After decades of boasting a good-but-not-great junior hockey program, USA Hockey is on top of the world - and the proof is everywhere.
There are the three World Junior Hockey Championship titles since 2010, including a dominant 2016-17 performance in which the Americans went unbeaten and outscored foes by nearly a two-to-one margin. There's defending Calder Trophy winner Auston Matthews, an Arizona native and Toronto Maple Leafs star who's considered one of the best prospects of the past 20 years.
And if that's not enough to convince you, take a look at this year's NHL rookie scoring race. Entering Thursday, three of the top four first-year scoring leaders - Brock Boeser, Clayton Keller, and Alex DeBrincat - are American-born.
In other words, it's safe to say the days of USA Hockey being a mediocre program are over.
Team USA heads into 2017's world junior tournament as the favorite to repeat - something general manager Jim Johannson attributes to a talent pool jam-packed with pro potential.
"Without a doubt, it's the depth of the player pool we have," Johannson told theScore. "Kind of with that, it's hard to describe, but I think obviously our mindset going to everything is that we have a team that can compete for the championship no matter what the level of play is or what the tournament is."
That winning mindset is a lot easier to instill in a team filled with players destined for the NHL.
Kieffer Bellows (New York Islanders), Casey Mittelstadt (Buffalo Sabres), and Kailer Yamamoto (Edmonton Oilers) offer the most intrigue up front, as all three are first-round picks.
On the back end, returning defensemen Ryan Lindgren (Boston Bruins) and Adam Fox (Calgary Flames) offer head coach Bob Motzko experience and stability in a defensive corps otherwise lacking in big-name talent. However, blue-liner Quinn Hughes is a player to watch, as the offensively gifted defenseman is garnering some top-10 attention ahead of the 2018 draft.
Yet, Team USA's biggest strength is arguably between the pipes, with returning netminders Jake Oettinger (Dallas Stars) and Joseph Woll (Toronto Maple Leafs). Oettinger, a hulking 6-foot-4 2017 first-rounder, stands to be the No. 1, with Woll, an underrated third-round pick, serving as backup.
Aside from its world juniors roster, the development program's progress can be seen, as mentioned above, in the burgeoning superstars putting the NHL on notice - a fact that has Johannson fired up.
"I think it's exciting on a lot of fronts, guys have been coming from a lot of varied backgrounds and paths, if you will, to the NHL," he said.
"As players like that have success, I think two things. I think it helps pave the way in the future for guys, and, from the players' perspective, when they see guys having success, they want to emulate it. And it seems just a little bit more real to them that they can get to that level as well."
Johannson said much of that success can be attributed to hockey's expansion into new, untapped markets such as Arizona and Texas, which produced Matthews and Seth Jones, respectively.
"I think we have done a better job of keeping kids in the game, coupled with the exposure of the game in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida. All of sudden, kids are exposed to the game. There's facilities, and the next thing you know is pretty good athletes walk in and start playing hockey. If you roll that out, like Jones and Matthews, to me, are kids that grew up in Texas and Arizona and all of a sudden they are hockey players.
"Twenty years ago I think they would have been playing football or basketball, they wouldn't have been playing hockey. So now we have both the programs and the facilities for them to play the game."
Team USA might finally have all the pieces needed to build its foundation as a hockey powerhouse, but that's only half of it, as they now have to be carefully assembled - a task Johannson is trusting Motzko with.
"He's a guy that guys want to play for," Johannson said of his head coach. "And that's because he believes in them, he lets them know he believes in them, he takes feedback from them, he lets them play. But he holds them accountable and he has that respect factor from all of them. And so, my other part with him is he does an unbelievable job of using the coaches that are with him, and he'll be the first guy to tell you that."
Both Motzko and Johannson were at the helm of the 2017 gold medal-winning team in Toronto and Montreal, but despite this year's talent and expectations, Johannson isn't ready to anoint his team as the favorite heading into Buffalo.
"Well, I still wouldn't characterize it as that," he said. "There's so much respect for the countries in the tournament, and I think the world juniors is the best international hockey tournament every year.
"Put it this way: There's major disappointment any time we don't walk away winning it, but I guess I'm not a guy who has a gold-or-bust mentality, because there is so much that can happen, and so much respect for what the other countries are doing to put great teams on the ice."
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