Jon Cooper, Peter DeBoer, Dave Tippett and Jay Woodcroft were named assistant coaches for Team North America for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey on Friday by the NHL and NHL Players' Association.

Edmonton Oilers coach Todd McLellan will serve as the head coach. He said he liked that the assistant coaches have extensive experience working with younger players. Team North America will consist of players from the United States and Canada who will be age 23 or younger as of Oct. 1, 2016.

"A lot of experience, international experience," McLellan said. "Coaches that have been around a lot of young players for a while. I look at [Tippett on Thursday against the Oilers] having [Anthony] Duclair and [Max] Domi and a growing [Oliver] Ekman-Larsson, those type of players. [Cooper] with his group in Tampa. Peter DeBoer has some young players that he's had in the past both in Florida and New Jersey. The comfort of working with those people that I've been involved with in the past, we're excited about it."

TORONTO/NEW YORK – The National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) and the National Hockey League (NHL®) announced today the appointment of Team North America's Assistant Coaches: Jon Cooper (Tampa Bay Lightning), Peter DeBoer (San Jose Sharks), Dave Tippett (Arizona Coyotes) and Jay Woodcroft (Edmonton Oilers). The four assistant coaches will report to Team North America General Manager Peter Chiarelli (Edmonton Oilers), Associate General Manager Stan Bowman (Chicago Blackhawks) and Head Coach Todd McLellan (Edmonton Oilers).

"We are excited to announce Team North America's assistant coaches for the World Cup of Hockey 2016," said Chiarelli. "Jon, Peter, Dave and Jay are great additions to our staff and their tremendous experience will go a long way in helping our young players have a successful tournament."

Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice enjoyed the conversations he had with Ralph Krueger when they both worked for the Carolina Hurricanes.

They'll have a chance to renew those talks when they work together at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

Maurice was named an assistant coach on Krueger's staff for Team Europe at the event, which will be held Sept. 17-Oct. 1 at Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

"Very excited to work with Ralph," Maurice said from Dallas, where the Jets play at the Dallas Stars on Thursday. "He's a real interesting guy. He's been around hockey for an awfully long time but done a tremendous amount of work in leadership and building organizations and motivating them. So it'll be a great opportunity. A bunch of players I've never worked with before and a great challenge."

Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice was named an assistant coach for Team Europe for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, the NHL and NHL Players' Association announced Thursday.

In addition, former NHL players Peter Bondra, Sean Burke, Lorne Henning and Vaclav Nedomansky, and executive Ricky Olczyk, were named as scouts.

Krueger's relationship with Maurice dates to 2008, when Maurice coached the Carolina Hurricanes and Krueger, who was coach of Switzerland's national team, was helping with European player recruitment. Krueger also helped Maurice make the decision to coach Magnitogorsk in the Kontinental Hockey League in 2012-13.

Team Europe will have plenty of players to choose from when making its roster for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. General manager Miroslav Satan wasn't ready to name specific players yet after he named his scouting staff Thursday, but did say that he expects almost all of the roster to be comprised of NHL players.

"I think what we are looking at now is 50-plus players in the NHL who have some kind of European passport and belong to our team, so I think that's a big enough group to find our players. But having said that, we are not excluding European players," Satan said. "You never know what might happen. Injuries might happen or someone might have an unbelievable season over in the KHL and we might consider him. But I would say our primary focus will be NHL players.

"I think it's too early to talk about names right now. Everybody probably has in their head some surprises and we will probably discuss that internally [in the future]. But it's too early to mention anything public yet."

TORONTO -- A strong start to the 2015-16 NHL season from Los Angeles Kings forward Tyler Toffoli and defenseman Jake Muzzin, Ottawa Senators forward Mark Stone, and Montreal Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher has each on Team Canada's radar for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

General manager Doug Armstrong and his management team met this week for the third time to continue to shape Team Canada's 23-man roster for the best-on-best tournament, which begins Sept. 17.

Armstrong said putting together the 16-man roster required by March 1 will be relatively easy; it will contain plenty of players from Canada's gold-medal team from the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

But deciding who will join the likes of Carey Price, Drew Doughty, Duncan Keith, Shea Weber, P.K. Subban, Jonathan Toews, Sidney Crosby and Jamie Benn, as well as Steven Stamkos, who did not play in Sochi because he was injured, on the final roster will be the difficult part for Team Canada's management team.

"We've all put a mock team together and we're starting to clarify the guys that have been on that list every time," Armstrong said Tuesday. "But what's great about scouting this and going through this is that there are players that are having really good seasons that weren't on that radar screen that we're really going to hone in on."

TORONTO -- Dean Lombardi, the general manager of Team USA for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, has an extensive to-do list for the next 10 months.

Atop that list is finding the leaders who will drive the team he and his management group pick to represent the United States next fall.

Lombardi, the general manager of the Los Angeles Kings, said Tuesday he ranks leadership among the most important characteristics for Team USA for the eight-team tournament, which runs Sept. 17 to Oct. 1 at Air Canada Centre.

He expects there to be turnover from the U.S. team that was assembled for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. That team finished a disappointing fourth after back-to-back losses to Canada and Finland.

"I think there is a trend toward having a bit of a turnover," Lombardi said at the League office here during a break in the fall meeting of NHL general managers. "On two accounts too. Not only with some players, but with the players that will be back to start assuming more hands-on leadership roles. That's one of the things we learned from [Sochi]. I'm not sure some of those players realized that it is now their team, their responsibility to take over. So I think there will be a transition there, as well as new faces."

TORONTO -- Peter Chiarelli has come across some significant challenges as he and co-general manager Stan Bowman continue to evaluate the players available to them in the selection process for Team North America for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

Beyond the challenge of forming a team featuring players from Canada and the United States, Chiarelli said he's finding it difficult to get a consistent read on young players who typically are inconsistent while also trying to paddle through a relatively small and inexperienced pool of goalies, none of whom are in the NHL.

That's why Chiarelli said he and Bowman expect to use all the time allotted to them up to the March 1 deadline to name the initial 16 players to the roster. He said they likely will wait until after scouting at the 2016 IIHF World Championship before naming the balance of the roster (20 skaters, three goalies) before the June 1 deadline.

Ralph Krueger is unique to hockey.

How many people go from behind an NHL bench to chairman of soccer club Southampton FC of the Barclays Premier League?

Before the 56-year-old native of Steinbach, Manitoba was asked to run the elite soccer team, currently seventh in the 20-team premiership, he won a gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics as an assistant coach with Canada. Previous to that he spent 19 seasons coaching in Austria and Switzerland, and three seasons with the Edmonton Oilers, including the 2012-13 season as coach.

TORONTO / NEW YORK -- A limited number of World Cup of Hockey 2016 Tournament Passes will go on sale to the public on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 10 a.m. ET, the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) and National Hockey League (NHL) announced today.

Over 150 of the top players in the NHL® are coming to Toronto to face off in what promises to be one of the most competitive, highly skilled hockey tournaments in the history of the sport. The World Cup of Hockey 2016 will run Sept. 17 through Oct. 1, exclusively at Air Canada Centre, and feature players representing over 15 countries. Eight teams -- Team Canada, Team Czech Republic, Team Europe, Team Finland, Team North America, Team Russia, Team Sweden and Team USA -- will compete in this best-on-best international hockey championship.