Team USA GM Dean Lombardi has plan in mind for his World Cup of Hockey roster

12:21 PM ET

In spite of the disappointment losing to Canada in overtime in the gold-medal game at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, there was nonetheless a feeling that emotional night that this was a seminal moment for the United States, an arrival of sorts.

Or make that a return, the silver medal providing a connector to earlier moments of defining national hockey moments: the 1996 victory in the World Cup of Hockey over Canada and the 1980 Miracle On Ice gold medal in Lake Placid.

But somehow by the time the Americans had limped home from the Sochi Olympics in 2014, having been shut out in their final two games and embarrassed by a less talented Finnish team in the bronze-medal game, the feeling was that line had been broken — or, at the very least, bent.

Today, with less than three months to the start of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Team USA GM Dean Lombardi is relying heavily on what made those earlier moments of success possible while building a team that might restore the Americans to that plateau.

To do so, the Los Angeles Kings GM has cast aside conventional wisdom in leaving a handful of elite, offensive players off the roster and instead has assembled a team that even before it takes its first steps on the ice at training camp in Columbus, Ohio, in early September has a clearly defined identity, its players already aware of the roles they are going to be expected to fulfill.

Hard? Oh, you bet.

Gritty? Check.

Capable of the heaviest kinds of hockey? Got it.

“I think you’re on the right track,” Lombardi said in a recent phone conversation.

Hall of Fame coach Herb Brooks guided the 1980 U.S. Olympic team to immortality, insisting while building his team he wasn’t looking for the best players, but the right players.

Lombardi is nothing if not an ardent student of history and the psychology of team-building.

Many thought the 1996 World Cup win would be a pivotal moment for American hockey. Glenn Cratty/Getty Images

He has now staked his reputation on the fact that players such as Ryan Callahan, Brandon Dubinsky, Justin Abdelkader, Jack Johnson and Erik Johnson are the right players for this …

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