2017 World Juniors: Team USA Notebook — USA-SUI Exhibition preview; Roster thoughts; Where’s the WJC Buzz?

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Chris Peters

usawjc

The U.S. National Junior Team has crossed the border after their five-day camp in Buffalo. Wednesday also marks a crucial evaluation day as the team looks to pare down its roster from 26 to 23, or possibly even 22 if they end up deciding to cut a goalie.

Team USA will be taking on Switzerland in Oshawa tonight at 7 p.m. ET. Unfortunately, it does not sound like any live stream will be available for the game, which is going to makes analyzing Team USA’s decisions a bit more difficult for those of us not there. However, the lack of availability of the game is another example of something I’ve noticed about this World Juniors in particular, which I’ll get into a bit more below.

The big news of the day, however, is that the U.S. roster could be decided as soon as tonight. The team hopes to make the cuts after the game so that they can go into their final pre-tournament contest Friday with their roster. Barring injury, illness or a decision they can’t just bring themselves to make yet, at least three players could learn their fate. The hope is to have the decision made by Thursday.

Team USA has typically brought 13 forwards and seven defensemen to the tournament, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they go 12 and eight instead. I don’t think it’s overly likely, but it is possible. They also have the option of bringing three goalies with them, but don’t have to take all three. U.S. GM Jim Johannson told Mike Morreale of NHL.com that it hasn’t been decided yet if the team will bring all three or send one home. That probably won’t be official until after the final exhibition.

The picture becomes clearer within the next 24 hours, either way. So let’s get into some notes. UPDATE: Includes official lineup for tonight’s pre-WJC game:

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on 2017 World Juniors: Team USA Notebook — USA-SUI Exhibition preview; Roster thoughts; Where’s the WJC Buzz?

2017 World Juniors: Team USA camp preview

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Chris Peters

usawjcThe U.S. National Junior Team opens camp Friday in Buffalo with 26 players vying for 23 spots as the Americans seek to improve on a bronze medal finish from last season.

To do that, Team USA’s head coach Bob Motzko is going to need to find the right mix with two cuts to make among forwards and one on the blue line. It appears as though all three goaltenders named to camp will be on the roster USA Hockey submits before the tournament, with each of the invitees having an honest shot at the No. 1 job.

Team USA will hold a series of practices at the HarborCenter in Buffalo starting Friday morning and running through Dec. 20 before heading to Oshawa, Ontario for the remainder of camp.

The team has often played at least one exhibition game against a college team before the end of the U.S. based portion of the camp, but that won’t be happening this year, which means one less opportunity for Team USA candidates to make their case in a game setting. The Americans will, however, be playing two pre-tournament exhibitions against Switzerland and the Czech Republic before the tournament. The final roster is expected to be announced on Dec. 24.

Here’s Team USA’s camp schedule page

With all of that in mind, let’s get into what to know about Team USA as camp nears…

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Annnnd… we’re back (for a little while)

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Chris Peters

Logo_USA_hockey

After more than two years of dormancy, the United States of Hockey is back just in time for the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship. It was exactly six years ago today (really?) that I published the first post on this little website and it’s been a wild ride ever since.

As some of you may know, I am no longer with CBS Sports, which is the job that ultimately took me away from this little passion project. It was a mostly expected and amicable split. That said, your ol’ pal is still trying to figure out the next move and since I have some time — especially with the World Juniors coming up — I decided to pull off the drop cloths, sweep away the cobwebs and turn the lights back on here.

My plan for right now is to only run the blog through the end of World Juniors. So maybe don’t call it a comeback, but it’s definitely an exciting limited engagement for me and I hope you’ll enjoy what I have to offer.

In addition to the World Juniors coverage, which probably won’t be as intense as it used to be due to time constraints and having two kids now, I’m going to try to hit on a few topics relevant to the old USofH audience. So if you’re a longtime reader or even if you’re new, there’s going to be something for you here.

Coming soon, a preview of Team USA’s World Junior camp which gets going Friday in Buffalo.

It’s good to be home.

eagle_sparkle

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

The Long Goodbye…

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Chris Peters

USofHBanner

As a noted procrastinator who utilizes the stress and anxiety of a tight deadline to focus and tighten his writing, and as someone who so often said on this very website that this piece would come at this time only to have it come later or not at all, I don’t think I’ve put off anything as long as this post. It’s the dread of finality, really.

