U.S hockey teams aiming for total domination

Beware Canada.

... The elephant to the south is rolling over. It's heading in this direction, primed to crush our title as the world's foremost hockey nation. We've always known that if Uncle Sam put all its financial and infrastructural might behind our game, than we'd have pan-Canadian panic.

Well, it's happening. Look no further than the past few years.

Heading into the 2010 Olympics, the United States has five hockey teams that are reigning international champions. By comparison, Canada has one.

"In years before, USA Hockey teams were going into tournaments hoping to win," said defenceman Jack Johnson of the Los Angeles Kings and the 2010 Olympic men's team. "Now, they go in expecting to win."

Indeed.

Their women are the two-time defending world champions. Ditto their under-18 women.

Their under-20 men won gold at the world junior championship in Saskatchewan last month, toppling Jordan Eberle's magic and Canada's five-time champions.

Days earlier, their best 16-year-olds beat an Ontario outfit in the world under-17 challenge. Last year in North Dakota, their under-18 club beat ours at the world championship, and won gold on home soil.

Canada? The women won gold at the 2006 Turin Olympics. Other than that, we have squat when it comes to international hockey bragging rights.

"It's great that were winning world juniors, under-18s, but we've got to start winning world championships and tournaments like this," American forward Zach Parise said of the Olympics. "But I think that we are on the right track."

According to the International Ice Hockey Federation, Canada has 499,695 registered hockey players. The United States has 465,975.

In Canada, that number includes many elite athletes, who chase Stanley Cup dreams in the country's most popular sport. In the U.S., many of the top athletes are funnelled to football, basketball and baseball.

But that, too, is changing.

"We're getting players from more and more places across the country," said USA Hockey executive director Jim Johannson, citing California specifically. "Our comment has always been: ‘Boy, just think if John Elway played hockey.'."

Elway was a Super Bowl-winning quarterback with the Denver Broncos, but he was also a second-round draft pick of baseball's New York Yankees. He attended high school in Southern California, where hockey barely registered in the late-1970s, but the same elite athlete at the same high school could now, feasibly, choose sticks and pucks over helmets and bats.

Grassroots hockey remains more splintered than in Canada. Players come from high schools, colleges and universities, regional junior leagues, and the United States Hockey League. Some of their best players, including Windsor Spitfires defenceman Cam Fowler, continue to flee to the Canadian Hockey League.

But USA Hockey's National Team Development Program, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is starting to bare its teeth. It's a centralized program for elite, under-18 players and designed to improve the Americans' chances on the international stage.

It has produced players such as Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks, Ryan Kesler of the Vancouver Canucks, and Phil Kessel of the Toronto Maple Leafs. All three made the 2010 Olympic team.

"This is all part of the vision of USA Hockey going back a few years, putting the program together in Ann Arbor, committing to elite development rather than just leaving players spread all over and trying to be the best they can," said Brian Burke, general manager of the men's Olympic team and the Leafs. "We were getting guys who were the best player in a group of ‘B' players and now we are getting all the ‘A' players together and I think it's the best decision that USA Hockey ever made."

go america, bet it