By now, everyone's heard about Mike Modano's sharp criticism of Team USA's management and of coach Peter Laviolette. He wasn't pleased with the roster. He wasn't pleased with the travel arrangements. He wasn't pleased with the time-out taken early in the first period of the quarterfinals loss to Finland. He wasn't pleased with being benched in the third period. He wasn't pleased with the results. I don't know anyone who was, but that's beside the point. He spent a lot of time on Wednesday night railing the coaching staff and management. Then, on Thursday morning, he skipped the final team meeting and flew home on his own. As unimpressed as I was by the play of team USA throughout the tournament, I am doubly unimpressed by Modo's act of childishness.
I'm not sure what else to say about this.
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4 comments:
Sigh. 1980 just seems that much further away.
Yet another reason why I've never been impressed with Senor Morono like quite a few are/have been...
And Morono's actions are absolute proof of why I thought Team USA would not do well...too many damn "heads" (my term for egos) stirring the pot.
Cannot believe somebody in LiveJournal's Hockey community criticized me about knowing Team USA not doing well from the get-go...not that I wasn't expecting to be criticized. But c'mon, how can anyone look at that roster and say Team USA is/was Olympic gold material?! I predicted Team USA's fate once Chelios was made Captain...any team with him wearing the C is royally screwed.
Anyhoo, I cannot believe that there are people at the Scout.com Canes board that want Morono on the Canes!! I've already not been super impressed with the post-Weight trade Canes, even if they are still somehow picking up wins. As much as I like Doug Weight (even if he did have a piss-poor Olympic performance...then again, with the exception of Erik Cole, who didn't?!), I still fail to see the necessity of the trade for the guy. I cannot help but feel that the Canes gave up some chemistry in Jesse Boulerice...and I *really* hope that does not come back to bite them in the ass like the infamous Langdon/Malik trade did.
While I think it was ridiculous that the players had to make their own travel and accomodation arrangements individually (rather than the USOC or whoever arranging for everyone to travel and stay together), that's a lame excuse for their performance. Especially since these guys are pros and can afford a plane ticket to Italy.
Didn't we learn from our last Olympic basketball team that you can't just throw together an "all-star" team at the last second and expect them to be able to play together with little practice? The 1980 team spent a year together, playing 70+ games against college and minor league teams before the Olympics began. (Our women's team did something similar this year, playing against *men's* college and prep school teams throughout New England.) If we're going to use pros, at least take the most recent Stanley Cup winner (or another top team), and sub in Americans for the foreigners as needed. So what if they're not the best individual players? They're used to playing together as a team*. Besides, it's not like they can really do any worse.
(* Yeah, yeah...I know this year is an exception since all the rosters got reshuffled after the stike, but still.)
Scott, you've just inadvertantly made a decent argument for the return to using amateurs. I'm not saying that I'm in favor of that, but the Olympic break is certainly a distraction to the players, so it causes problems on their respective teams.
I have to partially agreee with you, Stormbringer, about team USA. Like you, I had very low expectations of them. Even before the team was announced, I was begging for Chelios to be left off. I was pretty pissed when he was not only named, but given the "C". I think it was a huge mistake to leave Brian Leetch behind. I also sharply criticized the decision to include Hatcher instead of Paul Mara. Those were two huge mistakes in my opinion, and as I stated yesterday, Hatcher did some dumb shit that ultimately cost us the game against Finland. I also thought, and still think (sort of) that Jamie Langenbrunner should have gone to Torino instead of Keith Tkachuk. Tkachuk was very active, and was unfortunate in not finding the net, but I still think that Langenbrunner would have been a better call.
Team Canada made some similar mistakes in going with veterans/ F-O-Gs like Kris Draper and Shane Doan instead of the younger and more talented players like Jason Spezza and Eric Staal.
Oh, and Scott, your idea about letting the defending Stanley Cup champ play as the US team (subbing Americans in the stead of foreigners) is kind of a horrible idea. To wit: the current Tampa Bay Lightning roster has exactly ONE American--John Grahame (who was in fact the starting goalkeeper for USA). They're kind of an anomaly in that respect, but most teams have a situation where their best players are non-American and/or their least skilled players are American. It wouldn't be a good idea to send,for example, a player just because he was a fourth line enforcer on the Stanley Cup champion team.
And now, my surrogate team (Czech) is out of the tournament, leaving me to root for the Finns.
grr.
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