okay it's come to my attention that there is once again some ryan leonard misinformation floating around the internet, and this time i believe it's team usa's terrible housekeeping spreading lies and slander. with the caveat that this is not 100% definitive proof of my theory, i am going to lay out my evidence and suggest to you all that leno did not, in fact, pick the sharks as his favorite nhl team in 2024 because of will, but that it was always because of his brother john, and has not been his favorite team since the sharks traded john.
first, let's look at will's personal sections/bios from the ntdp and team usa:
will's 2024 wjc bio (via wayback machine as it's no longer linked on team usa site):
as you can see, his favorite movie and musical artists are the ones he picked in 21-22, not 22-23. there are also answers here not reflected in his ntdp bio. it's just weird! i guess will could be flip flopping back and forth between bruce and the the weeknd, or more likely, they pulled some old answers from whatever spreadsheet they stored the 21-22 answers to populate this. idk i'm not a spreadsheet scientist i'm just suggesting this does not add up to team usa using the most accurate/up to date information.
(for reference: john is with the sharks/barracuda for the '20-21 and '21-22 seasons. he is then traded to nashville for the '22-23 season, and signs with arizona for the '23-24 season)
so here we see leno's fav nhl team change from the sharks - his brothers team - to the bruins - his hometown team - after the sharks trade his brother. this suggests to me that he dropped the sharks as his fav team for that reason.
leno's '24, '25, and '26 team usa bios (all identical no matter which link you use to access his 'personal' tab):
it's important that none of these bios changed, because it suggests that they did not collect any new information for them year to year. we can also see that they list john as being a forward for the preds, which was only true for one year ('22-23). if this page were up to date, john would be listed as being the detroit organization, or even if it were updated in 2024, it would put him in arizona.
also, because it's helpful to my case, here are zeev's answers:
zeev's 2024 wjc bio (like will's, accessed via the wayback machine as it's also unavailable on the team usa site):
his 2024 answers are also pulled straight from his '21-22 answers, NOT his '22-23 answers, and unlike will or leno, there are no additional fun facts offered.
in conclusion: while i cannot definitively say where the additional facts came from in will or leno's bios, or that with 100% certainty that they did not ask him what his favorite nhl team was in 2024 for his wjc bio and he answered the sharks (i was not personally there when players were asked these questions, and i do not run the team usa website), i think these findings certainly suggest a very plausible alternate theory that team usa pulled old data from '21-22 ntdp bios and do not keep their players' personal pages up to date. i would also find it shocking that leno would answer 'favorite nhl team' with anything other than the caps after being drafted in 2023.
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