The US men’s hockey team got off to a good start but were disappointingly eliminated from the World Championships this weekend. again.
The U.S. team, which has a lot of NHL players, made it through the pools in Finland with a 7-0 record and defeated the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals. That put the USA in the semi-finals against Germany, a team centered around players from German league teams such as Eisbeeren Berlin (Berlin Polar Bears) and Körner Haye (Cologne Sharks).
The United States has not won a solo world championship since 1933. They haven’t even reached the final since 1950. A win over Germany on Saturday would have changed things. The United States lost 4-3 after extra time.
The annual World Championships are an interesting event. This is an important international competition, not far behind the Olympics in prestige, at least among hockey enthusiasts. However, due to the NHL playoff overlap, many countries will not be able to face some of their best players.
Instead, they rush to recruit players from teams that didn’t make the playoffs or were quickly eliminated. Some of the players are NHL veterans, but strong players like Canada’s Tyler Toffoli (73 points for the Calgary Flames this season) are also suitable. And just about every superstar, including Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin and Conor McDavid, competed in the event.
Still, the tournament is often ignored by fans chasing the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Athletes who have won the Stanley Cup, Olympic gold medals, and world championships belong to a club known as the Triple Gold Club. The feat was accomplished by Peter Forsberg of Sweden, Vyacheslav Fetisov of Russia, Crosby of Canada and Jaromir Jagl of the Czech Republic. , among others. But no Americans.
With most international teams lacking superstar players, everyone is equally disadvantaged and hockey’s strongest nation tends to win. Besides this year’s winner, Canada, the other winners of this century are Finland, Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. But the United States is different.
Technically, the United States won the “World Championship” in 1960. But that was at the Olympic Games, then considered the World Championships. (This rule was changed before the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” Olympic victory.) But even if one or both of those victories are credit, since the US men won the gold It’s been a long time.
In this year’s semi-finals, the United States led 3-2 and scored with 1 minute and 23 seconds remaining when Germany stole the goalkeeper. Germany then won after extra time with a goal from EHC Red Bull Munich’s Frédéric Tiffels.
Rocco Grimaldi, a player for the Rockford Icehogs of the American Hockey League, led the tournament with 14 points for the United States with seven goals and seven assists. The US team also included three Olympians named Drew Commesso, also of the Ice Hogs. Sean Farrell of the Montreal Canadiens. And Nick Purbicks of the Tampa Bay Lightning, and Alex Touch of the Buffalo Sabers and Casey Dessmith of the Pittsburgh Penguins. They also missed out on the bronze medal on Sunday after losing 4-3 to Latvia.
(U.S. hockey fans may not have watched, but Latvian fans certainly did. declared a national holiday It was the country’s first medal after an unexpected medal win. )
A long time has passed since 1933. For that year’s tournament, just his third solo world championship, the United States sent a college team called the Boston Olympic Club to Prague. The club defeated Canada, represented by the Toronto Nationals, 2-1 in the final.
‘World Title to US Six’ New York Times headline This game is a two-paragraph article. The winning goal scorer, John B. Garrison, declined to play in his NHL after playing at Harvard. Inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame for his amateur feat. The team’s goalie was Jerry Cosby, who later founded a sporting goods company named after him.
At the time, the tournament was completely amateur, and in the 60’s and 70’s it was dominated by the powerful ‘amateur’ Soviet teams. In the 1970s, NHL players were allowed to join, leading to the current system where players from teams that have not made the playoffs make up the bulk of the roster.
For the American, who has won seven bronze medals since 1950’s silver, it’s still not working.
Without many top players, fans often consider the Hockey World Cup and its predecessor, the Canada Cup, to be more prestigious because they regularly feature the best players in the world. The USA won the World Cup once in 1996, but it hasn’t been held since 2016, but is expected to return within a few years.
And the U.S. women, who dominate the world championships alongside Canada, have a stellar track record at the world championships, winning 10 titles in their 22 years in the competition.
But when it comes to the men’s world championships, the U.S. seems destined to stay behind.
