USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program, familiarly known in global hockey circles as the NTDP, is now entering its third decade of existence. The “Program” had a humble launch in 1997-98, with little or no fanfare. Today it enjoys its role as a junior hockey machine, a two-year program that generates IIHF medals every January and April. Whether or not it is the best use of our national governing body’s resources is debatable, but there is no questioning the tangible results of the NTDP, in both team and individual success for American hockey.
The paradigm of small-group sport specialization has a long history worldwide.
Back in the Cold War era, nations behind the Iron Curtain would sequester their elite athletes to improve international results, the Olympics in particular. The Russian Red Army under Viktor Tikhonov comes to mind, with his 11-month-a-year boot camps in Moscow and beyond, a sports dictator who created a global hockey dynasty under his iron fist in the 1970s and ’80s. Despite a slew of gold medals, it left a trail of psychologically scarred players.
USA Hockey’s Ben Smith (Gloucester, Mass.) centralized his 2002 Olympic women’s team for not one, but two seasons, taking the best and brightest American student-athletes to the cultural gulag of Lake Placid, Smith doing everything in his power in defense of Olympic gold. The result was disheartening — his team lost the gold-medal game to Canada on home soil. His troops were ill, burned out and couldn’t get out of their uniforms fast enough, eager to enjoy freedom away from the rink.
Four years prior, when Smith was leading Team USA women to a historic gold medal in Nagano, USA Hockey attempted a radical concept with its male hockey players, centralizing the country’s best 16- and 17-year-olds on an annual basis. This experiment was christened the National Team Development Program. It was reminiscent of the Czechoslovakia tennis tracking system of the 1960s and ’70’s, one that sequestered the nation’s elite tennis teens, giving them the best training and global competition. The Czech system developed a handful of stars such as Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova, but the Czech tennis nation lacked depth.
Prior to the NTDP, Team USA was a non-factor in the U-20 World Junior Championship, winning three medals — none gold — in the first 21 years of the tourney. “Before the NTDP, we couldn’t even medal,” said John Wroblewski, current coach of the U-18 selects. “Now gold is the expectation, at the U-18’s and same with the U-20’s.”
Wroblewski happened to be part of that inaugural NTDP class, when our national governing body concluded that investing in select players, and the subsequent attention from getting them onto the international medal stand, was the best use of its resources. It appears to be working. This past decade, on average, USA wins a world junior gold medal every three years. Those triumphs are beamed nationally on NHL Network, and USA Hockey participation continues to increase. Current Michigan State coach Danton Cole was coaching NTDP teams from 2010 to 2017. He is convinced that the program is the ultimate destination for today’s fast-track player, but back in its early days it was considered a “leap of faith.” USA Hockey Hall of Famer Keith Tkachuk (Melrose, Mass.) recalls the debut of the NTDP. “People were curious about it,” said Tkachuk. “People had their typical high school hockey in Massachusetts and Minnesota, prep schools and stuff.”
Despite reluctance from traditional hockey circles, a tall blonde kid from Wisconsin, and his dad, somehow found their way into the inaugural program back in 1997. “You heard a rumor going around that this might happen. The Internet wasn’t what is today,” said current NTDP coach Wroblewski. “My dad hounded down (USA Hockey player personnel director) Bob Mancini’s number. The next thing you know we got a call back. It was a crude situation.”
Wroblewski headed down to Ann Arbor, a pioneer in USA Hockey’s great experiment. He moved in with an unfamiliar family, a situation tempered by the fact that his goalie was doing the same just down the block. His new hockey neighbor was a Boston kid with a personality to match his oversized talent. That goalie is current ESPN radio star Rick DiPietro (Winthrop, Mass.). “He’s not acting in his job, that’s who he is!” said Wroblewski with a laugh. The mellow midwestern kid and the future Boston University star soon became fast friends.
“We used to hang out all the time, and ride to the rink together,” recalled Wroblewski, reminiscing about DiPietro. “Game days he was really serious, but when he wasn’t playing, the guy was hilarious. You talk about those guys with big personalities, he’s in his own category!”
Massachusetts has a history of hockey players with bigger-than-life personaes, but today those characters have all but disappeared. Guys such as Tkachuk, Billy Guerin (Wilbraham, Mass.) and Jeremy Roenick (Marshfield, Mass.) might not have cut it at today’s NTDP. “They’re very strict when it comes to off-ice,” said Tkachuk, whose two sons, Matt and Brady, went through the program in recent years. “You screw around, you’re going to get sat. I’ve seen some kids get kicked out.”
