USA-Latvia Liveblogging

I’ve got an odd venue for liveblogging USA-Latvia, as I’m at a Tex-Mex bar near my office with the laptop on the bar. Terminally uncool? Yep, that’s me. The television is muted, so Ray Ferraro is talking, but the only sound is Mexican adult contemporary pop. Kinda surreal, really.

One resource you might like is Justwide’s USA Olympic roster — USA Hockey only provides it in a Microsoft Word .DOC, which is merely inconvenient for us Mac users and dangerous for PC folks (who knows what fun lurks behind a humble macro?).

Also, if you’d like to see more about the earlier games, go check out fellow Caniac d-lee’s work at red and black hockey.

First Period: I arrived just in time to see my boy Erik Cole take an inadvertent slash across the face, but he was back out a few minutes later. If you liked seeing John-Michael Liles jumping up on the play that resulted in the first USA goal, get used to it — we Canes fans have been treated to that sort of play all season long. Peter Laviolette isn’t afraid to let defensemen who can skate join the rush. Team USA doesn’t appear sluggish, but Latvia is obviously trying to spread the ice on odd-man rushes, the classic play against North American-based teams. Their goal was scored exactly this way, as the right D for Team USA (didn’t catch who) was unable to cover the two men on him effectively. Lack of experience together prevented good communication between him and goaltender John Grahame to isolate on one forward.

Second period: Was I saying something? The USA looked ragged, but was managing to hold puck possession until about 14 minutes in. Grahame had also looked solid to that point under limited work; not exactly afterward. Latvian goaltender and Canes 2002 hero Arturs Irbe has stood his ground, and his team’s experience together showed, interrupting passing lanes and connecting where Team USA simply wasn’t able to. The talent disparity is clear, but so is the brains disparity (at least under current travel- and team composition-related conditions) that goes the other way, giving us Latvia 3, USA 2 through 2. Peter Laviolette didn’t look to have lost his composure, but let’s hope he has a couple of ideas in the dressing room.

Third period: a soft goal through Arturs Irbe is all that stands between Team USA and utter humiliation… and honestly, a tie against Latvia ain’t much to brag on. The third went all America’s way, but after that tying goal, Archie stood on his head to preserve the point. Laviolette’s style, especially as played on the big ice, requires skaters, and I didn’t see a lot of fluid skating from the USA with the exception of Bret Hedican, Erik Cole, and Jason Blake (notice a common thread?). More analysis once I get home through the traffic… or maybe after a workout.

Revise and extend: Phil Esposito and Todd Lewis on XM Home Ice didn’t seem to think Team USA had anything to worry about; Espo’s view was that four minutes of breakdowns and some spectacular goaltending by Irbe spoiled an otherwise dominant game for the Americans. The third period supports his view, but I’d have expected sharper play nonetheless; it was a shooting gallery, but lots of shots went wide or high.

One interesting point of the wide ice is what it does to angles to the net off the boards. Several times during the third, Latvia allowed an American right winger to penetrate along the side boards and skate in free, while their defense tied up his passing options. Cutting in at around the faceoff dots, the US winger found repeatedly that he had no net to shoot at; he was forced to take a wider angle easily covered by Irbe.

I’m going to take more note of lines tomorrow when I watch the Kazakhstan game on Tivo at home, but one obvious set I noticed was Cole with Modano and Guerin of the Dallas Stars, dropping Guerin on penalty kills. Cole was even playing some power-play point, which he hasn’t done recently with Carolina; my conclusion, Caniac-shaded though it may be, is that Laviolette’s relying heavily on his guys to start. On defense, Hedican was as smooth as usual, and Chris Chelios deserves a nod for some good defensive work and better movement than I expected from him.

Channeling Uni Watch: I’ve always found it amusing to see the goaltenders wearing gear in their club team’s colors, despite how badly it may clash with their national team uniform. (They have no interest in breaking in new pads for the Olympics, obviously.) Irbe had no problem, since he’s worn the same set of white pads for fifteen years, and Grahame’s kit in Tampa blue, black and white wouldn’t have been grotesque even without modifications. But he decided to play anyway, adding stripes with red duct tape — which didn’t look any more goofy than the rest of his teammates, with Nike’s bizarre Cooperall-esque vertical-stripe fetish this year.

15 February 2006 / 0 Comments / Tags: hockey