Number the Stars: Grading the US Men’s Hockey Team
The twenty-four hours where the US Men’s Hockey team plummeted from gold medal aspirations to going home empty-handed were some of the most painful and most humiliating in USA Hockey history, especially since the process of leaving Sochi without a medal also involved laying two goose eggs on the scoreboard. USA Hockey will rally from this, and part of the recovery process will probably entail apportioning blame and metaphorically making a few heads roll.
Like USA Hockey, I will be holding various members of the team accountable for the good and bad they did in Sochi in this blog post. The objective of this report card isn’t to tear into any particular member of the roster but rather to highlight areas where individual members needed to improve, as well as situations where a certain player shone like a beacon of hope for USA hockey’s future. In essence, this post is intended as a celebration of the successes team members had in Sochi and an indictment of certain players’ failures.
Now that I’ve sung my new jam “Let It Go” a couple of hundred times and made my family members suffer from hearing my terribly off-key singing the same way I endured the torture of watching Finland crush the USA in the bronze medal game, I feel like I have just enough distance from the situation to be objective in rating various players, but also enough indignation at the dismal level of US play in the final two games to rake team members over the coals as necessary.
In terms of grading individuals, I have judged them based on whether they have met, exceeded, or failed to meet the expectations for their role in the team. Within this system, it is possible for a fourth line winger to have a better grade than a first line winger because the first line winger may not have lived up to expectations, whereas a fourth line winger may have exceeded them. This does not mean that someone like Patrick Kane is actually a worse player than T.J. Oshie. It just means that T.J. Oshie fulfilled his role on the team better than Patrick Kane is. No member of this team has been upgraded or downgraded because of his NHL affiliation. Everyone is judged based on what they did or failed to do for the US team in Sochi. Now onto the grading system.
Grading Rubric:
A+ = Excellent
A= Extremely Good
A-= Good
B+= Consistently Exceeds Expectations
B= Occasionally Exceeds Expectations
B-= Seldom Exceeds Expectations
C+= Consistently Meets Expectations
C=Occasionally Meets Expectations
C-=Seldom Meets Expectations
D+= Hurts Team
D= Disaster Waiting to Happen
D-=Disaster Happening on Skates
F= Should Never Play in the Olympics Again
Dan Bylsma, C-: On any team, accountability should begin with the coach, who is responsible for his team’s performance and who should hold his players accountable for their efforts, so it is only fitting that we start by looking at our head coach’s work in Sochi. His system worked well in the preliminaries, but it backfired in the medal round. I felt like he failed to adapt to the team’s he was facing, and he never tried to free Kessel in the Canada even when it was apparent that Kessel was being effectively shut down by Toews, which is pretty damning since Kessel was the dominant scoring forward for the USA in the preliminary rounds and ultimately was named the best forward of the tournament.
Some of Bylsma’s line combinations like the Van Riemsdyk-Pavelski-Kessel and the Pacioretty/Wheeler-Statsny-Oshie had chemistry and were successful. However, other line combinations like putting Brown on Kane’s line and Parise on a checking line were less effective and were not ended until the quarterfinals even though it was clear before that this experiment had failed. If Parise and Brown had been swapped from the beginning or even from the second game onward, Kane and Parise might have been more productive in early games, boosting their confidence for the medal round.
With the defense, McDonagh and Suter made a solid shutdown pairing (even if I did sometimes wonder if McDonagh might have been better used on his natural side anchoring his own pairing), while Shattenkirk and Fowler did well providing an offensive thrust. On the defensive pairings, I think Bylsma erred the most in frequently sending out Orpik and Carlson together despite the fact that by the end of the preliminaries they had been on the ice for three goals against (which is an impressive stat given that they were not a regular defensive pairing) and overusing Orpik in general. Bylsma has an unfortunate delusion that Orpik is essentially the Second Coming of Pronger, and that cost the USA throughout the tournament as Orpik got bone-headed penalties and accumulated team-leading goals against. If Bylsma couldn’t overcome his nepotism enough to realize that Orpik needed to be an extra defenseman and penalty kill specialist for this tournament, he should have left his toy in Pittsburg and brought someone else to Sochi.
