Looking at the 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team today is a trip down memory lane. I loved hockey growing up at this time and the roster is nothing but guys I remember fondly. Mike Modano. Mike Richter. Jeremey Roenick. The Hatcher brothers. This is a gold medal-caliber side.
Only it wasn’t. The 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team was awful. Like, they were only slightly better than Belarus. Anyone who ever played Olympic Hockey 98 for N64 knows just how bad Belarus was.
Now some might blame Ulf Samuelsson. As this New York Times’ article from 1996 points out, NHL players already hated the guy with a passion. And he played a part in the downfall of the 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team.
In the Olympic opener between Sweden and the US, Samuelsson played and even notched an assist on the Swede’s game tying goal in a game the Americans lost 4-2. However, his Swedish citizenship had actually been annulled before the Games started because he applied for a US passport. Samuelsson was kicked out of the Olympics following the victory, but Sweden kept the points anyway.
Of course, the loss wasn’t a reason to panic since all eight teams in the second group stage qualified for final round.
Next up was a game against Belarus who were one of two teams to advance from the preliminary round. They were also dominated by Canada just a few days earlier, so it looked like a get right game for the Americans.
It wasn’t though. Sure, USA won 5-2, but the score flattered the Yanks. Belarus scored early in the third period to make the score 3-2 and pushed the USA for the remainder of the game. The Americans scored twice in the final six minutes to put things out of reach, but the performance was hardly impressive.
While that may have been a slight disappointment, the final group match was a disaster. Canada crushed the USA 4-1 with the lone American goal not coming until deep in the third period with Canada well in control. The losses to Sweden and Canada meant the US drew an unfavorable matchup in the knockout round – the Czech Republic.
Dominik Hasek was playing out of his mind at this time which was bad news for the US. They put together what was arguably their best game of the tournament against the Czech Republic. And yet they still lost 4-1 thanks to Hasek stopping 38 of 39 shots. With that loss, the 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team packed their bags and left Japan without a peep.
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The 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team leaves its mark
About that last part. The 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team actually made sure everyone in Nagano knew they were taking off. The players trashed their rooms in the Olympic Village. Well, trashed is a bit much. The incident was fairly overblown with only an estimated US$3,000 in damage done by the players.
The real issue was the team’s explanation about what happened. Doug Weight told a reporter that the team had a few beers after the loss to the Czech Republic and basically started acting like frat brothers. We’ll let him fill in the details.
“We got back to the village real late, and we probably were too loud. Some guys were wrestling and stuff, but that’s it. I know nothing about broken windows or anything like that,” Weight said. “As for the broken chairs, we’re big guys and the chairs aren’t real strong and some of them had been broken since we got here just from sitting on them to play cards. We weren’t throwing furniture.”
Come on dude. You guys just went 1-4 at the Olympics and players thought that it was cool to start wrestling during the middle of the night. No one is saying you need to go all disgraced samurai and commit suicide or anything. But maybe not dicking around like a couple of bored sophomores at Chi Psi would have been a good idea.
The US did turn things around in 2002 with a silver medal performance. Even then, I can’t help but look at the 1998 USA Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team’s roster and think they should have at least made it to the gold medal game. At least it is possible to fire up the N64 an rewrite history while playing Olympic Hockey 98.
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