SAINT. PAUL, Minn. — Now, more than 15 years removed from the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Zach Parise still thinks about the gold-medal game every day.

Though it’s not the because of the thrill he felt scoring with 24.4 seconds left to force overtime, nor the gut punch that followed when Sidney Crosby netted the game-winner for Canada.

No, it's due to the photo of Parise's goal hanging on his son's bedroom wall.

“It’s a constant reminder every day, but it’s great. Just to think that we were a part of that game. I’m biased — it’s one of the best games ever played,” Parise said.

The Minneapolis native was reflecting on his career before being inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame on Wednesday night at the Saint Paul RiverCentre.

Joining Parise in the Class of 2025 is photographer Bruce Bennett and fellow longtime players Scott Gomez, Tara Mounsey and Joe Pavelski. The late executive Ray Shero was also honored with the Lester Patrick Trophy.

Though Parise fell just short of a gold medal in Vancouver, he enjoyed a long and decorated career with Team USA, including an MVP award and gold medal at the IIHF World Junior Championship in 2004 — the first time the U.S. won the tournament.

“[That was] kind of our first experience of playing against the other people that we had heard about, like the [Alex] Ovechkins and all that,” Parise said. “Those are big moments in our lives at the time it was almost like a stepping stone to get to the next level.”

Pavelski joined Parise on the 2010 and 2014 Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Teams, and he was on the ice for Parise’s game-tying goal in 2010. Pavelski said the U.S. players went into those 2010 Olympics believing they would win gold, even if that wasn’t an expectation outside of the locker room.

“We were very proud of the way we represented our country, but we are extremely disappointed we didn’t get gold,” he said.

In the gold-medal game, Pavelski lined up against four of his San Jose Sharks teammates in Dan Boyle, Dany Heatley, Patrick Marleau and Joe Thorton.

Pavelski described Marleau and Thorton as “two guys who meant the most to me.” Playing across from them in Vancouver, he had to disconnect himself from those relationships. That kind of dynamic is what makes the Olympics so special to him.

“It’s a unique event, the Olympics, because how meaningful it is and how impactful it is, and you’ll kind of do whatever to win,” Pavelski, a native of Plover, Wisconsin, said. “Athletes are incredible in that way of having a great understanding of what’s at stake and putting things aside and trying to accomplish something special.”

Even though Gomez had plenty of experiences playing for Team USA — World Juniors in 1998 and 1999, the World Cup of Hockey in 2004 and the 2006 Olympics — his favorite international memory came as a fan.

As a 16-year-old in Anchorage, Alaska, only a couple years away from his international debut, Gomez watched on television as the U.S. beat Canada to win the 1996 World Cup of Hockey.

The team's championship, he said, put the U.S. "to another level.”

“For me, when I got to play with all those guys, you know, Billy Guerin, Tony Amonte, [Chris] Chelios, Brett Hull, Brian Leetch, that was probably the highlight of my career, was being with my heroes and the way they treated me,” Gomez said.

After crossing paths with all those players during his NHL and international career, Gomez now joins them as U.S. Hockey Hall of Famers.

Mounsey’s career highlight came in Nagano, Japan, in 1998, when she helped Team USA win the first Olympic gold medal in women’s hockey.

When Mounsey first started playing hockey as a kid in Concord, New Hampshire, competing in the Olympics wasn’t even something she could imagine. That changed in 1992, when the International Olympic Committee announced women’s hockey would be become an Olympic sport in Nagano.

“I found out about the Games, I think it was in seventh or eighth grade, and right away I set that as a goal of mine,” she said. “I probably wasn’t even old enough to know if I could or couldn’t make it, but I was in love with the sport, and it was the highest level that a woman could go.”

Thanks to trailblazers like Mouncey, women today now have even more opportunities, including professional hockey.

Looking back at her team’s gold-medal triumph in Japan, Mounsey’s main memory is how connected the U.S. team was.

“No one cared about points; no one cared about what line they played on. It really was we had one goal, and that was to come home with a gold medal,” she said. “It’s hard to get 20 people to do that at the right time. That’s really what sticks out, how well we did it.”

Bennett is connected to the entire Class of 2025, as he’s taken pictures of all the players over his more than 50 years as a photographer.

Based in Long Island, New York, Bennett shot plenty of photos of Gomez and Parise, both longtime New Jersey Devils.

The 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milano and Cortina, Italy, will be Bennett’s seventh. He’s gotten plenty of photos of the four Class of 2025 players at the Games as well — including a picture of Mounsey posing with her gold medal.

Being inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside iconic American players is something Bennett never dreamt of.

“When you shoot pictures you’re not thinking there’s going to be like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” he said. “The pot of gold is when you pick up a newspaper, you look at a website, and you see your picture used, or it gets used in any kind of media. This kind of thing, it’s just icing on the cake that you know, never in a million years would I have thought it would come to this kind of honor.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.