Cold Comfort

Team USA and Team Canada were both unceremoniously dumped from the Olympic men’s hockey tournament Wednesday, America 4-2 by Finland and Canada 2-0 by Russia. They won silver and gold in Salt Lake City four years ago, but will fly home from Turin empty-handed this time. Reactions from the hockey press both north and south of the 49th have been rather vitriolic at times, but I’m not sure that’s called for.

The general tenor in the USA has been the calmer of the two for two reasons: this team wasn’t expected to do well, and hockey simply doesn’t matter as much here. The team’s final record was 1-4-1, but the flow of play actually looked better than most hockey observers expected from this team before the tournament; the three preliminary losses were by one goal, and America wasn’t able to finish plays with any regularity.

American hockey is caught in a generation gap this year. The core of this team has been intact since the 1996 World Cup of Hockey win, and the brightest American stars since then are currently in college or just beginning their NHL careers: expected 2006 #1 draft pick Phil Kessel at the University of Minnesota, 2005 Carolina #2 Jack Johnson at the University of Michigan, New Jersey’s Zach Parise, etc. Those players will feature at the 2010 games in Vancouver, but were not ready yet; meanwhile, the ‘96ers were mostly in their upper 30s or early 40s, and it showed, especially on the larger international ice surface that required consistent hard skating. It’s arguable that head coach Peter Laviolette and general manager Don Waddell could have selected a few more young players, or even changed up a veteran or two (Brian Leetch for Derian Hatcher seemed to be the primary desire pre-Olympics), but results likely wouldn’t have been much better. You can’t win all the time, and sometimes we Americans have trouble with that concept.

That said, a few players did earn positive recognition. At the risk of being partisan, Erik Cole of the Carolina Hurricanes was the best player on the ice for the United States over the course of the tournament. Brian Gionta of the New Jersey Devils and the Islanders’ Jason Blake were both all over the ice, and for three games in the preliminaries, Rick DiPietro shut us all up with the kind of goaltending that made him the #1 overall pick in 2003. His kamikaze style scares the daylights out of me, and by all reports he’s got an ego and a half, but he cares, and I love how proud he is to play for his country.

Canada has other problems. Talent isn’t the issue, and likely will never be for hockey’s homeland. In that regard, their national team’s selection troubles resemble those of USA Basketball’s Dream Team: lots of stars, the chance of bruised egos as team captains have to take 6-minutes-per-game fourth-line checking duties, and every outsider has a favorite player that supposedly would have been the difference: Eric Staal, Jason Spezza, take your pick. Compound this trouble with the national pride Canada invests in hockey, and you’ve got the roots of national psychosis. Now add the fact that there are lots of other talented hockey countries, something Canada seemed to forget after winning gold in Salt Lake City.

The result was that a fifth-place finish played out as a national disaster, complete with ten tons of recriminations, panic, and general whining that this was one of the worst calamities ever to befall their great nation.

Oh, to have problems like those.