Tkachuk, Roenick and Guerin were USA Hockey’s wild bunch from the 1990s, the vastly entertaining gang that won the inaugural World Cup in 1997 but flamed out in a haze of controversy at the 1998 Olympics. “Very few of the big boys left,” said Tkachuk with a smile. “Guys that say anything and do anything.”
“Guys today are cautious,” said former NTDP coach Cole, who spent seven years shaping lives at the program. “I think that media, social media, they learn at a younger age.”
“The world we live in, you’ve got to be pretty careful now,” said Tkachuk, who at age 18 fit right in with Jack Parker’s legendary wiseguys at Boston University.
Compared to the Mass. men of yesteryear, today’s NTDP players representing the Bay State are choirboys. Matthew Boldy (Millis), Patrick Moynihan (Millis), Sean Farrell (Hopkinton) and Henry Thrun (Southboro) all have elite prep school grooming, college commitments and heads tightly screwed on. “They’re really good kids, no-nonsense, show up and do their work,” said the coach known as Wrobo. “Rarely do they mess anything up in practice; zero-maintenance type kids.”
Although they are being groomed to win IIHF medals for the Red, White and Blue, they will be New England’s next wave of NCAA impact players. Boldy will be a top-six sniper for Boston College next year, Moynihan a two-way attack dog for Nate Leaman’s Providence Friars, and Farrell and Thrun will be paired in Cambridge, Harvard’s latest elite student-athletes. As the NTDP seeks more challenging competition, the U-18 squad has scheduled 16 Division 1 college games, giving their charges a first-hand preview of next-season’s rigors.
“It definitely gives you confidence going into the next level that you know the speed, so you’re not surprised,” said Boldy, the fleet 6-foot-2 winger who is averaging a point a game for the NTDP.
The two Harvard commits, winger Farrell and defenseman Thrun, already have traveled to the Bright-Landry Hockey Center this fall and claimed a scalp from the Crimson, winning 6-3. “Yeah, we took it to them,” said Thrun. “It was cool to play against future teammates, and see the coaches afterward; a pretty special experience.”
Moynihan knows he will soon be playing for a grueling taskmaster down at Providence and is confident he is taking the necessary steps this year to be one of Leaman’s guys in six months’ time. “Coach Wrobo expects a lot from us, and works us hard, gets us to be a better team. Coach Leaman likes to do that, too. It’s right up my alley. I can’t wait.”
In order for Wroblewski to reach the prescribed goal of winning precious medals at season’s end, he needs to drive these young men to a higher level of performance. This is his second straight season coaching these 2001-born players, and he knows their strengths and weaknesses. Boldy’s combination of speed and outrageous hand-eye skill has him shooting up the Central Scouting pre-draft rankings, but Wroblewski focuses on Boldy’s shot. The U-18 club had just been shut out by Michigan State, a game in which Boldy’s separation speed had generated a half-dozen grade-A chances, but he failed to find the back of the net. “You talk about his shot,” said Wroblewski. “He is still growing into his body. He’s put on two or three inches, and probably 25 pounds, since he got to the NTDP. It’s still all coming together in regard to his fluidity. When that shot starts to connect a little more often, the numbers of goals he will produce is going to be off the map.”
Wroblewski loves Moynihan’s intangibles, but knows his winger’s limitations. “He is the most liked guy on the team, that 200-foot guy willing to do the dirty things and set the table for his teammates; he plays the game with an abrasiveness. I’m looking forward to when his skill-set becomes more consistent.”
Wroblewski pointed out that in the midst of their Division 1 college schedule, his players can’t control the puck for more than a second because of the fast-reacting college defenses. He expects Moynihan’s skill to “shine through” with extended puck time in the USHL portion of their season.
The long-term goals, IIHF medals, are implemented on a short-term basis here at the NTDP — extended days in the sprawling USA Hockey Arena complex in Plymouth. On non-game days, the players arrive at noon and leave at 6, competing against each other in lengthy sessions before rigorous weight sessions. It’s a hockey laboratory, shaping these select players into champions.
