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. Team USA has won gold medals at the 1960, 1980, and 2026 Olympics. Their victory at the 1980 Olympics, known as the Miracle on Ice, is widely regarded as one of the greatest upsets in sports history, when a team composed largely of amateur and collegiate players defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union en route to the gold medal. In 2026, the United States won its first Olympic gold since 1980 after defeating Canada in overtime in the final. Team USA has won silver medals at the Olympics eight times overall, including most recently at the 2002 and 2010 Olympics. The US has also won the World Cup of Hockey, defeating Canada in the finals at the 1996 tournament. The team's most recent medal at the World Championships came in with a historic gold in 2025, their first victory in the tournament since 1960 and third overall (also in 1933). Unlike many European nations, the United States has often sent less experienced rosters to the World Championships, largely because the tournament overlaps with the NHL playoffs and because not all eligible players choose to participate. By the 2020s, however, USA Hockey began placing greater emphasis on the tournament and assembling stronger, more competitive teams. Overall, the team has collected twelve Olympic medals (three 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. Until 2025, the US 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 included six semi-finals appearances in ten tournaments from 2013 through 2023, and three consecutive in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The US 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.