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From: fargo@ihuxx.UUCP (Matt Noah)
Newsgroups: net.sport.hockey
Subject: Re: Olympic Hockey
Message-ID: <661@ihuxx.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Feb-84 20:32:39 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxx.661
Posted: Wed Feb  8 20:32:39 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Feb-84 03:04:26 EST
References: <222@houem.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 29


I refuse to criticise any team - good luck to Canada - I hope the US
and Canada both advance to the medal round.  There is no sense in
comparing this US team with the 1980 team; "refuse to lose"? - hockey
is too unpredictable a game that one team can "refuse to lose".  What
happens when two teams which "refuse to lose" play each other?  In my
opinion, the 1980 team was the finest group of US amateurs ever
assembled for Olympic competition - both in ability and character
(nebulous, I know).  They were also the first group assembled that
actually played a reasonably long time together before the Games.
Prior hockey Olympians assembled as a team a short while before the
Games.  The only way the 1984 team could have surpassed the 1980
team was to annihilate every team they played enroute to another
Gold.  Even then, could they really have induced as much pride and
joy and excitement as the 1980 team gave us?  The circumstances are
too different in my opinion.

Notice who scored from Canada?  Not names but where they played 
previously?  Cary Wilson spent two years at Dartmouth.  Flatley
played last season at Wisconsin.  Tippet, the Canadian captain
who "shadowed" LaFontaine played at the University of North Dakota
where defensive hockey is king.  Troy Murray has a similar job for
the Chicago BlackHawks whenever The Great One is town.  Murray's
roots?  - UND.  

I, too was upset with the Richard Nixon version of the US-Canada
game that ABC gave us.  Whos cares that Harrisburg, PA is anything
like Sarajevo?  I loved the figure skating spills, though.