OTTAWA, Ontario – The United States will look to repeat as under-20 gold medalists for the first time in the country's history as the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship begins on Boxing Day, Dec. 26 and runs through Jan. 5 in Canada's nation's capital.
 
Team USA is being led for the second straight year by University of Denver Richard and Kitzia Goodman Hockey Head Coach David Carle, who returns his entire staff from the Americans' gold medal win in January 2024 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
 
Denver sophomore defenseman Zeev Buium goes for his second World Junior Championship and will play a larger role then he did as an 18-year-old last year. Buium was named an alternate captain on the Team USA's 2025 World Junior squad and is expected to be on the top defensive pairing and quarterback the No. 1 power-play unit.
 
Buium recorded five points (3g/2a) in seven outings in last year's under-20 tournament and scored an insurance marker in the Gold Medal Game against host Sweden.
 
A product of the U.S. National Team Development Program, Buium also won gold medals with Team USA at the 2023 IIHF U18 World Championship, 2022 Under-18 Five Nations Tournament in Michigan and the 2021 Under-17 Four Nations Tournament in Finland. He helped the United States to a pair of silver medals at the 2021 Four Nations Tournament in Slovakia and 2023 Four Nations Tournament in Finland.
 
The San Diego, California, native presently leads all NCAA defensemen in scoring with 20 points in 18 games with the Pioneers. His 16 assists on the campaign are tops among rear guards and tied for second overall among all skaters.
 
Two other Pioneers are back on the United States squad for the second-straight year as DU director of hockey operations Travis Culhane is serving as the video coach and Nick Meldrum is back as the equipment manager. Meldrum, who previously worked at the U.S. National Team Development Program, also led equipment operations for Team USA at the 2019 World Juniors in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.
 
Two other coaches on Carle's staff have Denver ties, as University of Minnesota associate head coach Steve Miller spent 20 years as a Pioneer assistant coach and USA Hockey's David Lassonde was also an assistant at DU for three seasons from 2011-2014.
 
Also on Carle's staff as assistant coaches are fellow NCHC head coach Brett Larson of St. Cloud State and Augustana head coach Garrett Raboin.
 
Last year marked Carle's first-time ever coaching the United States in an international tournament and was the second DU coach to guide Team USA at the World Juniors, joining Marshall Johnston in 1977. The Anchorage, Alaska, native was the third NCHC head coach to lead the U.S. to gold at the World Junior Championship, joining former St. Cloud coach Bob Motzko (2017) and North Dakota and Omaha coach Dean Blais (2010 with Omaha).
 
The United States has won a medal in seven of the last nine IIHF World Junior Championships, marking the best medal stretch in U.S. history. The seven medals include three golds (2024, 2021, 2017), one silver (2019) and three bronze (2023, 2018, 2016). The United States enters the U20 tournament with 22 wins in its last 26 games over the last four World Junior Championships, with two gold (2024, 2021) and one bronze (2023) during that time.
 
USA is in Group A with host Canada, Finland, Germany and Latvia and will play their preliminary-round games at Canadian Tire Centre, home of the NHL Ottawa Senators.
 

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