America is a top hockey country who is a threat for a medal or world championship any time their best players are allowed to participate.

America has some great hockey but as a popular sport it's much more dominant in Canada.

Does winning the Olympics in 1980 not count as world champion? And getting the silver in 2010 isn't exactly terrible imo.

>Does winning the Olympics in 1980 not count as world champion?

Olympics (used to) disallow professional athletes in some team competitions. The US basketball dream team of '92 was so fabled b/c it was the 1st time to allow NBA players to partake. So in that regard Olympics don't really count as 'world champion' in pretty much any team sport event. 1980 hockey was no exception and featured "amateurs".

> 1980 hockey was no exception and featured "amateurs".

Where the definition of "amateurs" differed wildly depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you were from... Up to about 1985 the ice hockey World Championship was mostly about who would come second after the Soviet Union (usually Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union's national team was largely identical to CSKA MOCKBA[1], whose players were all officers[2] who probably didn't do much else while on the clock than play, practice, or exercise for playing hockey.

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[1]: Club Sport Krasnaja Armija, the Red Army Sports Club Moskva (Moscow)

[2]: Long-time goalkeeper Vyacheslav Tretyak ended up a full colonel, IIRC.

> Does winning the Olympics in 1980 not count as world champion?

No. That makes them Olympic champions.

The world championship is an annual competition[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Hockey_World_Championships

But AIUI many -- perhaps most? -- other sports than ice hockey skip the WC in Olympic years and count the Olympic champion(s) as world champion(s) for those years.