Posted on 02/23/2006 6:25:28 AM PST by Hat-Trick
Modano goal: whine, not win
TURIN - Old. Slow. Small. Team USA was all of that, even before it took the ice against Finland. Then as Peter Laviolette watched his once-great generation of American hockey players go about its sad business of losing an Olympic hockey quarterfinal, 4-3, the coach came up with his own adjective: Disinterested.
This was something he hadn't counted on, so Laviolette called timeout midway through the first period and screamed at his players that if they didn't find a modicum of passion out there, "We're done."
His face was flushed. His tongue was sharp. But on the anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, this was as close to Herb Brooks as Laviolette would get. His players didn't really pay much attention, until there were 12 minutes left in the game and the cause was fairly hopeless.
Laviolette tried a bunch of different players, benched some of the guys who pass as stars, and watched it all go down the drain. The Americans peppered the net in those final moments, and as usual couldn't score.
Then it was done, left to the participants to justify how it was possible for such a large nation with vast regions of frigid winters and fresh water lakes could go 1-4-1 in an Olympic tournament, beating only Kazakhstan and drawing with Latvia along the way.
It turns out, fortunately, that the Americans are very good at explaining failure, far better than they are at playing hockey. Laviolette persisted that the team didn't try hard enough all tournament long.
"We were standing instead of skating," he said. "We were on our heels and they were on their toes."
Mike Modano, assistant captain, said it was because the team didn't have a charter flight and the players' wives weren't taken care of properly. Believe it or not, he seemed to really mean it.
Then, as a final dart aimed at the coach who had just benched him, Modano suggested the Americans may have lost because Laviolette called his inspirational timeout.
"We could have used (the timeout) at the end of the game, give the guys some rest," Modano said. "A little composure, a little less panic. There was 50 minutes left in the game."
It wouldn't be Team USA if the Americans didn't exit with a complete absence of grace, and so Modano filled a very real need as team knucklehead. He said USA Hockey required change, top to bottom, that it was the bureaucrats' fault, and that the players had not really lost this tournament.
"I don't think we're far off at all," said Modano, who had a total of two goals and no assists in the tournament, with a minus-one rating. "The talent is there, the personality is there. The hockey part was OK. We played pretty good hockey."
This sort of self-delusion was just the ticket out of Turin, so that the Americans can now return to the NHL believing they were brilliant and merely sabotaged by travel agents and stand-on-your-head goaltenders.
If only everybody was honest about his own shortcomings, it would become difficult to assign such specific blame to an effort so terribly doomed from the start.
These Winter Games are a 'tweener. This generation of American players is too old now, too resentful. The next generation of juniors is too young.
If you are looking for historical precedent, then consider the U.S. national soccer team's World Cup disaster of 1998 in France, also pockmarked by bad performances and dissension from players who had seen their best days. Four years later, with the right coach and a new group of players, the U.S. made a serious World Cup run in Korea.
The same probably will happen for Team USA, which will surely be revived by Vancouver 2010. For hockey nations not quite as deep as Canada or Russia, down cycles are inevitable.
This was nobody's fault, really. Don Waddell, the general manager, didn't exactly have his pick of Peter Forsberg or Jaromir Jagr. Laviolette is the victim here, the guy who comes off unfairly as a failure.
The only real shame is that U.S. hockey players never know how to leave the building without sacking the joint, figuratively or literally. Modano went after U.S. Hockey yesterday, blamed officials for forcing him to buy his own airline tickets. Then he went after Laviolette, because the coach didn't play him down the stretch.
The players here became so fed up with losing, they forgot to try to win.
Batten down the dorm furniture. We'll always have Kazakhstan.
Originally published on February 23, 2006
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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