Photo credit: Jeff Romance-Imagn Images
Seth Jones and Team USA Olympic roster talk has Florida Panthers fans locked in today.
ESPN's Emily Kaplan reported she's hearing Clayton Keller, Tage Thompson, and Jones were named to the United States men's Olympic team, described as adds from the Four Nations group. That report is the spark, even before any full roster graphic lands on an official site.
I'm treating it as strong insider reporting, not the final stamp, because USA Hockey still hadn't posted a complete 25-man list on its own Olympics hub. USA Hockey has consistently framed the full roster reveal as an early January moment.
Florida fans get why Jones would be one of those adds. He's the right-shot minute eater who can live through tough shifts, then still make the clean first play that starts the counter.
Seth Jones and Team USA roster momentum
As a Panthers watcher, it feels like the league finally noticed how steady Seth Jones has been.
The numbers back the eye test in a simple way, Jones has six goals and is skating basically 24 minutes per night. ESPN lists him at 23:59 per game, and StatMuse has him at 24:01, which is as close as you'll get across public trackers.
In a short tournament, that matters more than a flashy highlight, because the puck gets dumped behind you all day. Jones closes early, wins the retrieval, and moves it fast enough to beat the second forechecker.
Contract chatter always follows him too. He carries a $9.5 million cap hit on his eight-year deal, and reporting around the trade has noted Chicago retained money, dropping Florida's effective hit to about $7 million.
He's 31, he was drafted fourth overall by the Nashville Predators in 2013, and he's built like a classic Olympic defender at 6-foot-4. If the reported roster add becomes official on paper, the next fun argument is his exact role, not whether he belongs.