GOLD THE STANDARD
Struggling to compete internationally, USA Hockey envisioned a new program to hothouse the country’s top players. 25 years later, the National Team Development program is producing elite prospects, gold medals, and must-have card sets.
J ORDAN LEOPOLD AND HIS FATHER LISTENED TO TEAM USA’S PITCH THAT DAY IN 1996 AND INSTANTLY DISMISSED IT.
“‘No way,” they thought to themselves. “is is not going to happen.” Leopold had briefly le Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minn., during his junior year to represent his country in the Viking Cup in Camrose, Alberta. When the tournament ended, every player on the American squad was offered an opportunity to join a new Team USA, the National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, Mich. Beginning in 1997, the NTDP would groom elite talent for future national teams. ey would billet with local families, attend a new high school and be a part of the highest-level junior hockey program in the country. Leopold refused to even consider the invitation. He was from Minnesota, a er all. e state had the best high school hockey in the country. Why would the defenseman leave that for a nascent program? “High school hockey is considered the gold standard in Minnesota, really,” Leopold said. “So anything outside of that is deemed inferior to what we have going on.” Leopold’s eyes were opened when he returned to his high school team a er having faced some of the world’s best teenagers. He realized there was a better opportunity out there. “If I was going to challenge myself, I had to possibly make a tough decision,” Leopold said. Leopold decided to join the NTDP. During the 2021-22 season, the program will celebrate its 25th anniversary. It has produced 85 first-round NHL dra picks including some of the hobby’s biggest stars and top
young prospects. Cole Caufield, Jack Eichel, Jack and Quinn Hughes, Patrick Kane, Spencer Knight, Auston Matthews, and Trevor Zegras all participated in the program. In Kane, the Chicago Blackhawks superstar, the program can boast it developed a future MVP, scoring champion, and Hall of Famer. Now, an invite to join the NTDP is the dream for many young American players. But when Leopold bolted to Ann Arbor, it was a controversial move. Elite players in Minnesota high school hockey did not leave the state. “It was unheard of, it just was,” Leopold said. “Now, we don’t even think twice about it.” e program, which features both Under-17 and Under-18 teams, has become one of hockey’s great success stories, pumping out 363 NHL dra picks, including five first-overall selections. Team USA’s gold medal at the 2021 World Junior Championship was the fih it has earned in that span. “It changed the landscape of how we were viewed as Americans and what kind of hockey players we can produce,” said Leopold, who went on to play 695 NHL games over 12 seasons. e NTDP program, which moved to Plymouth, Mich. in 2015, has marketed its success by producing collectibles of past and present players, including game-night giveaway card sets. Two card sets have been produced, each in the form of multiple five-card strips: one in 2015-16 and another for the loaded 2018-19 team. Both include current players alongside notable alums such as Kane, who appears in both sets. e 2018-19 set, in particular, has become a sought-aer issue for collectors because it includes the first legitimate cards of Caufield, Zegras, and Jack Hughes. An eBay search for the set in August yielded less than 30 unsigned single cards and zero complete strips. “If you’ve got their USA rookie card the year right before they got draed, all of a sudden you’ve got this little piece of history,”
said Bryan Johnson, the NTDP marketing operations manager. e demand for those pieces of history is strong. Raw copies of the hand-separated singles have sold for as much as $50 for top stars. Signed copies can draw a premium, as do graded copies. One seller with a 2018-19 Jack Hughes given a Mint 9 by Beckett Grading Services was asking $249.99. Scarcity plays a factor in their desirability. Johnson said about 600 of each strip were produced and the team gave away 500 before home games to help increase attendance at USA Hockey Arena. e other 100 sets were given to season ticket holders. Each perforated five-card strip features members of the Under-18 team, one or two alums, and a Dick’s Sporting Goods coupon. “It was just a fun, inexpensive giveaway we could do that tells our story and shows the guys now what they can be,” Johnson said. Johnson said the team has also given away limitededition bobbleheads of Matthews and Dylan Larkin in the past, along with posters of other players. ere are plans to make more cards and bobbleheads, but details