“There’s a lot to like,” said Tkachuk, who moved to Michigan temporarily to keep an eye on his youngest son Brady. “Every day practicing with your same age group, the strength and conditioning aspect; you play a really good schedule to prepare you for the next level. All in all, it’s a huge success.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge for these NTDP teens is being housed by surrogate families known as billets. It’s a staple of junior hockey life in Canada, but leaving home and moving in with strangers takes some getting used to for these American preps. “Yeah, it’s a little overwhelming,” said Wroblewski. “The billet situation sorts itself out. People that are opening doors have the best intentions.”
Occasionally, when the situation doesn’t sort itself out, players’ parents with means come out and rent a home in the area. Matthew Tkachuk stayed with teammate Christian Fischer’s parents, and Brady Tkachuk stayed with his dad a year later. “That was definitely a thing we were concerned about,” said Keith. “We wanted to transition that way instead of billeting with people we didn’t know.”
Thrun and Farrell, former day students together at St. Mark’s School, have taken to living away from home after initially hesitating to leave the school they loved. “It was definitely a hard decision,” said Thrun, “but I don’t regret it at all.” The two teens, having played with each other since the age of 6, are now roommates in Plymouth, the NTDP’s version of the “Odd Couple.” Thrun is a tall, chatty defenseman who likes to maintain order in his living quarters. The 5-9 Farrell, on the other hand, lets gravity be his guide when finding a place for his used laundry.
"Sean’s kind of messy, and his stuff is always on my side of the bathroom,” said Thrun good naturedly. Farrell is at a disadvantage in the debate. “I don’t want to say anything, because he’s my ride everywhere.”
This tandem will be in Harvard Yard next fall, and it would surprise no one if they ended up rooming together. “We know our different habits, when to give each other space,” said Farrell. “It works out well for us living together.”
For the 50-something select Americans in adjacent birth years, major development is a given. They have the best trainers, coaches and facilities our national governing body can bestow. You see NTDP products annually at the All-American Prospects Game in the fall, the world juniors over New Year’s, and the U-18 World Championships each spring. Watching the fresh-faced American boys singing our national anthem atop the medal podium, on national television, has had the desired effect. USA Hockey participation is up, and elite players are now being mined from every corner of the continent, especially the Sun Belt. It’s not just California, but Florida and Arizona as well.
That’s just the big picture. The granular look reveals individual lives changed for the better. “You get to watch them grow up, great young men,” said longtime NTDP coach Cole. “They’re pros at 18 when they leave.”
Not ordinary pros, either, NHL stars like Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel (North Chelmsford, Mass.) and former BU whiz Clayton Keller.
And unlike players from other specialization programs in history, these NTDP subjects appear to be well-adjusted and psychologically healthy. “It’s almost like hockey heaven,” said Moynihan. “You go here, you get better every day.”
“Everything here is top of the line,” said Boldy. “It’s definitely helped me become a better player, so it was a good decision for me.”
“I’ve been really happy with my two years so far,” said Thrun.
Having four Massachusetts players on the U-18 national team is a bit of an aberration this decade. Other than Eichel, the Commonwealth has endured a recent drought of elite players at the national level. It appears the cycle has wound its way back to Bay State prominence again, as these four 2001-born stalwarts continue to shine at the NTDP.
“Massachusetts has always been an integral part of USA Hockey,” said Wroblewski. “It’s always been a hotbed. Players are now springing up from different places, like Phoenix and everywhere else. But it’s great to see that it’s back, and hopefully we can continue it here.”
Tim Rappleye’s latest book, “Hobey Baker, Upon Further Review,” was released in December.
NTDP at a glance
Year founded: 1996
Location: Plymouth, Mich.
Arena: USA Hockey Arena
League: United States Hockey League
Total Number of Players: 573
NHL Draft Picks: 308
First-round NHL draft picks: 72
First overall picks: 4 (Auston Matthews (2016), Patrick Kane (Chicago, 2007), Erik Johnson (St. Louis, 2006), Rick DiPietro (NY Islanders, 2000)
Alumni in the NHL (2017-18): 95
Alumni in the AHL (2017-18): 72
Stanley Cup champions: 16
All-Time Olympians: 19
Olympic medalists: 7
IIHF World Championship medalists: 19
IIHF World Junior Championship medalists: 98
World Cup of Hockey participants: 18
NCAA champions: 44
Hobey Baker winners: 6
Hobey Baker finalists: 20
NCAA first -team All-Americans: 35
