Quinn optimistic Team USA’s top stars will be together soon

San Jose Sharks coach David Quinn, a huge baseball fan, watched Team USA play Japan in the riveting final of the World Baseball Classic in Miami.

Like millions of others, Quinn, whose family for years had Boston Red Sox season tickets, was glued to the television Tuesday night as pitcher Shohei Ohtani faced slugger

Mike Trout in a matchup between baseball’s two best players. With two out in the ninth inning, Ohtani struck out his Los Angeles Angels teammate, giving Japan a stirring 3-2 victory.

“Oh yeah, I sure did,” watch, Quinn said. “It was exciting.”

It was also a reminder that hockey hasn’t had a similar beston-best tournament in seven years — and won’t for at least another two or three.

The 2016 World Cup of

Hockey in Toronto, won by a Canadian team that featured current Sharks Logan Couture and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, and former Sharks Joe Thornton and Brent Burns, marked the last time all of the sport’s best players were in one setting.

Since then, no Olympic games that have included all of the world’s best have been held, nor has another World Cup been played.

In 2018, the NHL, citing opposition by team owners, and the

International Olympic Committee’s refusal to pay travel and insurance-related costs, skipped the Winter Olympics in South Korea, much to the dismay of the NHL Players’ Association. The league then scrapped plans to pause its schedule during the 2022 Games in Beijing, saying it needed that time last February to make up the number of games that had already been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.