History
From 1920 until 1963, the senior amateur club teams representing Canada, were usually the most recent Allan Cup champions. The last senior team to win a gold medal at the World Championship was the Trail Smoke Eaters in 1961.
Following the 1963 World Championships, Father David Bauer founded the national team as a permanent institution. The new permanent national team first competed at the 1964 Winter Olympics. Since 1964, the national team has two Olympic gold medals, and five world championship wins.
Before the emergence of the Soviet Union, Canada dominated hockey, winning six out of seven golds at the Olympics before 1956 and 13 world championship gold medals before 1961. From 1954 to 1991, Canada was able to win only four World Championships and no Winter Olympic Gold medals when the Soviet, Czechoslovak, and Swedish teams dominated. This was in part because Canada's best professional players were unable to attend these events as they had commitments with their respective National Hockey League teams.
Canada withdrew from official IIHF events in 1970 and the National Team programme was suspended after they were refused permission to use semi-professional players at the world championship. Canada returned to the IIHF in 1977 after a series of negotiations between IIHF President Dr. Sabetzki and top officials of professional ice hockey in Canada and the United States of America. Canadians and Americans were allowed to enhance their world championship teams with professional players; and the world championships were scheduled as late as possible to ensure more players would be available from among the NHL teams eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs.
In return, a competition for the "Canada Cup" was to be played every four years on North American territory with the participation of Canada, the United States, and the four strongest European national teams, including professionals.
In 1983, Hockey Canada began the "Programme of Excellence", whose purpose was to prepare a team for the Winter Olympics every four years. This new National Team played a full season together all over the world against both national and club teams, and often attracted top NHL prospects, veteran pros with NHL experience and, in a few cases, current NHLers who were holding out in contract disputes. This programme was discontinued in 1998, when the NHL began shutting down to allow its players to compete.
After not winning a gold medal for 33 years, Canada finally won the World Championship in 1994 in Italy. Since that time, they have won in 1997, 2003, 2004, and 2007.
At the 2010 Olympics, Canada won the gold medal with a 3-2 win against the USA in the final. Sidney Crosby's overtime goal secured Canada the final gold medal of the Games.
At the 2012 in Finland and Sweden, Ryan Murray became the first draft eligible prospect to represent Canada at the Ice Hockey World Championship
Read more about this topic: Canada Men's National Ice Hockey Team
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