remain internal for now. Owning a Team USA bobblehead of Matthews, now a Toronto Maple Leafs superstar, should serve as a reminder of the NTDP’s impact. But as the program struggled to get off the ground, plenty of doubters existed, even within USA Hockey. Some higher-ups in the organization, however, knew a national development program had to be established. “We felt we needed to do something to invigorate interest in USA Hockey by players in the National Hockey League who want to be connected to USA Hockey,” said ex-president Ron DeGregorio, who was a vice president at the time. “I mean, we helped them in the past, but we wanted to do something that we felt would connect them for future years to the programs that we have internationally.” To accomplish that, USA Hockey lured Jeff Jackson from Lake Superior State University to the NTDP. In addition to coaching the country in international events, his duties included creating and supervising the program. “ey were looking for an international coach because frankly, we were getting embarrassed internationally,” said Jackson, who won two NCAA championships with Lake Superior and now coaches the University of Notre Dame. Jackson understood USA Hockey’s problems well. In 1995, he led its World Junior entry to a disappointing sixth-place finish in Red Deer, Alberta. “It was just a dysfunctional group of kids,” Jackson said. “ere was no motivation to play for the country necessarily. It was just an opportunity for exposure to scouts. e hockey culture in the United States wasn’t where it needed to be.” Assembling teams filled with college, major junior, prep, and high school players wasn’t working. Jackson said a fight almost broke out when a junior player gave away Landon Wilson’s sticks to another team. Not surprisingly, Wilson played NCAA hockey. “It was embarrassing because the college kids and the major junior kids were butting heads,” Jackson said. “e major junior kids were making fun of them for wearing face shields or cages.” When USA Hockey approached Jackson about the job – DeGregorio said the search was secretly conducted – he outlined his vision, which resembled a college hockey program. It would cost about $2 million a year. “Aer my personal experience coaching the national junior team in 1995, I was so embarrassed that I basically said, ‘Some
body’s got to do something about this,’” Jackson said. Jackson said the program got off the ground because DeGregorio and Dave Ogrean, the executive director of USA Hockey, supported it. Starting the program from scratch, of course, was arduous work. Jackson hired Bob Mancini to coach the Under-17 team and Greg Cronin to lead the Under-18 team. Forty-four recruits had to be found. Mancini said people thought he was “absolutely nuts” to leave his job as Michigan Tech University’s coach. “Nobody understood what it was, the vision,” Mancini said of the NTDP. USA Hockey built offices and a locker room at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube, the rink the NTDP rented for its headquarters. “We were showing future NHLers a drawing, an artist’s rendering of what we were,” Mancini said. “ere was a point we were asking players and parents to trust us. We didn’t have a schedule.” Still, the talent started flowing in. Early commitments from Leopold and future Boston Bruins forward Andy Hilbert, who grew up nearby Ann Arbor, helped the NTDP establish credibility. “It put the next group of kids that we were recruiting on notice that this program is legit, that it had to be looked (at),” Mancini said. e NTDP built a schedule playing against North American Hockey League, United States Hockey League, and Ontario Hockey League opponents. One of the early recruits, goalie Rick DiPietro, had to convince his mother, Cheryl, to let him leave Boston. When DiPietro arrived, he said he “had the time of my life.” “It was brand new, so we had no idea what it would look like,” he said. Leopold remembers doing “some of the weirdest stuff,” including boxing. “We’d get in the ring with amateur boxers and they’d beat the snot out of us,” he said. “ere were so many different things that were tried throughout the year just to see how we’d react as kids and see if we’d push through. It was very challenging. But you know what? I think all the guys that were there will say we’re better because of it.” DiPietro agrees with Leopold. He parlayed his two-year stay into a scholarship to Boston University before the New York Islanders draed him first overall in 2000. “There was no way I would’ve ever achieved what I achieved in the sport without the U.S. program,” DiPietro said. Now, 25 years later, the NTDP is the envy of the hockey world, producing elite prospects that the NHL, and collectors, love.