Team USA Finds Its Way

In 2004, a gaffe by Team Canada goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury allowed the United States to score the winning goal and win gold in the World Junior Championships.

Since then, USA Hockey has sent teams full of high-end players to the World Juniors, and they've watched in horror as those teams have been knocked out of medal contention. Only once in a five-year run after their first gold medal did Team USA make the podium, and that was a bronze medal in 2007.

So what changed to allow for a magical gold-medal run in 2010?

There were a couple major factors that worked in Team USA's favor this year.

For starters, they finally figured out it was a good idea to have a selection camp. Team Canada has done this in the past, and it's worked quite well for them.

The premise is to bring players together for a tryout camp. USA Hockey invited 34 initially, and then pared down to their final roster from there. It's not going to get you instant chemistry across four lines and three defensive pairings, but it does give the players a chance to show USA Hockey what they can do with and against their peers. It's a much more effective way to pick a team than their old way, which involved too many people sticking their noses into the process and deciding what kind of team the country needed to have.

It's unfair to say that this is all about copying what Hockey Canada does, because it's probably giving our neighbors a bit too much credit. However, you don't win five straight gold medals in a competitive event by default or pure accident. As Team USA coach Dean Blais said after Tuesday's game, "We learned from the best."

It wasn't all about the player selections. Another problem for the American outfit was that they tended to lean too much on players who came from their National Team Development Program. Based in Ann Arbor, Mich., the NTDP trains hockey players to compete in a number of international events. Instead of a schedule of 20-30 games that U.S. high school teams play, the NTDP teams (Under-17 and Under-18) play over 60 games. They get to take part in world tournaments, play against top U.S. junior teams, and NCAA Division I and Division III teams.

Enter Blais. He's a college coach (Nebraska-Omaha), he has a winning pedigree, he is almost universally respected around the sport for his coaching ability, and he came into this gig with no perceived biases for or against any players. He decided what kind of team he wanted to take to Saskatoon, then went to work with his assistants and USA Hockey to get the players he wanted for his vision.

Hiring Blais to coach the team, holding a selection camp, and finding the right kinds of players to fill the roster were all huge keys for Team USA. Many of the moves they made came right out of Hockey Canada's playbook.

USA Hockey got major impact out of experienced international players like Jerry D'Amigo (NHL rights: Toronto), Jack Campbell (2010 draft eligible) and Jordan Schroeder (Vancouver). They reached into college hockey, and found that Wisconsin's Derek Stepan (N.Y. Rangers), Chris Kreider (N.Y. Rangers) from Boston College, and Notre Dame freshman Kyle Palmieri (Anaheim) were more than ready to compete at this level. They also weren't afraid to dip into a growing population of Americans playing Canadian major junior hockey, like defenseman Cam Fowler (2010 draft eligible) and dynamic forward Tyler Johnson (undrafted). For Blais, it wasn't about where you're playing hockey at or where you developed. It was about finding the right 23 players to make this the best and most competitive team possible.

"I didn't want a bunch of fancy Dans who wouldn't play both ends and were cocky and arrogant and I didn't have that team," Blais said. "We picked guys with good character and yeah, we got a few breaks, but win or lose, I think we had the right guys here."

Frankly, this is something USA Hockey should have done years ago. You can't totally copy what is done in Canada, because you're not likely to ever have the same kind of high-end talent they do. Instead, it's about finding the right combination of speed, skill, and all-out grit that can compete and give the United States a chance to win.

This tournament wasn't about proving to Canada that we're better than they are. Beating them once -- in overtime -- isn't going to do that. Instead, USA Hockey needed to find its way. There is really no excuse why this team can't medal in this event annually. Four medals in 14 years is wholly unacceptable.

Don't look at this gold medal as the culmination of anything for USA Hockey. Instead, it should be looked at as the mere beginnings of a real hockey rivalry in North America.