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BY KEVIN ALLEN Houston, W From the days of Tommy Williams to a record number of Americans drafted in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, USA Hockey has come a long way. 16 USA Hockey 75TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE PROGRAM We Have Liftoff From A Cult Obsession To A Mainstream Phenomenon, The Sky's The Limit For American Hockey home always included hockey clippings from Detroit newspapers. hen I went to work for an Arizona newspaper fresh out of college in 1979, the care pack- ages I received from It was the only way to follow hockey in the desert. If you grew up in one of America's cold weather climates in the 1960s and 1970s, hockey was a major sport. If you were anywhere else in the country, hockey was more rumor than reality. In that era, hockey had cult status in most of the popu- lated areas of America. The amazing story of USA Hockey's 75th anniversary celebration is a tale of how the sport has matured and grown, particularly over the past three or four decades. Here's a stat that brings it home: In 1969, America sent more men to the moon than it sent to the National Hockey League. There were five Americans in the NHL that season, and six U.S. astronauts made lunar orbits on two Apollo missions. Contrast that to today's NHL passport review that shows that one of every five NHL players is an American. In the late 1970s, Eastern Michigan University geography professor Carl Ojala studied the birthplaces of professional hock- ey players and determined that "America's Hockey Belt" was almost exclusively in Michigan, Massachusetts and Minnesota. When he mapped his work, those were the only states with noteworthy numbers. If that study was done today, the hockey belt would have strings hanging from that belt that extend as far west as California and as far south as Florida. Last season, there were as many NHL players from the state of New York as there were from the large hockey-crazed country of Russia. PHOTOS BY USA Hockey; Getty Images