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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
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Mike Modano is an over-rated, over-paid, whiney-assed PU$$Y!
Team USA went into the tournament as the sixth- or seventh-ranked hockey team in the world, if my information is correct. A loss in the quarterfinals sounds just about right.
Canada suffered the same fate. Hockey is not a sport where you can just put a bunch of guys out there and expect them to play together without having time to practice together.
I suggest in the future the Olympics should be for players 23 and under, like they do in the Summer Games with soccer.
If you want a tournament with the best players, they already have the hocket World Cup, which is played outside of the NHL season, so that the teams get a chance to play exhibitions together before the tournament.
He hasn't been the same since he broke up with Simone from Ferris Bueller.
Gretzky:
"I take full responsibility," said a drained Gretzky, Team Canada's executive director. "It's nobody else's fault."
"I feel tremendously responsible that we didn't win. There will be accountability over the next couple of years."
"I'll reassess what I'm going to do in the future and what's best for me and Hockey Canada. Hockey Canada is wonderful, my country is great, and I love it dearly."
Sakic:
Canada captain Joe Sakic agreed: "We didn't play well enough. We didn't deserve to win."
This kind of stuff ticks me off. If we play amateurs on our team, we're screwed. If we play professionals on our team, we're screwed.
"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."
LOL...last I knew, Mike, the ice is a level field. Everybody gets to rest during a TO.
In defense of Modano ... he loves the game. He's not in it for what "it can bring to Mike." He could have easily made lots more money for another team before this season (free agent) but decided to stay in Dallas out of respect for the team and love of the game. He may be whining about the Olympic team, but he just might be right. Maybe they should've used younger players.
Overall, the US played well. They weren't blown out by anyone and lost each of their four games by one goal. They lost to Sweden and Russia in the prelims, both of whom are now in the semis along with Finland and the Czechs. They played inspired defense but couldn't score.
It takes time for lines to gel, players have to anticipate where the others are going to be. That's why this was doomed to failure. The team should have been playing exhibitions for months before the Olympics.
Were you, by any chance, ever a Minnesota Northstars fan?
I'm rooting for Modano's teammate Jere Lehtinen and Finland. Lehtinen is the heart and soul of the Stars.
If we play amateurs it is at least fun to watch.
Not only is this guy a petulant loser, but he's either too cheap with his money, or with his travel agent, and expects the U.S. Olympic Committee to suck-up to his wife.
That must be why they didn't win ANY medals.
Younger, faster Euro's buzzing around on a bigger sheet of ice caused problems for the US defense. Our team just wasn't defensively sound, and neither was our goaltending.
I doubt we'll ever see the days of amateurs/college players only in the lineup. Some of the younger players were great - Blake, Gionta, Gomez, Drury, Leopold - and have a great future wearing our flag in international competition. Hopefully we've got some good netminders coming up in the future.
Not anymore. Now that players from behind the Iron Curtain are free to play in the National Hockey League, counties like Russia and the Czech Republic don't have the ability to send dominant professional teams to the Olympics anymore. I think U.S. and Canadian amateurs would actually do very well these days, since they already do quite well in the World Junior Championship tournaments every year.
1992 was the first Winter Olympics after the collapse of the Soviet Union, while 1998 was the first Winter Olympics in which NHL players were allowed to play. This means that 1992 (Albertville) and 1994 (Lillehammer) are really the only two Olympics that give a good indication of what a post-USSR, pre-NHL Olympic hockey tournament would look like.
And I would take the results of the 1992 Olympics with a grain of salt, too. That was the year there was no team from either the USSR or from Russia, but a unified Confederation of Independent States (CIS) team that included a bunch of former Soviet republics that now compete separately (Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, etc.). The CIS team won the gold in 1992, but the former Soviet republics were nowhere to be found on the medal podium in 1994. Sweden beat Canada for the gold in 1994, and Finland won the bronze.
Scandinavian hockey powers like Sweden and Finland actually have an advantage over other countries when it comes to international tournaments. Their laws that require two-year military commitments for all men make it impossible for their young players to sign in the NHL until they are 20 or 21 years old -- which is two years after the best players from other countries are already playing in North America.
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