Effective today, I will be going on an extended, possibly permanent hiatus from United States of Hockey after three-plus years of covering the things I am most passionate about in this great game.

I am pleased to say it is with good reason that I step away. On July 1, I assumed a full-time role as an NHL writer for CBSSports.com. I’ll be taking over the Eye on Hockey blog, which I have been contributing to on a part-time basis since October of 2012. It is a terrific opportunity that I am so thankful to have been offered and I can’t wait to continue building an audience for hockey under the CBS Sports masthead.

This blog started as a way for me to fill some voids at first. There was a number of things I felt were under-covered and had hoped that maybe I could shed some light on certain areas of hockey that didn’t get as much notice.  Continue reading →

Posted in 2014 Olympics, All-America Teams, American Prospects, Blog News, Grow the Game, High School Hockey, Hockey Weekend Across America, IIHF Men's World Championship, Junior Hockey, Minor League Hockey, NCAA, NHL, NHL Draft, NTDP, Paralympics, U.S. National Teams, USA Hockey, USHL, Whimsy, Women's Hockey, World Junior Championship, World U17 Hockey Challenge, World U18 Championship, Youth Hockey | 17 Comments

U.S. Hockey Participation Numbers for 2013-14

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Chris Peters

There were more people playing hockey in the United States than ever before during the 2013-14 season according to USA Hockey. The national governing body’s membership report released in early June indicates that 519,417 people registered as players last season, which bested the previous year’s total by more than 9,000 and the previous record set in 2011-12 by 7,000. It should go without saying that this is a spectacular sign for the direction of hockey in the United States.

USAHockeyArcUSA Hockey enjoyed a 1.79 percent bump in membership from 2012-13, which helped offset a minimal decline in playing membership that season. Looking at the 10-year growth, USA Hockey has enjoyed a 16.6 percent bump from 2004-05.

The organization also reached record highs in total membership, which includes coaches and on-ice officials. USA Hockey now includes 598,841 Americans directly involved with hockey as players, coaches or officials, with an estimated 1 million-plus involved as volunteers, team managers and parents. That’s pretty good news for the game.

Coming up after the jump, a deeper dive into the 2013-14 numbers as well as a state-by-state breakdown of growth and where each state ranked in total membership last season.

Continue reading →

Posted in Grow the Game, High School Hockey, Junior Hockey, Minor League Hockey, NCAA, NHL, USA Hockey, Youth Hockey | 12 Comments

USA Hockey Board Approves Stronger Rules to Curtail Fighting in Junior Hockey

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Chris Peters

USA Hockey’s Annual Congress was held in Colorado Springs, Colo., last week. The organization revealed that its playing membership was at an all-time high of 519,417, which is more than 8,000 players better than the previous high set in 2011-12 (more on the growth in a future post). The Congress also is an important week for changes to rules and there was one of great significance on the table.

USAHockeyArcUSA Hockey’s board of directors, in conjunction with the council that oversees junior hockey in the country, reviewed new rules to curtail fighting at that level. The board approved stronger rules as they pertain to fighting at the Tier I (USHL) and Tier II (NAHL) over the weekend.

Starting in 2014-15, any fighting major in Tier I or Tier II junior hockey will be accompanied by a 10-minute misconduct — that is over and above the major, meaning a player would sit for a total of 15 minutes. There are expected to be a few more details to this that were not immediately released by USA Hockey, but this rule alone is an important first step toward curtailing fighting and I believe one day they will take it a step further with automatic game misconducts, but this is a good middle ground for now.

Continue reading →

Posted in Junior Hockey, NCAA, USA Hockey | 3 Comments

2014 IIHF Men’s World Championship: Team USA Progress Report Heading into Medal Round

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Chris Peters
Embed from Getty Images

Coming into the tournament, the U.S. Men’s National Team was short on name recognition (outside of the diehards out there) and long on youth. With the newer format that only the top four teams advance to the quarterfinal at the 2014 IIHF Men’s World Championship, getting in was bound to be difficult.

