Joe's Reaction of the Week (Chip's Version): Why I'm Glad Adam Fox Wasn't on Team USA
Adam Fox’s Olympic snub looked like a joke in February. Now, with his would-be teammates forcing trades left and right, it looks a lot different.
Joe is on sabbatical from Joe's Reaction of the Week until November. Until then, other Blueshirt Banter's writers will be filling in for him. Today, it's Chip23.
When Adam Fox didn't make the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team, I thought it was an absolute joke. Fox is one of the best defensemen in the National Hockey League and certainly one of the best U.S.-born defensemen. By all rights, he should have been on the team. But, Bill Guerin is a tool.
Having looked at the behavior of the Team USA players since the Olympics, I'm cool with Fox missing out on Milan and drinking his milk instead.
Since the Olympics, four of the players from Team USA (Vincent Trocheck, Brady Tkachuk, Dylan Larkin, and Connor Hellebuyck) have either been traded or demanded trades off their teams, while a fifth, Quinn Hughes, had previously forced his way off the Vancouver Canucks.
Look, I can't argue with a lot of this. As I've said repeatedly, the Detroit Red Wings made their bed with Larkin by ignoring his repeated requests for any sort of meaningful help, Brady Tkachuk wanted to team with his brother, and the Vancouver Canucks were—and remain—a toxic tire fire. Hellebuyck is a different story, with lots of conflicting reports about whether fans turned on him (including threats to him and his family*) after the Olympics or after it became clear he wanted out and would not play for the Winnipeg Jets.
*To be clear: whenever those threats took place, the people who made them are chickenshit cowards, not passionate fans.
Here's the problem, though: it's not just that these players wanted out, it's that they decided that not only did they not want to play for the teams they were currently on, but they would only play for three or four other teams, and those teams were not realistic trade partners.
