Tema: USA U-20 Team

Nice job! I'm glad Calhoun proved his worth.

It's that time again. Seasons are wrapping up and I wanted to preview the U20 World Championship for you. After last year's DI title, we are excited to take the ice in the Top Division for the first time in more than 10 seasons!

This is one of the deeper teams I have seen in my years running the team, with a lot of talent on both offense and defense, and they are led by some veterans who were instrumental in last year's title run.

The team will be captained by LW Nathan Springer. Springer is a natural goal scorer, and was third on the team with 7 points in last year's tournament. Winger Herb Coats will serve as one of the alternate captains after finishing second on the team with 5 goals last year. The other alternate with be defenseman Chad Reetz, who started last season on the bench, but managed to finish tied in second among USA defensemen with 3 points despite only playing in half of our games. Our top goalie will be Mike Martel. Martel bailed us out by coming in in relief and stopping all shots he faced in two periods to seal a come from behind win last year, and posted a shutout and a better than 90% save percentage in 8 games with the U18 team in his career.

As always, I'm grateful for the opportunity to manage the team, and appreciate all the great USA talent you have developed.

A must win against Bulgaria tonight

Thank goodness the boys came to play! We are advancing to the qualifying round, but that last minute loss to Sweden has us behind the eight ball. Probably need to win 2 of 3 (where we will be heavy underdogs in 2 of those games) to make the playoffs. The one against Canada tomorrow is huge.

Sorry, late with this update, but wanted to give my annual update on how the tournament went. The short version is, we were disappointed to miss the playoffs, but we made the qualification round which kept us out of the relegation round and managed to survive a year in the Top Division without getting relegated for the first time in more than 15 seasons. A few late heartbreaks prevented us from having an even better tournament.

We started off with a 2-0 loss to Hungary. Slayton Sillick kept us in the game by stopping 36 of 38 shots, but despite putting 29 shots on net, we couldn't break through.

In the second game, we fell to Sweden 2-1. Top center Donald Pullen scored our first goal of the tournament, and Mike Martel kept us competitive by stopping 40 of 42 shots, but Sweden scored the winner in the last minute. That was a killer, because reaching overtime would have guaranteed us at least a point in the qualification round standings.

In the last preliminary round game, our offense finally came alive in an 8-2 win over Bulgaria. Quentin Hanks scored two goals and two assists, Omar Ingersoll scored two goals and an assist, and Cedrick Sorenson scored a goal and an assist. This win was huge because it kept us out of the relegation round, but since it moved Bulgaria to the relegation round, it didn't give us any points to take with us to the qualification round.

First game of the qualification round was the other heartbreaker, we lost 2-1 to Canada after surrendering the winning goal with less than 6 minutes left, again depriving us of at least a point in overtime. Mike Martel again kept us in the game, stopping 37 of 39 shots.

The offense came alive again as we beat France 7-3 in a must-win game. We got big contributions from the fourth line with Michael Moore and Virgil Gilbert each contributing a goal and an assist. Herb Coats also added a pair of assists. While we needed to win this game, we also needed help, and even though we got the win, other games eliminated us from playoff contention and ended our title hopes.

This set up a final game with only pride on the line against Serbia. Mike Martel pitched a 17 save shutout, and team captain Nathan Springer scored our last goal of the tournament to secure a 1-0 win.

Our goaltending was fantastic, never surrendering more than 3 goals, and both Mike Martel and Slayton Sillick recorded a GAA of 2 or below, and a save percentage above 93%. We got 5 points each from forwards Donald Pullen, Cedrick Sorenson, Quentin Hanks, and Darin Bradford, and Wesley Ndydar led all USA defensemen with 3 points.

As always, I appreciate the opportunity to manage the team, and all of the USA managers for developing such great talent to use.

We are once again approaching the World Championships. For the second year in a row, USA will take the ice in the Top Division. This is a very balanced and competitive team we have, and I wanted to give you my annual tournament preview.

Top right winger Will Ulrich returns from last year's team where his lethal shot helped score two goals for team USA. Right winger Omar Ingersoll, who also scored 2 goals from last year's team, will be an alternate captain. Winger George Montgomery, who appeared in 2 games with last year's team will also be an alternative captain. Slayton Sillick, who kept us in a game where we were significantly outshot by stopping 36 of 38 shots he faced last year will be our top goalie.

As always, I appreciate getting the opportunity to coach this team, and you all have given me great players to work with. Hopefully we can improve on last year's result and be competing in the playoffs of the Top Division.

Good Luck!

Sorry for the late summary, but I want to give the yearly recap for those who are interested in how your players did but weren't able to follow game-by-game.

We started off with a close one against France. We were outshot heavily, but Ricky Thibodeau kept us in the game by stopping 31 of those 33 shots. Unfortunately, we couldn't bury one, and lost 2-0.

Against Sweden, we bounced back well. Slayton Sillick stopped 30 of 31 shots, and Brian Minor and Eduardo Stroud both scored, leading us to a 2-1 victory.

This set up a situation where we could advance to the qualifying round with anything other than a regulation loss against Serbia. We got a bit of a scare, falling behind 3-1 early in the second, but rallied to win with George Montgomery scoring the winner with only 8 seconds left in the game. Team captain Will Ulrich scored twice, and top center Weston Handy added a goal and an assist.

