Head Coach Tony Granato, who played for the U.S. in the ’88 Olympics, works practice to get his players, who come from a dozen states, ready for the Games.

Head coach Tony Granato, who played for the U.S. in the ’88 Olympics, works practice to get his players, who come from a dozen states, ready for the Games.

When the 1980 U.S. hockey team made up of college kids shocked the favored Soviet Union on the way to winning the gold medal, 13 players came from Minnesota, four from Massachusetts, two from Michigan and one from Wisconsin.

We’ve been overlooked pretty much our whole careers, much of us, so just in the back of our minds we still think of those times where people didn’t give us the right chances and have this opportunity now to kind of take advantage of that.”

The Americans will try to do it with players from Massachusetts, New York, Michigan and Minnesota and some less-common hockey hotbeds: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, California, Connecticut, Virginia, Florida and Arizona.

The NHL’s expansion into the Sun Belt led forward Broc Little to start playing in Arizona, goalie Brandon Maxwell in Florida and defenseman Jonathon Blum in Southern California.

Zapolski, fellow goalie David Leggio and defensemen Matt Gilroy and Ryan Gunderson were all college walk-ons and now get to reprise that role by being thrust into the Olympic spotlight as NHL continues its season.