USA program riding wave of success
Twenty-eight American hockey players, soon to be whittled to 23, and five coaches prepared over the weekend at the Ice Haus and Nationwide Arena for the world junior championships, which will take place Dec. 26-Jan. 5 in Buffalo, New York.
The U.S. won the event in 2017 in Montreal, edging Canada 5-4 in a shootout in the goldmedal game.
With seven players returning, players and coaches didn’t mince words when talking about the state of the U.S. hockey program: From top to bottom, this is the best it has been.
“From the grass-roots level, all the way up to the top,” said coach Bob Motzko, who coached the team last year. “That’s been years in the making. Even last year, that’s where USA Hockey is right now. It’s in a special place.”
The seven returning players include forwards Joey Anderson, who named team captain Monday, Kieffer Bellows and Patrick Harper; defensemen Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren; and goaltenders Jake Oettinger and Joseph Woll.
The team features 10 first-round NHL draft picks, the most of any team in the field, plus Brady Tkachuk and Quinn Hughes, who are two of 24 in the 2018 draft class were given A grades by the NHL Central Scouting Agency.
The U.S. enters the field with hopes of repeating, but of course Canada will try to return the favor on U.S. soil after the Americans knocked off the Canadians in Montreal last year.
“There’s always going to be that U.S.-Canada rivalry, but our mindset throughout the tournament has to be taking it one game a day,” Bellows said.
Included in the 31-game tournament will be an outdoor matchup between Canada and the U.S. at New Era Field, the Buffalo Bills’ home stadium. It will be the first outdoor game at a top-level world championship.
“It adds to the event,” said Jim Johannson, the general manager of the 2018 U.S. National Junior Team. “I’m a little surprised in this day and age it took this long, so I’m glad we are the first ones to do it.”
The overall talent on the roster represents the growing nature of the game in the United States. The number of registered players, coaches and officials reached 637,744 in 2016-17, according to USA Hockey’s website, a 210 percent increase from when the governing body began tracking such data in 1990.
Seeing a talented world junior team will only help the program, Johannson said.
“I think the world junior program and the rise of it, if you will, from both hockey fans and media perspective, has led to more and more kids wanting to get on a team and the byproduct of that is more and more programs are saying, ‘How do we run programs to get kids in that?’” he said.
“I think it just helps the whole cycle.”