From the motivation perspective, his benching certain players worked. For instance, Brown stopped taking stupid penalties when he was benched in the Russian game. There were times, though, when Bylsma would do something like bench Carlson for the goal in the Russian game, but not bench Orpik, who was also on the ice and who was as much to blame for the goal. That I felt was less effective and fair.
In the end, he also failed to rally his troops after his team let in two goals in eleven seconds. At that point, if he had maintained control of his team, it might have been possible to recover from a two goal deficit, but he allowed their psyche to be crushed, although the team looked like it was ready to fight for a bronze at the opening of the Finland game. He let his team lose that drive, and if a coach is judged by whether his team can perform at the highest level it is capable of for the most important games, Bylsma messed up big time. His team reached its nadir during the medal round and became so rattled that it could not even give the best performance it was capable of, which is at least partly Bylsma’s fault. After failing so publically, I doubt that we’ll see Bylsma coaching a national team again. Balancing his strengths and weaknesses, I give him a C-.
Zach Parise, D+: When a team fails to meet expectations, the captain often is the first one to fall under scrutiny. In this case, it is a bad omen that Parise was more visible in his Chobani commercials than he was on the ice. His most memorable moments this Olympics were the brief scuffle he had along the boards during the Russian game and his failure to convert a sweet pass from Kane into a goal, which is quite a come down from Vancouver when he had his famous tying goal that sent that gold medal game against Canada into overtime. This Olympics our captain had one goal (to put that in perspective, so did defensemen Carlson, Fowler, and McDonagh) and it took him until the quarterfinals to get it.
There were times I would even forget he was on the team until the camera panned over to the bench, and we got to watch Parise wipe the sweat (because it’s apparently hard work to do what amounts to nothing all Olympics) off his brow with a towel while the commentator reminded us that he was the team’s captain. It was good that the commentator reminded us of that fact, since you never saw Parise doing much to inspire his teammates on the bench as you might expect a captain to do. The US team needed Parise to step up and be a leader on the ice and off it in the medal round, and he couldn’t do it, just as he couldn’t score until the quarterfinals. His failure to produce points and to encourage his teammates during the game against Finland certainly did nothing to help the fight for a medal. His lack of determination and leadership hurt this team badly, hence his D+ score.
Dustin Brown, B-: After Brown was named an alternate captain, there was an outcry from everyone in America who regarded him as a diver (someone who tries to draw penalties) and a goon. Brown certainly showed his goon side in the game against Russia where he took a stupid penalty for basically trying to knock out an opposing player’s knee, and he was justifiably benched for that. He also was too slow to keep up with Kane on a scoring line, perhaps prompting Kane to begin falling into a pattern of useless one-on-three or one-on-four attacks that was ultimately impossible for Kane to break, and he did have his fair share of blunders like passing to no one.
On the plus side of the equation, he did have a goal in the match against Slovakia, and he was very effective on a checking line with Backes and Callahan, where he also scored against the Czech Republic. When on the bench, he could be seen joking around with players like Kessel, so he made an effort to interact with teammates in a positive fashion throughout the tournament, which I mark in his favor. There were times when Brown exceeded the expectations of what he was brought to Sochi to do, but there were also occasions when he messed up in a way that harmed the team, so that averages out to him overall seldom exceeding expectations and earning a B-.
Ryan Suter, B+: Now that we’ve analyzed Brown’s performance as alternate captain, it’s only fair that we study Suter’s. Suter was on the ice in all situations, and he performed solidly throughout the tournament. Unfortunately, the USA didn’t need Suter to be merely solid; he had to be spectacular, and, to be blunt, he simply wasn’t. He didn’t look like a Norris Finalist this Olympics. He made some poor decisions and turnovers that cost the team. Whether it was the turnover that ended in a goal during the opener against Slovakia or it was the back-to-back goals during the Finland game, the opposition found the chinks in Suter’s armor and exploited them to the detriment of the USA. Suter was not awful this Olympics but he was not awesome either, and that is a contributing factor in why the US team has no shiny Sochi souvenir, so he earns a B+ in my grade book.
