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Hockey is a Canadian sport. It’s a patriotic slogan that many Canadians carry with pride, and one that makes every other country roll its eyes. However, given Canada’s dominance in links, it is not without merit.
Canada has always had the most players and the best players, and the combination of quality and quantity has made them heavy favorites in all of the strongest tournaments over the past 20 years. Canada has won the past two Olympic gold medals, and three of the last four in which NHL players have competed. They also won the last “best on best” event, the 2016 Hockey World Cup.
It’s been a long reign and may come to a screeching halt the next time we see a best-on-best tournament. A new giant is emerging, or at least one powerful enough to rival Canada’s shining star, explosive firepower, and dizzying depth. Americans are coming.
The domestic hockey landscape has changed significantly since the 2016 Hockey World Cup. At this tournament, it was hard to imagine that Canada and the United States could be so far apart.
The Canadians prevailed, winning the tournament with relative ease. The Americans had an absolutely embarrassing performance, losing all three of their group stage games.
Granted, that was a small number of cases, but it still marked a dramatic low for the U.S. as a whole, and has since reversed course.
Since then, we haven’t been able to see it play out on the ice because there have been no best-on-best tournaments. However, since 2016, American hockey has made significant strides thanks to a new golden generation of talent, and it will certainly reach its peak at the 2025 World Cup of Hockey.
Canada is still looking its usual dominant self, helped by having the best forwards and defensemen in the world, but the U.S. has more than caught up. Last week, when we announced the potential roster for the 2025 World Cup, this was what immediately came to mind — the U.S. squad looks stacked on paper. They have a potential roster that is at least on par with Canada. It could be even better.
This is a bold statement, but one that stands up to further scrutiny. When you line up the roster, the American skaters are right up there with the Canadians and have a big trump card between the pipes. Based on a combination of our three roster projections for him and his 2025 net rating projections for each player (i.e. adding his one year of maturity to his current level), the Americans are slightly lower than the Canadians. will be on top.
Americans stack very well from top to bottom.
Canada has the formidable duo of Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon, arguably the best forwards in the world, and has the upper hand at the top. But thanks to Auston Matthews and Jack Hughes, the U.S. is closer than ever to closing that gap. And they certainly make up for it further down the list with the richest group of forward talent this country has seen in decades.
The emergence of Matthew Tkachuk and Jason Robertson as elite players last season was a big deal. The same goes for Tage Thompson. Jack Eichel and Dylan Larkin have established a center core that can compete with the Canadians, and the team appears to be focusing on the wings. Canada has its own potential trump card in Conor Bedard, the next generational talent in the league. He’s not as highly rated here, in part because of his extreme usage in Chicago, but he might look much better next to Canada’s best player.
Defensively, Canada is once again at the top with Cale Makar, but the U.S. still has an elite trifecta of other talented defensemen. Between Adam Fox, Quinn Hughes and Charlie McAvoy, the American may have the upper hand.
Much depends on whether countries trust their youth movements. For Canada, that means Noah Dobson and Evan Bouchard — two elite offensive rearguards who have played well this season — could be on the outside looking in. The same is true in America, where they have two rookies with potential in Brock Faber and Luke Hughes. To take America’s defense group to the next level. Faber’s defensive play could be a particularly good asset.
Betting on youth may feel risky, but countries that can place legitimate faith in it over veteran experience may have an added advantage.
Canada and the United States are relatively even when it comes to forward and defense players. The Canadians have a slight advantage thanks to their offensive power, but the Americans have the defensive strength to slow it down.
This is further supported by America’s huge online advantage. In Connor Hellebuyck, Jake Oettinger and Thatcher Demko, the Americans have three options to be Team Canada’s de facto starter and a goaltender capable of winning the tournament. Canadians have big question marks.
How big is that question mark? Between the nine goalie spots available within our three roster projections, seven different goalies were selected, all three roster It wasn’t included in everything. Addin Hill seems like the best choice at this point considering how he played in Las Vegas last year, but there’s not a lot of pedigree there. This is by no means safe, and it’s a place where the Americans have a significant advantage over Hellebuyck, one of the best goaltenders in the league.
That’s enough to move up the standings elsewhere on the roster and give the Americans an edge in total net rating. The team’s defense has also strengthened, so that’s an even bigger advantage.
So what would happen if these two rosters met? The Americans would be the slight favorites at 52 percent on neutral ice. This is a big change from when this team was in his 2016.
Slowly but surely, Americans have not only closed the gap with Canadians, but surpassed them. In just under 10 years, Canada has gone from being a 40% underdog to just a 52% favorite to win.
This path started gaining momentum in 2018 and continued until the 2022 Olympics. This year, America may have been the favorite for the gold medal.
You’ll never know who’s truly the strongest until these two titans hit the ice. Maybe it’s 2025. Maybe it’s 2026. Probably never (Gary Bettman, please stop).
But as it stands, it seems like we’re in a golden age of American hockey. In that era, America will prove to be the strongest of the strongest. On paper, it looks like hockey could be America’s game the next time these two giants of his company meet.
(Auston Matthews photo: Jared Silber / NHLI via Getty Images)
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