When the NHL announced it was re-launching the World Cup of Hockey, it received varied reaction. Regardless of your opinion of the necessity of the pre-season tournament, it does serve as a nice barometer to see how national programs are stacking up against one another. USA Hockey put Dean Lombardi in charge of the team and hired John Tortorella to coach it, and that's where things went bad for this iteration of a U.S. national team.
For a tournament as short as this one, the main idea of many teams was to bring the most skilled, complete players and roll out four scoring lines.