Ryan Kesler, B+: I would have liked for Kesler to be more of an offensive threat this Olympics, and when he was paired with Kane, I expected him to produce more points, since he and Kane were such excellent line mates in 2010. While Kesler was not an offensive force, he was gritty on the defense, blocking two shots with his hand in the game against Russia, and not missing a shift even though the puck hit him at upwards of ninety miles an hour. He was prepared to make a personal sacrifice of his body for the welfare of his team, and his determination was inspiring. Combining his lackluster offense with his stellar defense, I give Kesler a B+ for consistently exceeding expectations at least on the defensive end of things.
Patrick Kane, D: In America, Kane was marketed as one of the faces of the Olympics, so when the US hockey team fell first to Canada and then to Finland, it’s only natural that the cameras zoomed in on his crumbled frame and tear-filled eyes. As horrible as it sounds, Kane has reason to be disappointed in his performance this Olympics. Just as he stated to the reporters, he was expected to produce more in Sochi than he did, and his four assists in a six game tournament did not add much to the American bid for a medal. He needed to step up big in the medal rounds, especially when it became clear that the scoring well of Kessel had finally run dry. Instead, he blundered two penalty shots (which completely demoralized his team) and took three bad penalties (on the first penalty, Finland scored its third goal, which can be seen as a nail in the USA team’s coffin) in the Finland match, which is particularly horrible since Kane is mostly a clean player.
Kane is a brilliant American forward who will hopefully have many future successes and I sympathize with him for the recent loss of his grandfather, but that does not take away from the fact that he was more painful than beautiful to watch this tournament. In a nutshell, he was a disaster waiting to happen this Olympics.
His fans on Twitter, who even went to the extreme of suggesting that Team USA keep a suicide watch on Kane after the loss to Finland, noticed, and so did his teammates with USA and with the Blackhawks. That’s why Toews patted Kane’s shoulder when he was being interviewed by the media after the Canada game and why Van Riemsdyk shielded him from the cameras on the bench following Kane’s second botched penalty shot during the Finland match. Going into this tournament, everyone, including Kane, had high expectations of his performance, and he failed by a large margin to meet them. Everybody, including Kane, should be able to admit that.
David Backes, A: Backes was a resolute, strong presence on ice throughout the tournament. He played a physical game but also a disciplined one that did not draw poor penalties. He was a shutdown guy but he also produced points, and in the game against the Czech Republic he might have been the most valuable USA player, being the glue that held together the checking line of Callahan and Brown. He had a very good Olympics, and I would have preferred him over Parise as captain of the team, since he seemed a better embodiment of determination on the ice than Parise did. That one of the reasons he receives an A from me in contrast to Parise’s D+.
Ryan Callahan, C+: For a majority of the tournament, Callahan simply wasn’t that noticeable to me one way or the other, not standing out as a success or a failure. Basically, this Olympics, he seems to have been the embodiment of doing your job and nothing more. He didn’t have any breathtaking plays, but he did not accumulate tons of stupid penalties, either. He did well in his role as a winger on a checking line, so I feel comfortable giving him a C+ for consistently fulfilling his position as a physical shutdown man.
James Van Riemsdyk, A: When Van Riemsdyk was named to the US hockey team the general consensus was that he was brought in because of his pre-existing chemistry with Kessel on the Toronto Maple Leafs. He proved that he would not be deadweight by being an integral part of the USA’s most effective line, so I feel justified giving him an A for his overall performance in Sochi.
Joe Pavelski, A+: Pavelski was an assist machine throughout the Olympics, a talent that was particularly on display when he assisted on every goal of Kessel’s natural hat trick. He also was not afraid to score for himself, as he did when he got the second power play goal in the game against Russia. Throughout the tournament, he continued to do the little things right like winning faceoffs that made him so effective in Vancouver, and he was a great center for Van Riemsdyk and Kessel. I’m sure that many Maple Leafs fans are daydreaming about acquiring Pavelski from the San Jose Sharks, so I feel that I’m not overrating him by giving him an A+ for his efforts in Sochi.
