Until this year, Danny Schwartz didn’t know hockey was played in Israel. He’d never heard of the Canada Centre in Metulla, or that Israel had a national team in 2005 that won Division II Group B gold at an International Ice Hockey Federation championship.

And he certainly didn’t know that Canada had won hockey gold in Metulla at the 1997 Maccabiah Games, or that the late NHL coach Roger Neilson had operated a hockey summer camp there, or that former Montreal Canadiens coach Jean Perron coached Israel’s national hockey teams.

Schwartz had heard of the Maccabiah Games, but he wasn’t sure they were played in Israel (he confused them with the JCC Maccabi Games in North America).

He didn’t know any of that. Nevertheless Schwartz, a native of Dollard des Ormeaux, will be one of 22 Jewish Canadians – mainly from Quebec and Ontario – making up Team Canada’s senior men’s roster when the team faces off July 5 against Israel at the Israel Ice Hockey Federation’s World Jewish Hockey Championships in Metulla.

Canada is sending one senior team (comprising players 18 and older) and two junior squads (under-18) to the tournament, which winds up on July 15.

On June 28, the nine Montreal players head to Toronto for a four-day mini camp for the whole team. Then they take off on July 1 for Israel, where they’ll get four more days to practise and acclimatize themselves to their surroundings before the first game.

Other competing countries will be the favoured United States – which won the first tournament in 2007 – as well as Israel, France and Russia.

In 2007, Canada bowed out in a semifinal match against the Americans.

“I’ve been training real hard at the gym and getting on the ice two, three times a week,” said the affable 24-year-old, who works in his family’s metal recycling business.

Schwartz is a “two-way centre” – meaning he can handle both offensive and defensive positions – and prides himself on being a face-off specialist.

Schwartz played in the Quebec junior AAA league for the St. Jerome Panthers and Vaudreuil Mustangs, which won the league’s 2004 championship. Also on the Vaudreuil team that year was Kirkland native Jordan Topor, who will also be on the plane to Israel.

Other Montrealers who will be lacing up include goalie Josh Tordjman, who plays for the Phoenix Coyotes in the NHL; defenceman Casey Fazekas, who goes to Babson College in Massachusetts; defenceman Oriel McHugh, who has played pro for Oklahoma City; defenceman Phil Levine, who also played Quebec junior AAA, and forwards Eric Satim and Sy Nutkevitch, both NCAA players.

Players hailing from Ontario include Ontario Junior Hockey League defenceman Brendan Schwartz; university forwards Aaron Stein, Mitch Goldenberg, and Adam Weinberg; Dustin Laren of the Ontario Junior Hockey League; and Mikki Levy, who’s played in the Nova Scotia Junior Hockey League.

The team’s coach is Sherry Bassin, general manager and owner of the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League, who has coached over the past decades in the world juniors and is “very well-respected in the whole Canadian hockey community, let alone the Jewish hockey community,” Schwartz said.

Assisting Bassin will be Steve Simmons, a well-known Toronto sportswriter.

In all, the senior team is made up of veteran junior league and college players who Schwartz said will pose a real threat to win.

“I think we’re a good mix,” he said. “From my experience, it’s not always the best talent that wins, it’s more the team, and I think we’re bringing a real team. I think as a team we’ll do very, very well. We’ll play for each other. When we get to the rink, it’s going to be business.”

One reason he thinks the team will gel  is that almost all the Quebec players hail from the West Island of Montreal and have known and played hockey together since boyhood. Locally, they have “dominated the Jewish hockey community,” he said.

When the Quebec guys heard about the Israel tournament, Schwartz said, they went to Toronto in May for the tryouts and made the team.

The two under-18 teams – Team Canada White and Team Canada Blue – are being coached by former NHLer Steve Thomas of Toronto and TSN’s Pierre McGuire of Montreal, respectively.

Although Schwartz was not aware before this year of hockey in Israel, he and “almost all” of the Montreal players have been to the Jewish state before, mostly as part of Birthright Israel trips, which Schwartz went on at age 18.

 “You feel at home once you’re in Israel, so to play our national sport there is going to be extraordinary,” he said.