The youthful roster, made it through a difficult preliminary-round field with a 4-1-0-2 record, good for second in Group B and setting up a date with the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals on Thursday. Coming into the tournament, I thought some variation of a 4-3 record was probably going to be the best-case scenario. They did one better with four regulation wins and one in overtime despite a relatively tough schedule to start the tournament.

Continue reading →

Posted in IIHF Men's World Championship, NHL, U.S. National Teams, USA Hockey | 2 Comments

VIDEO: Johnny Gaudreau, Drew Shore score ridiculous goals for Team USA at World Championship

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Chris Peters

The U.S. Men’s National Team is through to the quarterfinals at the 2014 IIHF Men’s World Championship after finishing the preliminary round with a better-than-expected 4-1-0-2 record. The U.S. closed out preliminary-round play Tuesday with a 5-4 win over Germany. They now await the result of Russia-Belarus to finalize the seeding. Assuming Russia beats Belarus in any fashion, Team USA is locked into second in Group B.

Logo_USA_hockeyThat win today over Germany was a close shave for the U.S., but it featured some of the very best goals I’ve ever seen scored at this tournament and some of the best I’ve ever seen period.

Watch both after the jump, plus a bonus assist that will make your head spin.

Continue reading →

Posted in IIHF Men's World Championship, NHL, U.S. National Teams, USA Hockey | 1 Comment

The Evolution of Goaltender John Gibson

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Chris Peters
Embed from Getty Images

On a chilly November evening in front of 200 or 300 spectators at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube, John Gibson flipped a switch. The Pittsburgh native had been at USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program for less than three months, playing as one of two goalies on the U.S. National Under-17 Team and to that point and he was struggling.

The big goaltender hadn’t really made the adjustment from AAA to Junior, to the point where he wasn’t really seeing a lot of USHL action. He was raw and athletic, but he hadn’t quite figured out how to use his size and everything from positioning to awareness was messy.

His team was struggling, too. The U.S. National U17 Team was playing in the USHL for the first time and they couldn’t buy a win. By that November night in Ann Arbor, the U17s had not won a game in USHL competition yet. Gibson had barely played at the start of the season while battling some early-season injury trouble and the other goalie, current Minnesota Duluth netminder Matt McNeely, showing a little more polish.

Then Gibson stepped between the pipes for just his second USHL start on Nov. 20, 2009 against the Tri-City Storm, which featured Jaden Schwartz, the eventual scoring champion in the league that year and a first-round selection of the St. Louis Blues.

I happened to be the PR guy in Ann Arbor at the time and helped out with color commentary on the broadcast that night, which is why I probably remember a regular-season USHL game as vividly as this one.

It seemed as though Tri-City was going to roll into town and roll over the U17s and in a way, they did. But they didn’t count on the 16-year-old goalie to have one of the greatest goaltending performances in league history.

Continue reading →

Posted in American Prospects, IIHF Men's World Championship, Junior Hockey, NHL, NTDP, U.S. National Teams, USA Hockey, World Junior Championship, World U18 Championship | 10 Comments

2014 IIHF Men’s World Championship: Team USA Roster at a Glance

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Chris Peters

The U.S. Men’s National Team will open its quest for a second consecutive medal at the 2014 IIHF Men’s World Championship in Minsk, Belarus Friday against the host nation. All preliminary-round games will air live on NBC Sports Network, starting with Friday’s opener at 1:45 p.m. ET.

2014_IIHF_World_ChampionshipThe U.S. took bronze last year, defeating Finland in a thrilling shootout to earn the country’s first medal at the event since 2004. Medals are hard to come by at the Worlds as the U.S. usually has a roster that is comprised of young players and few stars. With this being an Olympic year and no 2014 Olympians on Team USA’s roster, the team is even less experienced than normal.

Team USA has an average age of 24.3, with several players just a few years or less removed from college or junior. They’ll face a tough task at a tough tournament, but this youth could be a benefit for Team USA, as explained in detail in this full preview here.

Since there are so many fresh faces on this U.S. roster, I decided to compile a quick roster at a glance with a few facts on each player, particularly the young guys that may be unfamiliar to NHL fans.

Continue reading →

Posted in American Prospects, IIHF Men's World Championship, NCAA, NHL, U.S. National Teams, USA Hockey | 2 Comments