to litter the team with their own players and it cost them in the end.
Thompson’s 44 goals led all U.S. goal scorers in the NHL this season and only two of the top seven American goal scorers made the 4-Nations team that played in February.
Since 2022-23, only Auston Matthews has had more goals for the United States followed by Thompson. The Toronto Maple Leafs captain has 142 goals while Thompson has 120.
Thompson has been around for half of the Sabres 14-year playoff drought, but he’s scored 173 goals in 407 games. That’s an average of 35 goals per season.
Sunday’s Gold Medal is the first time Thompson has won a championship and he now knows what that feeling is to be a champion. I’m a firm believer that will drive him to want to win a Stanley Cup even more.
I think Thompson had won a spot on the Olympic Team even before he scored the Golden Goal, but that was his second O/T goal of the Worlds and gave him six goals in 10 games throughout the tournament. The six goals tied him for Team USA’s lead and was fifth overall.
It was more than goal scoring, which I think helped him. In the three games before the Gold medal game, Thompson didn’t score, but I still think he played well. The thing I think clinched it for him is he played the team game that San Jose Sharks Head Coach Ryan Warsofsky wanted his players to play. I could tell the Sabres winger was embracing more of a team concept and sometimes passed up some offense knowing it could blow up and come the other way.
He still had nine points in 10 games which over an 82-game NHL season would equal 74 points. What was Thompson’s 82-game pace this year with the Sabres? It was 78 points.
Thompson started the Worlds on the top line with Clayton Keller and Logan Cooley of the Utah Mammoth and it didn’t work. When Warsofsky moved him to a line centered by Matty Beniers of the Seattle Kraken, all of a sudden the Sabres star caught fire and Keller’s line also got going.
The news wasn’t as good on Sunday for the Rochester Americans as they got trounced in the fifth and deciding game of the North Division Final to the Laval Rocket, 5-0. It was a sour taste for the young Sabres as a win would’ve put them in the Eastern Conference Final against the Charlotte Checkers.
Devon Levi was an absolute stud giving up just two goals in the three game sweep of the Syracuse Crunch and he was stellar in Game 4 against Laval winning 5-1 to force Game 5. The problem was Levi had three less than average games and wasn’t there to make the big saves when his team needed him in the three losses to Laval.
In the five games against Laval, Levi was 2-3 with a 3.64 goals against and .862 save percentage. At the other end in four games, Cayden Primeau totally outplayed Levi going 3-0 with a 1.71 goals against and .936 save percentage. For me, it just makes me wonder if Levi can even play in the NHL. In the biggest moments of his AHL season, he wasn’t up to it.
This just takes me back to, yes, it’s possible that starting the season with two young goalies in Levi and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen could work, but there is no chance I would do that if I were the GM. I think there’s a better chance that it won’t work and would lead to 15 straight seasons without a playoff spot. If all this happens again, I wonder how many of these players will be at Terry Pegula’s door asking to be traded to a team that at least has a chance to win.
