The U.S. has made its first key decision in net.<\/p>\n
Hellebuyck started three of four games for the U.S. at the 4 Nations Face-Off last February, with\u00a0Jake Oettinger<\/a>\u00a0getting the other nod. That duo is joined by\u00a0Jeremy Swayman<\/a>\u00a0in Milan.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s obviously an elite goalie,\u201d Sullivan said. “We think we have three elite goalies. We have ultimate confidence in all three guys. These decisions aren\u2019t easy, but we made a decision to start with Connor and we\u2019ll go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n Sullivan had previously declined to name a starter, noting that “performance matters.”<\/p>\n Swayman will dress as Hellebuyck’s backup. <\/p>\n Hellebucyk, the NHL’s reigning Hart and Vezina Trophy winner, holds a .900 save percentage and 2.79 goals-against average in 36 starts with the Winnipeg Jets this season.<\/p>\n The Dallas Stars’ Oettinger sits at .897 and 2.73, while the Boston Bruins’ Swayman has marks of .903 and 2.92.<\/p>\n After a day off Friday, the Americans have a back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday against Denmark and Germany to wrap round-robin play.<\/p>\n –with files from The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. has made its first key decision in net. Hellebuyck started three of four games for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-476316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}