Posted on 02/23/2006 6:25:28 AM PST by Hat-Trick
LOL!! That's why he leads the Stars in points, even at his age.
Olympic hockey sucks. Everybody tries to recreate 1980, which was a team of kids.
You can't expect professionals to take time out of their season, come together, and play like squads which have been practicing together for months.
Can't argue with that.
Exactly. That's why Gomez and Gionta were the team's best forwards (they play together on the same line for the New Jersey Devils), even though Keith Tkachuk was about as talented and mobile as a garbage dumpster playing on their line.
The moron who wrote this article doesn't know jack about Mike Modano. He has been the best player on one of the best teams in the NHL for the last 6-10 years. He is also one of the smartest and hardest working players. When he is playing his normal game, it is impossible to miss Modano on the ice. He can also be brutally honest to the media.
It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that the USA team had problems that it was not going to fix in this Olympics. For one thing, no one who can consistently score tough goals. On the Stars, those guys include mostly Jere Lehtinen, Jason Arnott, and Brendan Morrow. But Lehtinen is playing for Finland, and Arnott and especially Morrow should have been playing for Team Canada. Even in Olympic hockey, you sometimes have to score ugly goals. They didn't, and both teams are coming home.
Agree.. I thought the US goalkeeping was TERRRIBLE.
True, but that was the case for most of the teams, which are just a collection of all-stars.
It's going to happen sooner than you think. The current agreement between the international hockey federations and the NHL expires after the 2010 Olympics, and I don't think it's going to be renewed after that.
The plain truth is that the best USA players, as a group, simply are not as good as the best players in other countries. This is true both in Olympic hockey and NHL hockey.
And I must say given the choice between the US beating Finland, and Lehtinen not getting hurt, I would choose Lehtinen not getting hurt. We have no chance at the Stanley Cup if he gets hurt. That's why the NHL owners are not fans of Olympic Hockey in its current form.
"They should have never allowed pros to compete in the Olympics. It's been ugly ever since. What ever happened to amateurs only? That's when the Olympics were good"
It wasn't good for Canadians/Americans/Fins/Swedes/Czechs or anyone else when USSR sent their * amateurs *. They changed when there was still a Soviet Block didn't they?
The rest of the world couldn't compete when they were sending their best amateurs and they'd meet the USSR and see a super oiled machine, members of the armed forces...i guess, men.
While the rest of the world were sending boys.
marketing, all marketing and vanity.
Me too. Go Stars...er, go Finland!. :)
Yeah it changed over when the iron curtain was still standing, if I remember correctly. I doubt they'd be such a powerhouse in today's games.
Go Finland!
They are playing the way Canadians used to.
IMO, the US team looked like they were playing not to lose. They did not play to win. At times they were amazing but most of the time they were not.
Modano did a great disservice to his country AND to hockey with those childish, "you owe me" remarks. This guy makes about $4 million a year, and he's whining about a few hundred dollars for his wife to travel to watch him play? What about the parents of the amateurs we used to put on our teams, who used to pay their own way? Regular, hard working people who didn't make millions. He's a disgusting individual.
I don't think it was the cost that he was complaining about . . . it was the chaotic, disorganized nature of the whole thing that forced the players to scramble at the last minute to make travel arrangements.
How many of those guys were primarily playing not to get hurt? To a man I bet all of those guys would prefer hoisting the Stanley Cup, over getting a Gold Medal.
That's why I suggest younger players who really would see the Olympics as something worth playing for.
Who is the only player in history to win all of the following?:
1. the Stanley Cup
2. an Olympic Gold Medal
3. a World Championship
4. the World Cup of Hockey
5. the Memorial Cup (given to the top Canadian junior team)
6. a World Junior Championship
Modano: "We played pretty good hockey." No Mikey, you guys sucked.
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