Orchestrating An Upset: The 1996 World Cup of Hockey

Tagline

In 1998, less than two years after the first World Cup, the NHL would send players to the Olympics for the first time, and the face of best-on-best hockey would change forever.

Overview

Orchestrating an Upset is relatively recent history, but it is one of the United State’s rare international wins in best-on-best play and it hasn’t gotten nearly the same treatment the Miracle has. How did they assemble a team to beat Canada, who had previously won 4/5 Canada Cup tournaments? The documentary itself is a fun look back at a tournament that had a ton of drama despite not getting much in the way of publicity, especially in the United States. The movie covers Team USA’s creation and all of the international background going into the World Cup. The US was 0-7 against Canada in previous Canada Cup tournaments and hadn’t beaten their northern rivals in 20 years. A first shift brawl in a round robin game against Canada foreshadowed how the Americans would play for the rest of the tournament.