11/23/24
February 24, 2006
Taking stock of a hockey Titanic: Why the U.S. should be freaking and Canada relaxing after the Olympics
It's tough to tell which national hockey program is in wider disarray a couple of days after the big disaster.
Team USA immediately began fingerpointing after being eliminated 4-3 by Finland. That score doesn't look too bad considering how well the Finns have played, but the Americans showed all the jump of a John Tesh CD for 48 of the 60 minutes of play.
Mike Modano railed about having to book his own flights to the Olympics. Yes, I'm sure spending five minutes on Expedia.com (or even more likely, that 30-second phone call to your agent) had such a lasting effect that it directly led to your benching in the third period of the game.
The Americans simply didn't have the talent to win a medal, much less the gold. Who were the Europeans supposed to fear, Eric Cole? Jordan Leopold? When you're relying heavily (pun intended) on Keith Tkachuk, you have serious issues.
Modano is at least right in that changes need to be made by Team USA. The Americans have to do some serious soul-searching to find out why they just aren't cranking out high-end talent, or resign themselves to treating the Olympics as a nice vacation -- even if you do have to book everything yourself.
North of the border, the Canadians did have the talent -- they simply played the wrong game for the occasion.
With the inclusion of bruisers like Todd Bertuzzi and Shane Doan, the expectation was that Team Canada would bang and bump, wearing down the quicker Europeans over time. Instead, the only big hit in any game was Darius Kasparitis's clean destruction of Simon Gagne with a butt check.
The Canadian offense seemed to be the same replay over and over -- dump the puck in and try to center it in front of the net. Unlike themselves, unfortunately, the opposition had defensemen who could handle the puck, and fans were treated to the sight of Team Canada forwards quickly retreating as the play sailed past them into their own end.
Defensively, head coach Pat Quinn and the team orchestrated one big pilon drill for the opposition forwards, with the Canadians unable to keep the Europeans from going wide and dominating play near the net. The aforementioned inability to skate the puck out also led to both numerous turnovers and calls for Chris Pronger to suddenly develop a groin problem to clear the way for taxi squad member Dan Boyle.
Team Canada general manager Wayne Gretzky will bear much of the blame, and he should. Including Bertuzzi instead of Eric Staal, Jason Spezza or even Sidney Crosby was not only a mistake, but also a political misstep.
But others, including Quinn and his coaching staff, must have had a reasonable amount of say in personnel decisions, and certainly none of them made any major adjustments in Turin. This was simply a poorly constructed roster and gameplan, and hopefully all involved will learn from that in 2010.
Unfortunately, Team Canada might be starting from scratch. Joe Sakic and several other key players may be out of the game by the time Vancouver rolls around, and the exclusion of the youth in this tourney could haunt the Canadians on their home soil.
The one thing Team Canada shouldn't do is panic. The loss isn't an indictment of training methods, youth coaching or anything else. The fact is, there's plenty of young talent available for 2010.
All they have to do is put it on the team this time.
posted by wfrazerjr to commentary at 02:10 PM - 0 comments