From time to time, TheIHLC.com will feature detailed recaps and boxscores of some of the most legendary games in international hockey history, considered to be “IHLC Classics.” Today, in honour of American Independence Day, we look back at the final tilt between Team USA and Canada at the 1996 World Cup Of Hockey, where the Americans won their first ever “best on best” world title.
🇺🇸 United States 5-2 Canada 🇨🇦
World Cup Of Hockey Final, Game 3
Centre Molson, Montréal 🇨🇦
Saturday, September 14, 1996
When the NHL decided to revamp the Canada Cup in 1996, hosting the tournament in cities across the globe and expanding to eight teams in the first post-Soviet “best on best” tournament, many scoffed at the idea, seeing this as simply a renaming of the tournament Canada had become known to dominate, winning four of the five previous Canada Cup tournaments.
Team USA, however, had other ideas. Not quite on the scale as the “Miracle On Ice” in terms of the unlikelihood, but still the biggest American hockey victory in a generation, the U.S. won the third game of the best of three final 5-2 over Canada, on enemy ice, to capture their first World Cup Of Hockey, and also retain the International Hockey Lineal Championship.
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