We're going to be treated like kings, but we're going to expect this, this and this. I thought it was going to be loose, like, 'Hey, we've got something to prove.' But it was adamant to the point of anger, almost, in the first 10 minutes. Let's go and get it ourselves.'ĭoug Weight, Team USA: I knew we could have a good team, but I was like, 'Oh this is going to be a crazy tournament.' From the minute we got there it was, 'Nothing's acceptable except winning.' It was unbelievable. That was kind of the credo of the team: 'Yeah, let's go and earn some respect. He knew that all he had to do was, I guess you could use the word 'motivate.' He talked about how nobody respected us and how we needed to go out and earn that respect. That was one of the things looked at: not only having the skill set, but having the physical part of the game as well.īrett Hull, Team USA: Ron was the best coach for us. So we had the Hatchers and John LeClair and Joel Otto and Keith Tkachuk and Bill Guerin and players like that who could match up physically to them. Canada always had a pretty physical team, starting with the back end and some agitating forwards. And then he had to orchestrate the players to get them into that system. He understood the game, as far as systems and what worked. Phil Housley, Team USA: was a great technician. But I was certainly thrilled to be the coach. I didn't expect us to win or anything like that. He's not flying me out there for nothing. So Louie flew me out to New Jersey, and by the end of that day I knew I was going to be the coach. Ron Wilson, head coach, Team USA: I had coached the world championships the year before, and we did pretty well. After being selected as Team USA's GM, Lamoriello chose an old pal from his days at Providence College to coach - Ron Wilson. Lou Lamoriello was the general manager of a New Jersey Devils team that won a Stanley Cup in the spring of 1995. Everybody loves best-on-best hockey, whether it's in September or in February or on the moon. So this was a great way of quenching that here in Canada. There was a lack of international hockey at the time, with the Canada Cup's demise and the Olympics not quite there yet. You never quite knew when the next one was going to be. Joe Pelletier, co-author of "The World Cup of Hockey: A History of Hockey's Greatest Tournament": The Canada Cup was always kind of haphazardly scheduled. This is the story of the memorable first World Cup of Hockey, as told by people influential in the hockey world. Those tournaments had produced some of the greatest hockey ever, but through its five incarnations no American team had ever managed to break through against Canada and come home a winner. But until that point, the Canada Cups represented the grandest stage for the sport. In 1998, less than two years after the first World Cup, the NHL would send players to the Olympics for the first time, and the face of best-on-best hockey would change forever. Subsequent tournaments took place in 1981, 1984, 19. The first Canada Cup, held in 1976, was notable for Bobby Orr's gritty performance for Team Canada as his NHL career neared its premature conclusion. The World Cup was a direct descendant of the wildly successful Canada Cup - an international hockey tournament in which the best players from all nations, pro and amateur alike, could compete against one another - which had been the brainchild of former players' union head Alan Eagleson. 1 in Toronto, we revisited one of the seminal moments in American hockey history. So with a new, revamped World Cup of Hockey set to unfold Sept. Hockey Hall of Fame in November as part of its 2016 class. Twenty years later, Team USA - victors in that unforgettable 1996 tournament - will be enshrined in the U.S. The inaugural World Cup of Hockey began with the expectation of yet another Canadian triumph by a collection of some of the greatest players ever to take the ice and ended with an unexpected celebration by a band of upstart young Americans that included a dislocated jaw for future Hall of Famer Mike Modano and a raucous celebration at a Greek restaurant in Montreal while the host nation mourned. 'They had a swagger to them:' An oral history of the 1996 World Cup of Hockey You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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