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US Under-18 Team Claims Third Gold in Four Years

By Hockey IntelliGym, 05/08/17, 2:30PM CDT

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They’ve done it again.

On April 23, Team U.S.A won their third gold in the last four U18s and seventh in the last nine, running the table with seven straight wins. As has been the case in several recent U18 tournaments, special teams mattered a lot.

The Americans scored one goal with the extra man and one goal short-handed while Finland was 0-for-6 with the extra man.

Is there something in the water? Maybe. We know the US is a role. Indeed the Americans have won every top-level gold medal so far this year in IIHF competition--World Juniors, World Women's, Women's U18, and now men's U18.

Any observer of the game of hockey knows there are myriad factors in this type of domination.

One though, has to be hockey sense. On this USA Hockey may have a secret weapon. It’s called Hockey IntelliGym and has been a mainstay of the US National Team Development Program since 2009. IntelliGym is a software tool used by USA Hockey to help players improve their hockey sense - everything from on ice anticipation, to exploiting opportunities in transition to going playing more intelligently in the defensive zone. IntelliGym has proven particularly effective at honing special teams play. It’s helped the National Team Development Program (NTDP) gain worldwide acclaim.

Some elements of the US victory over the Finns looked like pure hockey sense. Case in point was the game’s opening goal at 3:51 moments after a U.S. penalty ended. Braedan Tkachuk made an incredibly smart play on the goal. He stole the puck from Finn, Aleksi Anttalainen along the boards in the Finnish end and fired a great pass to Josh Norris who snapped a shot in for the early lead.

It was as if Tkachuk “just knew” where Norris would be. As grads of the NTDP program both players have trained extensively on the IntelliGym.

Why does IntelliGym work?

“Skills integral to making shots and avoiding injury – like the ability to divide attention between the puck, the stick, the ice, the other players, and the strategy – are hard to acquire at 13 miles an hour, and are in fact trainable outside the arena. Gathering information, planning skating paths, recognizing opportunities, and advanced spatial perception are also better burned into the brain before translating into physical play,” said Danny Dankner, CEO of Hockey IntelliGym.

Bottom line: results have shown that teams that train with IntelliGym win. Other things being equal, the players and coaches that regularly use this program are the ones who hoist trophies.

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