MILAN — We usually let it go unsaid, but part of the reason the story of 1980 and Lake Placid is so unique in the echelon of American sport is because Team USA and “underdog” so rarely go in the same sentence.
That’s part of the deal of being the world’s superpower. American exceptionalism demands Team USA lead the medal table at pretty much every iteration of the Olympics.
Hockey, which belonged to the Soviet Union before it belonged to Canada, is one of two major exceptions, soccer being the other.
After beating the Russians and Finns on home soil, the Americans finished off the medal stand at nine of the next 11 Olympic Games, including 2014 in Sochi, when the NHL last sent players.
The United States has never walked into the Olympics as gold-medal favorites. Not in Vancouver in 2010, not in Salt Lake City in 2002, not even in 1960 when the Christian Brothers, Bill and Roger, helped lead Team USA to gold in Squaw Valley.
It is different here in Lombardy, where Bill Christian’s grandson, Brock Nelson, and a band of 24 other Americans practiced together for the first time Super Bowl Sunday as the main attraction of the Olympic Games. Most of the group was in Boston a year ago when Connor McDavid’s overtime winner broke American hearts at the 4 Nations Face-Off final that represented the biggest hockey game on U.S. soil since Lake Placid.
They went toe-to-toe with the Canadians then. Anything less than gold now would be a colossal disappointment.
“Those are the expectations,” Team USA general manager Bill Guerin told The Post last month. “I think we’re in a position now where it’s kinda like that. We feel we’re good enough to win.
“We have to prove it though. We have to go out and do it. We can’t just say we have a good team on paper or this or that. We have to go and prove it to everybody. Nobody’s gonna give it to us. There are other countries with great hockey, so we can’t just say we’re this. We have to do it.”
Guerin, a three-time Olympian who won silver with Team USA in 2002, will face the most scrutiny of anyone if the Americans fail.
Decisions to leave Rangers defenseman Adam Fox and Stars winger Jason Robertson at home, to keep the 4 Nations roster mostly intact despite its failure to win a championship, and to build a four-line team with an emphasis on roles all came under heavy criticism.
Regarding Fox and Robertson in particular, there has been plenty of questioning already not just among fans but in NHL circles. Fox suffered the ignominy of being passed up not once, but twice, with Jackson LaCombe getting the nod over him as an injury replacement after Seth Jones went down.
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Guerin, on a Zoom with reporters minutes after Team USA’s roster was announced, denied that Fox’s high-profile error on McDavid’s game-winner was the reason behind his exclusion, saying, “If you think we made a decision on one play, then you must not think we’re very smart.”
One play is overstating it, but it does not take a genius to understand that the 4 Nations underpinned every decision that Guerin and the management group that includes Chris Drury, Tom Fitzgerald, Bill Zito, Stan Bowman, Chris Kelleher and John Vanbiesbrouck made in constructing this roster.
That includes Fox, who struggled not only in overtime of the final but throughout the tournament, irreparably bruising his standing in the process.
If 4 Nations was the primary factor in convincing Guerin to keep Fox off the Olympic roster, it played just as big a role in so much of the group reuniting in Milan.
“The process before [4 Nations] was long, the list was much bigger,” Guerin said. “Then it just goes over a series of meetings and needs, wants, changes, new players that have kind of emerged. All sorts of things like that but it’s all just to check boxes and make sure we have all situations covered. We’re not splitting the atom.”
That roster was together for barely over a week, but the chemistry came immediately. To understand Guerin’s process, you must first understand the importance he placed on that.
Even the new faces on the roster — Clayton Keller, Tage Thompson, LaCombe and, technically, Quinn Hughes — have plenty of connections with the rest of the team.
“There’s a history with a lot of those guys together,” Guerin said. “They’re no strangers to each other. … I think their desire to win, their willingness to accept whatever role they’re asked to play. All those things play into chemistry.”
There is another factor, too, though Americans are careful in how they phrase it publicly: the belief that they could, or even should, have beaten Canada in the 4 Nations final, when goaltender Jordan Binnington’s heroics in overtime stopped Team USA from a historic victory.
“The margins were very, very slim,” Team USA captain Auston Matthews said. “It’s a bounce either way.”
It would be a gross oversimplification to say Guerin isn’t betting on skill. But he is betting as well on lessons learned over a life in hockey: that chemistry matters, that having four lines matters, that physicality and defined roles and playing a 200 — err, 196.85 — foot game matters.
A little over two weeks from now, that is the bet on which he will be judged.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
