OTTAWA – If history were easy to make, there wouldn’t be much point in it. For USA Hockey, it’s been 49 years of World Junior Championships and now, for the first time in their history, they have gone back-to-back as World Junior Championship gold medalists. 

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Teddy Stiga’s (NSH) goal in overtime after an exquisitely-placed stretch pass from Zeev Buium (MIN) touched off a celebration that was hard fought for in another instant-classic World Junior gold-medal game. 

TEDDY STIGA. GOLDEN GOAL.

USA goes back to back for the first time ever at the #WorldJuniors. What a game!!!!! pic.twitter.com/ZEVGLVcews

— FloHockey (@FloHockey) January 6, 2025

USA will have a chance to make more history next year on home ice as they go for an unprecedented American three-peat as hosts in the Twin Cities. That’s getting a little ahead of everything, though.

Let’s take a second to look at what just happened. In the 49 years of the tournament, USA has won seven gold medals. They have never even played in the finals in consecutive years until this year. 

Really, until the U.S. won its first gold medal in 2004, winning the World Juniors was barely a consideration. The U.S. had performed so poorly in the tournament historically, that it built the entire National Team Development Program to start changing that narrative. 

The program has been around for nearly 30 years and all of USA’s gold medals have come since then, but never with the consistency or regularity that would satisfy the original goals of such a unique program. And some would say that until an Olympic gold is won in men’s hockey, its purpose is still somewhat unfulfilled.

USA has probably never had a better chance to do what it did this year. They returned 10 players from last year’s gold-medal team and only lost one additional player to the NHL this year. They had a strong class of 18-year-olds that had fallen just short of gold at their U18 Worlds last year and were hungry. 

They also had a potentially generational American coach whose own story is one of great perseverance and triumph that made him the right man to lead USA’s historic double. David Carle already has two national titles in the NCAA and two World Junior golds in his first two attempts as a U.S. National Team coach. He is 35 years old.

While this may have been a perfect storm, the winds have been blowing for years. USA now has gold medals in three of the last five World Junior Championships and four in the last 10 years.

You can’t claim excellence until you are consistently excellent. USA Hockey has reached that level at the top of the amateur hockey pyramid.

Every single World Junior Championship, Team USA enters as a threat for gold. More importantly, they enter with the expectation not that they can win, but that they should. This is new. This is progress and it’s been hard-earned.

USA Hockey has grown as an organization. Country demographics and population, along with a grass-roots movement that has existed for decades, a plan for development and improved infrastructure like more rinks and programs to bring down the cost of hockey, have allowed American hockey participation to grow continually.

There are more people playing hockey in the United States than there ever has been before and with that comes the potential for growth at the top.

Now, this doesn’t mean USA is the dominant hockey nation. Canada still has more players at the highest levels of the sport and that will be the case for some time. That said, their stranglehold on the sport is loosening, not because Canada is fading but because everyone else is getting better. And the U.S. is now at the front of that line.

What makes the gold medal special for USA isn’t that they won with the best players. In fact, this team is not as good as last year's and probably not close. They had a lot of returnees, but a lot of the new players were not as experienced or talented as the depth of last year’s team.

The fact that Teddy Stiga, who was a healthy scratch at the beginning of the tournament and played managed minutes throughout the tournament, scored the golden goal on his only shot on goal is emblematic of why this victory means so much. 

USA’s top players have caught up, but other countries – especially Canada – could always win the depth battle. This time, USA’s depth came through in the biggest moments.

Fourth-liner Brandon Svoboda (SJS) scored an ugly goal that started the rally. USA expanded its bench in the third period, getting every player in their lineup ice time to see whoever was freshest. And they still controlled the second half of the game.

It’s easy to win when you have the best players, but I assure you that this U.S. team was not the best team in the tournament on paper. 

Next year, the team will have fewer stars even than this one. But they will have nine plyers that can help them again next year including leading scorer Cole Hutson (WSH) and probably top NHL Draft prospect James Hagens. Maybe they’ll win, maybe they won’t.

But there’s no doubt that USA Hockey can look back at 2025 as the year they hit another milestone that shows progress. And that there really is no ceiling on what comes next.

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FloHockey is providing comprehensive editorial and video coverage of the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship. With a team of content creators on site and leading WJC analyst Chris Peters providing stories and columns throughout the event, make FloHockey your home to learn more about the 2025 World Juniors. FloHockey will be following Team USA and Team Canada closely, while tracking the rest of the tournament on site. See all the stories here.

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