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The United States U17 national team is in the middle of another busy season, which takes the young players all over North America and Europe. Right now, they´re in the middle of a five-team international tournament in Brno, Czech Republic. After losing their first game 3-2 to Sweden, they bounced back with a 4-3 win over Russia.

“Overall, I was really happy with the way they played,” head coach Danton Cole said of his players. “Obviously, the time change and playing games back-to-back is a challenge, but I thought we skated better today than we did yesterday, and hopefully tomorrow we skate even better.”

Team USA arrived in Brno on Tuesday, play games on four straight games from Wednesday to Saturday, then go home on Sunday. It´s a grueling schedule, but nothing new for Cole, who has been through this before on previous editions of this team.

“It is what it is,” he shrugged. “You can look at it two ways, but think it´s great. It´s good for the guys to go through it. Mentally and physically it´s not easy, but that´s why we want to do it. It builds character.”

Building character, and winning hockey teams, is what the United States National Team Development Program is all about, and Cole enjoys being part of it. Every year, the top 16-year-old players in the country are recruited to play together on one team, based in suburban Detroit. For two years, the players play together and go to school together before going off to college hockey or the professional ranks.

“It´s a fun process. I´ve coached in a lot of different places at a lot of different levels, but this is a really good age. They learn a lot, they get bigger and stronger, and they grow up as young men. It´s just the right time in their lives when you can influence them on the ice and off the ice as well, teaching them to be young men. I really like it. It´s great having them for two years, and then they all take off and do bigger and better things.”

There was no USNDTP when Cole was a youngster, but he went through a similar process, playing four years of college hockey for the Michigan State Spartans, where was part of a national championship team in 1985-86. He then went on to bigger and better things, playing 11 seasons of professional hockey, which included NHL stops with the Winnipeg Jets, Tampa Bay Lightning, New Jersey Devils (earning a Stanley Cup ring in 1995), New York Islanders and Chicago Blackhawks. Like all careers, though, his came to an end, and that´s when he got into coaching.

“I accidentally fell into it,” he said of the start of his coaching career in 1999 at age 32. “I was playing in the old IHL for the Grand Rapids Griffins and I got hurt early in the season and I couldn´t play the rest of the year. It was getting to be the time in my life anyway where I had to start thinking about what I would do when I finished playing, and they asked me if I wanted to stay on and help coaching. Now, 18 years later, I´m still doing it.”

Cole was an assistant coach, then head coach in Grand Rapids, as well as a couple of other minor league teams in his native Michigan. Then he coached college teams at Bowling Green State University and the University of Alabama-Huntsville. In 2010, he got involved with the USNTDP, where he has been ever since.

“I´ve really found a passion for it and really enjoy it. I feel I can really make a difference in the lives of these young men, so it´s really nice.”

Like the players, coaches in the USNTDP commit to two years. He´s had players under his tutelage such as Seth Jones, Jack Eichel and Clayton Keller who are now either NHL stars, or well on their way to becoming. Now in his seventh season in the program, Cole is in the first year of his fourth two-year stint. How many more will there be?

“I think eventually they´ll probably kick me out,” he joked. “USA Hockey´s been great for me and my family. I really like it there, it suits me really well, but at the end of every two-year cycle, you tend to look around and see what your options are.

“In the middle of the season, though, I´m not really thinking about that. I´m committed to this program and this group of guys for the next year and a half, and then we´ll see what the situation is and go from there.”