CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- The United States feels it will stack up well with Canada, Finland and Sweden when the full rosters for the 4 Nations Face-Off are announced Wednesday.
"As far as the type of team that you'll see, it'll be very talented," coach Mike Sullivan said Tuesday. "It will be a talented group that I think can compete against any team in any environment. There's speed. There's skill. There's size. There's abrasiveness. There's defensive conscience. There's dynamically offensive players.
"But as I've said all along, every team is going to have talent. Talent alone isn't going to win the tournament, we don't think, and so I think our challenge is to become a team."
The United States named forwards Jack Eichel, Auston Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk, and defensemen Adam Fox, Quinn Hughes and Charlie McAvoy, when each team announced its first six players June 28.
Each team had to submit the balance of its 23-man roster by Monday.
The Finland and Sweden rosters will be announced at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday during a live show produced by NHL Network and made available globally. ESPN will announce them during the 2 p.m. ET edition of "SportsCenter."
The Canada and United States rosters will be announced at 6:30 p.m. ET Wednesday during live pregame shows on Sportsnet and TNT.
The seven-game tournament -- the first best-on-best tournament since the World Cup of Hockey 2016 in Toronto -- will be held in Montreal and Boston from Feb. 12-20.
The United States has a chance to win a best-on-best tournament for the first time since the World Cup in 1996.
"When you look at the prospect pool, the players that were available to potentially play on this team, it might be one of the deepest group of players that the U.S. has ever had, and I think that's a tribute to development of the sport of hockey in the United States," Sullivan said. "There's going to be players on that roster from all over the United States, not just what we would consider the hockey hotbeds of the U.S., where hockey is deeply rooted."
Sullivan credited NHL expansion, USA Hockey's American Development Model and the grassroots initiatives across the United States.
USA Hockey also has run the U.S. National Team Development Program in Michigan since 1996. Each player named to the roster June 28 went through the program, and many more alumni likely will make the roster. Will that give the United States an edge as it tries to gel as a team in a short tournament?
"Whether or not that's an edge, I think when you look at the nucleus of the best players in the United States, there's familiarity there for sure," Sullivan said.
The United States talent pool is so deep that general manager Bill Guerin and his staff had to leave stars off the roster. But more than two months remain until the tournament, and some of those players still might be needed.
"Those are the difficult decisions that Billy had to make with the help of the rest of us, and so it would be a better question for Billy than me," Sullivan said. "But what I will tell you is, this group has discussed how to handle those situations and the importance of being respectful of these players and what they've accomplished in the NHL and their body of work so far.
"None of us have a crystal ball. We can't tell what's going to happen between when the roster is named and when the tournament actually takes place. There could be some change on there depending on injuries or things of that nature. But that would be the next step that our group has already discussed. It's just a matter of implementing the game plan."
Sullivan, who won the Stanley Cup as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017, has been part of USA Hockey for five decades as a player and coach. This will be his first time leading the United States in a best-on-best tournament. He also will coach the United States at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.
"I'm incredibly honored to be the coach of this team and am so looking forward to the opportunity to compete with these guys," he said.
