Panthers coach Paul Maurice was asked about Jones’ status on Tuesday before the Team USA announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was originally a week-to-week idea,\u201d Maurice said. \u201cThen it was 2-4 [weeks] or whatever, but it will be the full extent of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaCombe has 31 points (six goals, 25 assists) in 49 games this season. The 25-year-old, who was a second-round pick (No. 39) by Anaheim in the 2019 NHL Draft, has 91 points (22 goals, 69 assists) in 197 regular-season games.<\/p>\n
LaCombe did not play for the United States at the 4 Nations Face-Off last season, but won gold with USA at the 2025 World Championships.<\/p>\n
“I got the call from (U.S. general manager) Bill Guerin last night,” LaCombe said in a video posted by the Ducks on X on Wednesday. ” He kind of told me the situation and told me I was going to be on the team.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, you never want to see something like that (Jones’ injury) happen to someone. But in my mind, I was super excited (to be selected).<\/p>\n
“There’s no way to describe the feeling. I’m just excited to be part of that group … it’s pretty special.”<\/p>\n
This is the first group of NHL players to represent the United States at the Olympics since 2014, when NHL players most recently participated.<\/p>\n
The tournament will feature all 12 teams playing three preliminary games in their respective groups.<\/p>\n
The three group winners and the best second-place team will get a bye into the quarterfinals; the other eight teams will play single-elimination games to determine the other four quarterfinalists. The gold medal game will be held on Feb. 22.<\/p>\n
Team USA which is in Group C, will open against Team Latvia on Feb. 12, then play Team Denmark on Feb. 14 and Team Germany on Feb. 15.<\/p>\n
The United States has not won a gold medal in men’s hockey since 1980 in Lake Placid, New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Panthers coach Paul Maurice was asked about Jones’ status on Tuesday before the Team USA announcement. \u201cThere was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-424159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}