Winter Olympics 2022: Meet the ‘quirky’ goalie with the paleo diet and weird glasses who might lead Team USA to gold-
The following written content by Greg Wyshynski
Team USA goalie Strauss Mann understands how he’s perceived by others.
He’ll spend five hours in the kitchen, preparing meals so he can maintain his strict paleo diet. He wears blue-light-blocking glasses on the bus in order to get a better night’s sleep. The 23-year-old goaltender is known to seek out coaches that can help with certain aspects of his game, exemplified by last summer’s sessions with a specialist that focused on opening his hips to improve his post-to-post mobility.
“Everyone that played with me knows me for my diet or my little habits. If everyone did it, then it wouldn’t be a competitive advantage, would it?” he said.
The NY Post once labeled him “endearingly quirky.”
Mann shrugged at the reference. “I’m OK with being a little bit different,” he told ESPN. “Maybe that makes people label me a certain way.”
The University of Michigan perceived him as a starting goalie. He was a standout for three seasons, culminating in a stellar junior year where he was a captain and a finalist for the Mike Richter Award.
NHL organizations perceived him differently. They saw his height, listed at 6-foot, and passed on him as being too small. Mann left Michigan before his senior season and took his talents to the Swedish pro league.
USA Hockey perceived Mann as an Olympian. The NHL opted out of the 2022 Beijing Olympics after the omicron coronavirus variant caused a material change in its regular-season schedule. Team USA needed goalies. Mann figured he had a shot at making the roster. USA Hockey was looking at college players and pro players overseas. He had been both in the last year.
“I was already thinking about [the Olympics], and then it became the only thing I could think about,” he said. “It’s the Olympics. Every kid watches it growing up. Every person. I had never represented my country at any stage. … For me, at this point in my career, this is pretty special.”
Especially when he was that kid watching the Olympics in Greenwich, Connecticut, wearing a Team USA Ryan McDonagh jersey while watching the Americans cede the gold medal to Canada in 2010. Read more from ESPN.
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