While the U.S. has not won a gold medal at the IIHF World Championship since the program started, DeGregorio notes that the results are starting to come at the IIHF World Junior Championship, which the U.S. has won the past two years and three times in the past five years.
It’s all something that has paid off as the team has assembled in Montreal. They know each other, are familiar with each other’s games, their on-ice tendencies, their off-ice personalities. They aren’t players from the Rangers and the Bruins, players from the Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers and Ottawa Senators.
“Without a doubt,” McAvoy said. “On and off the ice. Mostly off the ice, which has been the best part. Since we got together, we haven’t stopped smiling.”
There are stories, memories shared. There is so much laughter.
“We’ve almost all reverted to our Pioneer High school selves,” McAvoy said, referring to the high school most of the NTDP players attended in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “It’s hysterical because what we were then is still what we are now, in a way. There’s been stardom and fame and money and whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, we’re all in the room last night hanging out and we all feel like kids again. At least that’s how I felt.
“It’s nice to kind of feel that, to revert back and be like we didn’t skip a beat and we’ll always be that close. So I think that’s going to go a long way for this group.”
It’s especially true for a certain group of overlapping players, in McAvoy, Hanifin, Auston Matthews, Matthew Tkachuk, Zach Werenski, Jack Eichel, Dylan Larkin, Adam Fox and Jake Oettinger, all of whom were in Ann Arbor at the same point.
“I think it helps us with chemistry in these tournaments,” Hanifin said. “We have all made bonds and friendships in those years and it matters in something like this.”
In addition to that group, Jack Hughes, J.T. Miller and Brady Tkachuk attended the program and assistant coaches David Quinn and John Hynes coached there for multiple seasons before moving into pro hockey.
Those bonds will be tested in the coming days, in the coming tournaments, in international competition. But for now, they are all appreciative of how they got here, of the role the NTDP played in their development, of its existence at all.
“Whenever people ask me about it, I always say, ‘If you’re a U.S. player and you can go there, it’s a no-brainer,” Werenski said. “I’m a big fan of the USNTDP.”