The first game of the qualifying round was against Poland. Despite outshooting them 37-21, we fell 3-2. Brian Minor and Myles Bailey both scored, but this loss ended up being the difference between advancing to the knockout rounds and not.

Next, eventual-champion Slovakia thumped us 4-0 in a game where we got outplayed start to finish.

Going into the last game of the qualifying round, against Latvia, we were still alive but not in control of our own destiny. We needed to win, have Poland lose, and prevail on a goal-differential tiebreaker. Our boys did their part, running up the score to win 6-0. Brian Minor had a pair of goals, and defenseman Daniel Bernard and center Myles Bailey each had a goal and an assist. Unfortunately, Poland eliminated us by winning their game.

The team put a good effort in, and avoided playing in the relegation round for the second consecutive year in the Top Division, a feat USA hadn't accomplished in the U20 tournament in almost 20 seasons. We got some solid depth play, with third line center Myles Bailey leading the team with 5 points and second line center Brian Minor leading the team with 4 goals. We lacked a line that could really takeover games, though, as no USA player finished in the top 20 for tournament points.

As always, I had fun with the team. Thanks for giving me the opportunity, and the deep pool of players to fill out the roster! Here's hoping we make the knockout round this season!

Good luck for next season ! You did a great job last season considering the players you had

It's that time of year. As teams' playoffs wrap up, the players are arriving for the U20 championship. We are hoping to finally break through and reach the playoff round of the top division. I'm reaching out to share my usual world championship preview.

We've got a veteran heavy team with lots of 20 year olds. Our captain is star center Brian Minor, who scored four goals for us at last year's championships. One of the alternate captains is sharp shooting left winger Kirk Hanks. The other alternate is left winger and penalty killing specialist Eduardo Stroud, who also scored a goal at last year's tournament. Our top goalie is Ricky Thibodeau, who stopped 31 of 33 shots in his only appearance in last year's world championship. As always. I appreciate getting the opportunity to coach the team, and all of the star players you develop. Hopefully we make you proud.

Good Luck!!!!

Sorry to be late with this post, but I wanted to send out my traditional recap.

While we had a rough preliminary round that had us playing in the relegation round for the first time in years, the team battled hard and managed to avoid relegation.

We had a rough start where we got thumped 7-1 by Czechia in a game that we struggled in from start to finish. We followed that up by battling hard against the Russians but falling 3-1 in a game where we outshot the opponent.

The preliminary round ended with us dropping a third straight game, losing 3-1 to Latvia. The score was probably closer than the game as we were outshot 40-20, but Ricky Thibodeau kept us in it, holding them to only 2 goals on 39 shots before we surrendered an empty netter as we desperately tried to tie the game (though forcing overtime would not have kept us out of the relegation round as we needed a regulation win). Defenseman Ole Engelhardt kept us in the game with a shorthanded goal.

Things improved for us in the relegation round. We started out by beating Belarus 4-2, and our top line finally got going with right winger Ben Lockhart scoring 2 goals and an assist, center and team captain Brian Minor scoring a goal and 2 assists, and left winger Harry Rollins adding 2 assists.

We followed that victory up by blanking Ukraine 3-0 behind a 25 save shutout by Thibodeau and 2 goals by Rollins.

Despite being 2-0 in the relegation round, we still faced the possibility of being relegated going into our final match against Slovenia. Once again, our top line carried us. Minor had a 4 point night with 2 goals and 2 assists, Rollins had a goal and 2 assists, and Lockhart added 2 more goals.

The story of the tournament for us was a lack of depth scoring. We only scored 1 goal in each of our three preliminary games, before our top line came alive in the relegation round. Ultimately, the three top line forwards produced well, with Minor and Rollins tying for second in the tournament with 8 points each, and Lockhart tying for fourth with 4 goals. Unfortunately, no other player recorded more than 3 points. Thibodeau was great in net, posting a save percentage north of 93% and recording a shutout, as he kept us in every game he played in.

While we were disappointed to not reach the qualifying round, I'm proud of how the boys fought to avoid relegation, and as a result we will be playing in our fourth straight Top Division championship this year, matching our U20 team's longest streak in history of remaining in the Top Division. Looking forward to hopefully a stronger finish this season. Thanks again for the opportunity to coach the team.

Its world championship time again! Our players are arriving for the tournament, and this year, USA is one of the four tournament hosts. Last year we had a rough time in the preliminary round, so this year, we want to avoid the relegation round and try to fight our way into the playoffs. We've got a solid team, with a lot of good 19 year olds who can help us for two years.

Our starting goalie is going to be Lincoln Cross, an elite goalie who posted a 91.48 save percentage in seven appearances at the U18 world championships.

The team will be captained by winger Mitchell Mapp. Mapp is a versatile, all-around winger who can play on either side, has the heaviest shot on the team, and posted an assist in 5 games with last year's U20 team as well as a goal and 2 assists at the U18 World Championships.

The first alternate captain is Quincy Sinclair, a rugged penalty killing forward who played in 3 games at last year's U20 world championships.

The other alternate captain is Josh Wilcox, a two-way center who is playing in his first world championships, but already has recorded more than 300 points in competitive games with his team.

As always, thank you for giving me the chance to coach the team and for developing the players. Wish us luck!