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The breakout pass from Ryan Suter to Zach Parise skidded tape-to-tape like so many before it. The odd-man rush by Ryan Kesler and David Booth had the seasoned harmony of Stockton and Malone. The scene was the U.S. Olympic Orientation camp, just outside Chicago in August, but for many on the ice, no orientation was necessary.
Of the 34 players invited to the three-day camp, ten were groomed at the U.S. National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, and 20 others had played with some of their new teammates in past world championships.
"When we were in Chicago I was talking with Zach and we were looking around and we realized we had played with almost everybody on the team," says Suter, who has represented the U.S. in nine world championships. "I think it says a lot about USA hockey."
Team USA GM Brian Burke and head coach Ron Wilson talk about their expectations for Vancouver.
In 1996, the first true generation of American-born NHL stars solidified its legacy by defeating Canada for the gold medal in the inaugural World Cup of Hockey. That same year, amid far less fanfare, USA Hockey sowed the seeds for the next generation by founding the program with a dual goal: to provide a viable domestic alternative for elite American players who might otherwise opt for Canadian major-junior leagues, and to improve U.S. results in international play. In 12 seasons, 166 NHL draft picks have come through the program, and now it stands to become USA Hockey's leading source of Olympic talent.
Two teams comprise the program: a team of 16-year-olds that competes in the United States Hockey League, the nation's top junior league, and a team of 17-year olds that plays a barnstorming exhibition slate that includes contests against NCAA Division-I opponents. The NTDP blends its game schedule with an arduous, season-long program of practice, power-skating and weight training designed for athletes to peak at major international tournaments such as the World Under-18 Championships.
"We'll be lifting and doing pretty hard off-ice workouts the day before games because it's not about this Friday's junior game or this Saturday night against this college team," said Scott Monaghan, director of operations for the program. "Our barometer is the international events."
It is in the international events that the program has made its mark. After first competing during the 1997-98 season, the NTDP quickly began to draw top talent from the prep schools and junior teams that often nurture American players before their NHL Draft eligibility.
At the 2002 World U-18 Championships, an American squad composed almost entirely of NTDP players such as Suter, Kesler, Booth and Parise - who was not in the program, but joined the team for some tournaments - captured the first U.S. gold medal at a world championship since 1933.
Two years later, those four and nine others from the 2002 U-18 team won the United States' first ever World Junior Championship, with Parise earning tournament MVP honors. Now, they're in line to be Olympians.
"I played with Booth even before the national junior team," says Kesler, the MVP of the 2002 tournament. "After being on other teams for a couple of years, when you get back in the locker room with these guys, it definitely brings back some old memories and sparks some chemistry."
Since 2002, the program's success has continued. In the past eight U-18 Championships, the U.S. has won four golds, two silvers and a bronze. It has yielded two of the last four first overall selections in the NHL Draft - Olympic hopefuls Erik Johnson and Patrick Kane - and in the 2009 Draft, six players were plucked from the U-18 team in the second round alone.
"There's no question that there were guys who didn't come here in the first couple of years because it wasn't a proven commodity," Monaghan says. "But after that ‘02 season we really started to see it wasn't a matter of whether we could get the players that we wanted - it was a matter of making sure we took the right ones."
Kane, a 5'10" wunderkind from Buffalo, was one of the right ones If Suter is the link between USA Hockey past and present - his father, Bob, played on the Miracle on Ice team that won Olympic gold in 1980, and his uncle, Gary, was on the 1996 World Cup team and the 2002 Olympic team - Kane is the new face of American hockey. He is the only NTDP player to score more than 100 points in a season, and he made good on the lofty expectations by winning the NHL Rookie of the Year award in 2008.
In Vancouver, U.S. team general manager Brian Burke will send a decidedly younger team onto the ice than at past Olympics. Gone are the stalwarts who helped deliver gold in 1996, like Chris Chelios, Brian Leetch and Mike Richter. The average age of the current roster at Games time - 27 - is four years younger than the aging 2006 squad that sputtered to an eighth-place finish in Torino. Mike Modano, the lone holdover from the World Cup, is one of only five players with Olympic experience on the pre-Olympic roster. But it is far from guaranteed that all five will make the final 23-man roster when it is announced during the NHL Winter Classic on New Year's Day.
More likely, that list will include a cadre of NTDP alums, making their Olympic debut in Vancouver.
"I was seven years old when the '96 Cup was on," Kane says. "It was really fun for me still to watch guys like Modano and Chelios and dream of becoming the next Mike Modano. With this young team, I think we're on the upswing now. Hopefully we can do some damage."
