The U.S. won gold medals at the 1960 and the 1980 Olympics and more recently, silver medals at the 2002 and 2010 Olympics. The U.S. also won the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, defeating Canada in the finals. The team's most recent medal at the World Championships came with a bronze in 2021. They won the tournament in 1933 and 1960. Unlike other nations, the U.S. does not typically use its best NHL players in the World Championships. Instead, it provides the younger players with an opportunity to gain international experience.[4] Overall, the team has collected eleven Olympic medals (two of them gold), nineteen World Championship medals (two of them gold), and it reached the semi-final round of the Canada Cup/World Cup five times, twice advancing to the finals and winning gold once.[5] The U.S. has never reached a World Championship gold medal game, having lost in the semi-final round twelve times since the IIHF introduced a playoff system in 1992; this includes six semi-finals appearances in ten tournaments from 2013 through 2023, and three consecutive in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
The U.S. is one of the most successful national ice hockey teams in the world and a member of the so-called "Big Six", the unofficial group of the six strongest men's ice hockey nations, along with Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, and Sweden.[6][7][8]
History
The American ice hockey team's greatest success was the "Miracle on Ice" at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, when American college players defeated the heavily favored seasoned professionals from the Soviet Union on the way to a gold medal. Though ice hockey is not a major sport in most areas of the United States, the "Miracle" is often listed as one of the all-time greatest American sporting achievements.[9][10] The U.S. also won the gold medal in the 1960 Games at Squaw Valley, California, defeating the Soviet Union, Canada, Czechoslovakia, and Sweden along the way. However, since this victory is not as well known as the 1980 win, it has come to be known as the "Forgotten Miracle".[11][12]
The 2010 U.S. Olympic team was composed of much younger and faster players than teams of previous years, including David Backes, Dustin Brown, Jack Johnson, Patrick Kane, Phil Kessel, Zach Parise, Joe Pavelski, Bobby Ryan, Paul Stastny, and Ryan Suter. The team also had a solid group of veterans that included such stars as goalie Ryan Miller, defenseman Brian Rafalski, and team captain Jamie Langenbrunner. The U.S. team upset team Canada 5–3 in the round-robin phase of the tournament and went into the single elimination phase of the tournament as the number-one seeded team. After beating Finland 6–1, the U.S. advanced to the gold medal game, where they lost in overtime 3–2 to Canada to claim the silver medal. The gold medal game between Canada and the U.S. was watched by an estimated 27.6 million U.S. households. This was the most watched hockey game in America since the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" game, including any Stanley Cup Finals or NHL Winter Classic broadcast.[13]
The NHL pulled out of the Olympics for the 2018 competition in a dispute over insurance and the IOC's ambush marketing restrictions, prohibiting the national teams from inviting any player it held under contract. The American team was put at a particular disadvantage, as more than 31% of NHL players are Americans (in comparison, only 4.1% are Russians). As a result, the U.S. had to enter the tournament with a hastily assembled team of free agents, players from European leagues, AHLers on one-way contracts, and college players.[14] The team proved unsuccessful, losing to Slovenia and the Olympic Athletes from Russia in the preliminary round, and being eliminated by the Czechs in the quarterfinals.[15] The OAR team benefited most from NHL's absence and ultimately won the tournament with a team that was composed primarily of SKA Saint Petersburg and HC CSKA Moscow players from the Russia-based KHL and featured ex-NHL all-stars Pavel Datsyuk, Ilya Kovalchuk and Vyacheslav Voynov (all SKA).[16][17]
On March 31, 2021, Stan Bowman was appointed the general manager of the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team for the 2022 Beijing Games.[18] On October 26, 2021, Bowman resigned in response to the results of an independent investigation into allegations of sexual assault committed by a member of the Blackhawks' video coaching staff.[19] The lead investigator stated that Bowman's failure to report the alleged assault had eventually led to the perpetrator committing further acts of sexual abuse.[20]
The IIHF has given awards for each year's championship tournament to the top goalie, defenseman, and forward (all since 1954), and most valuable player (since 2004). The following American team members have won awards.
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