United States men's national ice hockey team
Updated: Wikipedia source
The United States men's national ice hockey team also known as Team USA, represents the United States in men's international ice hockey. The team is controlled by USA Hockey, the governing body for organized ice hockey in the United States. As of May 2025, the team is ranked 1st in the IIHF World Rankings. The U.S. captured gold medals at the 1960 and 1980 Olympics, and earned silver medals more recently at the 2002 and 2010 Olympics. At the best-on-best professional level outside of the Olympics, Team USA has won the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, defeating Canada in the finals. Most recently, the U.S. claimed a historic gold at the World Championships in 2025—its first IIHF Worlds title since 1933 and its third recognized world title overall when including the 1960 Olympic gold that the IIHF also recognizes as a World Championship. Unlike other nations, the U.S. did not typically use its best NHL players in the World Championships. Instead, it provided the younger players with an opportunity to gain international experience, although they changed the approach by the 2020s. Overall, the team has collected eleven Olympic medals (two of them gold), 21 World Championship medals (three of them gold, including 1960), and it reached the semi-final round of the Canada Cup/World Cup five times, twice advancing to the finals and winning gold once. Before 2025, the U.S. had never reached a World Championship gold medal game, having lost in the semi-final round twelve times since the IIHF introduced a playoff system in 1992; this includes six semi-finals appearances in ten tournaments from 2013 through 2023, and three consecutive in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The U.S. is one of the most successful national ice hockey teams in the world and a member of the so-called "Big Six", the unofficial group of the six strongest men's ice hockey nations, along with Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, and Sweden.