Ask any coach, and they’ll tell you the key to a short-term competition is coming together quickly, becoming a team instead of 20 individuals, which can be a challenge for Team Canada when you consider the talent produced from coast to coast.

For five players invited to Canada’s National Men’s Summer Under-18 Team selection camp, getting familiar with each other is something they won’t have to worry about.

The five – Matthew Finn, Scott Laughton, Matia Marcantuoni , Chris Marchese and Adam Pelech – are all products of the Toronto Marlboros AAA program and have spent most of their minor hockey years playing together.

“It’s pretty special,” Laughton says of having the five in camp together.” Most of us played together for nine years, so it’s a pretty special moment for all of us since we’re pretty much best friends and brothers.”

Beginning in Peewee AAA in 2005-06, the five helped the Marlboros win Greater Toronto Hockey League championships in Peewee AAA (2006-07) and Bantam AAA (2007-08, 2008-09), a bronze medal at the Ontario Peewee Championship in 2007 and a gold medal at the Ontario Bantam Championship in 2009.

In their final season together, 2009-10, the 1994-born Marlboros saw their GTHL title run come to an end at three, falling in the semifinals, but made a run to the championship game of the OHL Cup, the showcase event for Minor Midget AAA teams in Ontario.

The success of the Marlboros allowed the five to be selected early in the 2010 OHL Priority Selection, with four – Laughton (3rd overall to Oshawa), Marchese (11th overall to Erie), Finn (12th overall to Guelph) and Marcantuoni (18th overall to Kitchener) – taken in the first round, while Pelech was the first pick of round two.

Fast forward just over one year from draft day and the former Marlboros are in camp with the best 1994s from across the country, battling for a Team Canada roster spot.

It is an impressive achievement for the Marlboros program, considering the number of minor hockey associations across the country and the number of players in the running for one of the 42 camp invitations.

“The Marlboros, they’re known to have a strong program and strong coaching,” says Marcantuoni. “I think the five players that were invited were coached the right way and they’re all very strong, and that’s why they’re here.”

While all five admit it would be a thrill to pull on the Team Canada jersey and go after a fourth straight gold medal at the Memorial of Ivan Hlinka tournament in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it wouldn’t be their first golden moment in red and white.

The Marlboros graduates helped Ontario win gold at the 2011 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, beating the United States in the gold medal game in front of a tournament-record crowd of more than 12,000 at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Man.

They say that experience – of playing in pressure-packed situations, with and against the best in Canada – works as a benefit coming into their first national team camp.

“It makes it easier,” Laughton says. “We’ve played with and against a lot of these guys, we already know what we can do, and what they can do. The relationships we’ve built help us stay loose and joke around off the ice, and we know everyone is all business on the ice.”