The under-18 national development team based in Ann Arbor, Mich., will only have two Minnesotans on its roster this season.

They are defenseman Justin Faulk of South St. Paul who was on the under-17 national team last season and Derek Forbort, who played for Duluth East last season.

Faulk has committed to UMD, Forbort to North Dakota.

The under-18 national team will play 25 games against USHL teams this season and 17 against NCAA schools.

It has four players from Michigan and three from New York and California. Seventeen of the players on the team have committed to NCAA Division I schools, none to the U.

Kurt Kleinendorst of Grand Rapids, Minn., is the team’s head coach.

Finland beat the U.S. 3-2 on Monday in the first game of the 2009 Hockey Canada Cup ay GM Place in Vancouver, B.C.

“We ran into a goaltender that played exceptionally well, while not capitalizing on the opportunities we had,” said Mark Johnson, the U.S. coach. “It wasn’t the way we wanted to start the tournament but all we can do is bounce back and play well against Sweden [on Tuesday]. We’ll take the lessons we learned and move forward from here.”

The goalie? Noora Raty, who will be a Gophers freshman this season. Not sure how much she will play, though, because she will undoubtedly be the Finn’s goalie in the 2010 Olympics.

Gigi Marvin had one of the two U.S. goals in the first period. After that Raty stopped 34 shots in the second and third period and finished with 49 saves total.

After playing Sweden today, the U.S. faces Canada on Thursday.

The 23-member U.S national women’s hockey team was named on Monday and six former Gophers are on it.

Two of them are the Lamoureux twins, Monique and Jocelyne, of Grand Forks, N.D. They played for the Gophers as freshmen last season but then transferred to North Dakota.

Also on the national roster, which is basically the roster for the U.S. Olympic team minus two players, are:

Gophers assistant coach and former all-america player Natalie Darwitz and two players on last season’s team, forward Gigi Marvin and defenseman Rachael Drazan.

The sixth ex-Gopher is forward Jenny Potter, who played at the U of M before transferring to UMD and leading the Bulldogs to the NCAA title in 2000.

The seventh Minnesotan on the national team is forward Angie Keseley of St. Louis Park. She plays for the University of Wisconsin.

The national team will play a 10-game tour before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which starts Sept. 25 in St. Paul.

The under-17 U.S. select team lost 3-2 to Slovakia on Tuesday in the Five Nations tournament in Fussen, Germany.

Five of the players on the team are Minnesotans: defenseman Dan Molenaar of Eden Prairie, forwards Ben Bahe and Kevin Becker of Hill-Murray, Anthony Greco of Shattuck-St. Mary’s and Christian Horn of Benilde-St. Margaret’s.

Forward Kenneth Gillespie of Shattuck is also on the team but he is from North Carolina.

The U.S. team beat Germany 3-1 on Sunday and plays Switzerland on Thursday.

The Gophers women’s soccer, which tied Penn State for the Big Ten title last season, is rated No. 19 in the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s preseason poll.

The U was 22-4 overall last season, 8-2 in conference play.

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WCHA commish Bruce McLeod said Wednesday that he expects the conference to release details soon of what the 2010-11 schedule will look like and how the conference playoffs will work.

“Within two weeks, we should have news on both,” he said.

The WCHA will grow to 12 teams in 2010-11 with the addition of Bemidji State and Neb.-Omaha.

Most college hockey people expect the WCHA to go to a Final Six in 2011, with all 12 teams playing in the first round and the six winners advancing to the Xcel Energy Center.

In St. Paul, there would be two quarterfinals on Thusday instead of one, two semifinals Friday as is the case now and a championship game on Saturday. The third-place game would probably be eliminated.

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Five Minnesotans are among the 23 players named to the U.S. women’s under-18 select team. It will train at the Super Rink in Blaine from Aug. 17-21 and play in the women’s U18 three-game series against Canada from Aug. 24-27 in Calgary, Alberta.

The state players on the team are forwards Stephanie Anderson (North St. Paul) of the Minnesota Thoroughbreds, Rachel Bona of Coon Rapids HS, Dana Gallop of Grand Rapids HS and Taylor Kuehl of Mound Westonka HS and defenseman Milica McMillen of Breck.

Katie King, a three-time Olympian and the head coach at Boston College, will be the head coach of this team.

 The Gophers recently got commitments from four recruits. I don’t think any of them will come in next season, even though three will be high school seniors.

Maybe those three — the Reilly twins of Holy Angels and Justin Holl of Minnetonka — will come in for the 2011-12 season.  Travis Boyd, who played for Hopkins the past two years, will be a sophomore on the U16 national development team this season.

Boyd, unless he accelerates his education and completes three years of high school in two years, will join the Gophers in 2012-13 at the earliest.

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Wish I was in the Chicago area on Aug. 17-18. The U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey orientation camp will start those days at the Seven Bridges Ice Arnea in Woodridge, Ill., and anyone can go watch for free. There will also be a third closed day.

Thirty-four candidates for the 2010 U.S. Olympic team will be there. The XXI Olympics will be from Feb. 12-28 in Vancouver, B.C.

The final roster for the 2010 Olympics will be named in late December.

The 34 players represent 22 NHL teams. Five have played in previous Olympics:

* Mike Modano, Dallas (former North Star), 1998, 2002, 2006

* Chris Drury, New York Rangers, 2002, 2006

* Brian Rafalski, Detroit, 2002, 2006

* Scott Gomez, Montreal, 2006

* Jamie Langenbrunner, New Jersey, 1998

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I’ve been gone for two weeks, on a working vacation. Mostly I was on my knees or back, dealing with  plumbing issues — you don’t want details — at my home and at my daughter and son-in-law’s house. Realize now, being a plumber would have been a bad career choice. Unless I got paid by the hour, not the job.

But back to college hockey. There’s a little news, here and there:

* At Wisconsin, junior defenseman Ryan McDonagh said he is coming back for a third year. He is a Badgers co-captain.

He was a first round draft pick of Montreal coming out of high school at Cretin-Derham Hall but his NHL rights got traded to the N.Y. Rangers this summer. Rangers told him they were happy with him being happy developing at UW.

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