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
When you get as many short handed goals scored against you as Team USA did, it's time to start reevaluating your program.
Not that it makes it any better, but I'd really be upset if I was a Canadian hockey fan. What happened there?
Sending NHL'ers to the Olympics is ridiculous. The schedule, right in the middle of the NHL season, does not allow a team to coalesce, and for the pros it must seem like just anouther couple of games. Go back to the college kids - at least they really really wanted to play, and they have the time to make it a full-time dedication for a year prior to the Games. Sure they'll get their butts kicked more often than not, but occasionaly they'll win too.
I could see Sweden sending the majority of Team MoDo and being competitive.
Most of the great players in history never won junior titles. And to play in a World Championship tournament, a player basically has to play for an NHL team that either doesn't make the playoffs or gets knocked out in the first round (the World Championships are held in April every year, right around the time the NHL playoffs start).
I'll give you a hint, though . . . it's none of the players you mentioned, but I'm pretty sure this guy did win the sixth of these six tropies/awards at Salt Lake City in 2002.
Shoulda just sent the Gophers over there, again.
Time to take pro players out fo the Olympics and put the college kids and amateurs back in.
Hard to get into an Olympic mindset when you have a multi-million salary waiting for you back home.
It's ridiculous for the NHL to play a condensed schedule so that they can take a two-week break in the middle of the season to play for something that most Americans don't care about. The Olympics used to be about competition and the Cold War.
Without either, we have no interest. And NBC is just finding this out.
As for Canada? My GOD! How can you send that kind of killer lineup , with the best goalie on the planet (Brodeur), with the icon of all hockey icons presiding, and throw three stinkers in a row? How many penalties can Todd Bertuzzi and Chris Pronger take in one game?
For all of you who still think Sydney Crosby is half as good as Alexander Ovechkin; get yourself a prescription for prozac -- you're halucinating. Perhaps if Crosby had played for Team Canada he might have made a diference; one fewer shutout, maybe. Ovechkin even made Alexei Yashin look good.
The Finns and Swedes have been great to watch, even better than the Czechs (best part of the Czech's tournament? Watching Jagr bleed.), and is it just me, or is Daniel Alfredsson not the most complete hockey player you've ever seen? The man does it all.
For all the love I have for Scott Gomez (I'm a rabid Devil's fan), he's not a great center, at any level. Brian Gionta is close to God. Amazing what he does at that size. As for Brian Rafalski, I think the US could have left him home and taken Brian Leetch (as much as it hurts to say that).
Hasek?
Amateurs only? In the olden days, we were the only country that did that.
I wasn't paying close attention in 1980 to remember how the players playing on TeamUSA impacted their college teams. Had most of The Miracle team already graduated or used their college eligibility? Most college teams during this year's Olympics are playing their last 2-3 regular season series, and losing some of the top players to TeamUSA would really impact the conference standings and post-season conference and NCAA tournaments.
Canada's other problem is that they selected their Olympic roster months ago, which meant that fine young rookies like Sidney Crosby, Eric Staal and Dion Phaneuf didn't really have a chance to make the team.
It has more to do with unreasonable expectations than lack of performance. If anyone had been following these sports during the year, one wouldn't be surprised at the results. For example, I have a hard time understanding why Bode Miller has become a target of criticism. He has performed well, but there are others who performed just a little better, just as they have during the world cup events leading up to the Olympics. The US will probably win its second highest total of medals in the Winter Olympics.
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.
exactly.
we should abandon the nhl players and go back to amateurs...or revamp the entire way the USA hockey team is chosen and practices for the Olympics...or both
I think most of the players from the 1980 team had already completed their college eligibility.
Regardless, college players would start training the summer before the games, after their college season is well over.
Funny you should mention that. I was talking about this with a Canadian friend of mine last week, and he reminded me that "Team Canada" is a fairly new entity. For the first few decades of Olympic competition and World Championship tournaments, Canada simply sent the men's amateur championship team to represent the country.
So who is it - I've got to know!
Not a bad guess (that guy seems to have won everything else), but you're really focusing on Canadians here -- since Europeans really only started playing in Canadian junior leagues (see Memorial Cup) fairly recently.
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.
Olli Jokenon, a Fin player, had this to say about the travel arrangements:
"About six months ago," he said, "my wife went online and took care of all that."
'Nuff said......
The suspense is killing us.
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