1960 and 1980 certainly were good moments at a time when the Americans were not considered threats. 1980 for sure with it being the Soviets and Al Michaels' call at the end and being on home ice and such (I guess 1960 was too). But to go back to 1996, I can remember the lead up to that tournament during the 1995-'96 season. Canada has about 63% of the NHL players, at least half if not more of the best players in the world are Canadian and we had Mario playing other worldly. How the heck can we lose? We don't have a weakness anywhere. Our strength is down the middle and we have most of the coaches in the NHL and at least half of the best goalies in the NHL. Honestly, at a time like this where we hadn't lost in a best on best since 1981 I felt we were a lock cinch.
Then some strange things happened. Patrick Roy wasn't picked for the team. Scotty Bowman, initially the coach, stepped down and they went with a much different approach in Glen Sather. Mario isn't playing, Bourque isn't playing, all of the sudden MacInnis is hurt, Kariya is probably the best left winger in the game and he's hurt, Ron Francis who is Mr. Everything at that time had his best year with 119 points and isn't playing. Just take a look at those names and the starting line up that they boast:
Kariya-Lemieux-Francis
Bourque-MacInnis
Roy
Coach: Bowman
So for me I thought the cracks in the armour of Team Canada started when there were big names not playing. All of the sudden the defense started to look thin. If you take two HHOFers off the team that will happen. Coffey, Stevens, Blake, Niedermayer, Desjardins, Foote, don't look bad, but then when you look at the Americans with Chelios, Leetch, Suter, D. Hatcher, K. Hatcher, Schneider. Hmmm, that's probably an advantage for the Americans. And while our forwards were still great from name recognition, all of the sudden you are relying on an old Gretzky, an old Messier, and an erratic Lindros who hasn't won anything yet. Sakic, Yzerman, Shanahan, Fleury, etc. they all were good too but for the first time I looked at the Americans' forwards and saw a very fast team with good speed and all of the sudden it seemed to make a difference that they had Hull. Throw in Richter who was in his prime and very capable of stealing a game and I will admit when I first looked roster vs. roster up and down the lineup and compared these two I got some quivers. We still almost beat them, and maybe should have, but we weren't at that clear advantage anymore. And our defense and even forwards had well known names but many were in different parts of their careers.
Give the U.S. credit. They lost an overtime game in Game 1 that should have never been scored because of an offside. They could have sulked but didn't. I can remember an interview with Leetch after Game 1 and he sort of just shrugged off the bad call. I thought "Wow, they aren't worried." And this was despite going to Montreal for two games.