Phil Kessel, A+: Through the quarterfinals, Kessel was a scoring beast, who even managed to score a glorious natural hat trick against Slovenia. His scoring and his line in general carried the USA through the preliminaries, and he should not be blamed for the fact that he could not keep scoring at such an incredible clip in the medal round, especially since he was one of the few USA players who tried to get and set up strong scoring chances in the Canada and Finland games. It is not his fault that other forwards like Kane and Parise, who should have been able to contribute some more goals and assists, never really showed up to the tournament. Kessel did his best, but he could not carry his team all the way to the podium. In the end, it is hard to give the man who was voted the tournament’s best forward anything less than an A+.
Max Pacioretty, B: Along with Statsny and Oshie, Pacioretty was a hard-working fourth liner who put pressure on other teams and generated legitimate offensive opportunities. I was expecting more scoring from him and that is reflected in his grade, but other than that, his performance was solid and above reproach.
Paul Statsny, A: Statsny fulfilled his role of centering a competitive fourth line very well. He was able to forge a fourth-line that worked hard and was an offensive threat. He ensured that his line put up points, and, along with the Van Riemsdyk-Pavelski-Kessel line, it was one of the successful ones devised by Bylsma. In the Olympics, Statsny did not disappoint with his efforts, which is evident in his A grade.
T.J. Oshie, A+: Throughout the Olympics, Oshie was a vital part of a fourth line that made life difficult for other teams and gave opportunities to his own. Of course, he will be most renowned for his stellar performance in the shoot out against Russia, where he scored four times on six shots. Whatever you think of shoot outs, it is a challenge not to admire someone who looks as if he is having the time of his life participating in one instead of on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. It is common knowledge among USA fans that Oshie was taken to Sochi for his shoot out prowess, and, under the utmost pressure, he delivered in a stunning show. After that, it would be nearly impossible to claim that he failed to meet expectations, and he was a gracious teammate in his fifteen minutes of fame, saluting Quick as soon as he scored and giving Quick credit in all of his interviews. Even if you feel that shoot outs are a gimmick, Oshie deserves an A+ for his magic tricks against Russia and for being an integral part of the fourth line throughout the tournament.
Blake Wheeler, B-: For the most part, Wheeler was a valuable addition to the fourth line when he was played with Statsny and Oshie, but there was that memorable awful penalty that he took during his first shift in the game against Russia. (Not that I blame him for wanting to smash into Kovulchuck…) Bad penalties cost teams and that drops Wheeler from a B to a B-.
Derek Stepan, C: During the brief time that Stepan spent on the ice, he was neither spectacular not terrible, so I feel like giving him a C is fair. However, it should be noted that I do not have much to grade him on since most of the time he was an undressed extra who would only have seen action if a forward was injured. I give him credit for presumably being a supportive teammate in Sochi, being prepared to step up if someone was injured, and for not complaining about his role on the team basically being to sit out the Olympics. A C is not an indictment of him; it’s just a reflection of the fact that I have nothing really to grade him on this Olympics.
Paul Martin, C: Except for falling ill (which I blame on the primitive sanitation in Sochi, not on Martin), Martin had a pretty unremarkable Olympics. For the most part, he was effective on the defensive side of things, but he contributed little to the offense. He was competent in his position, but another American defenseman could easily have fulfilled the role he did in the Olympics, and we might have been spared the pain of a Martin-Orpik “shutdown” pairing. Martin is not worth the deadweight of Orpik, and, sadly, Bylsma lacked the creativity to separate that duo until sickness forced his hand. Martin mostly met expectations but he added nothing to make up for the baggage of Orpik. A C seems like a just tribute to his work in the tournament.
Brooks Orpik, D-: By the end of the tournament, my faith in Orpik hovered around absolute zero. He was a turnover machine and a positioning nightmare, so I honestly lost track of how many goals against he was on the ice for, but I would be shocked if he didn’t lead the team’s defensemen in that statistic, which is pretty appalling considering he is a veteran surrounded by a ton of rookie Olympians who basically all outperformed him.
At the beginning of the Olympics, when Orpik made a positioning mistake that resulted in a goal, I would throw my remote at the TV screen, bellowing, “Orpik!” By the conclusion of the Finland game, I just moaned in despair and buried my forehead in my hands when he made a blunder and the other team scored. It didn’t take me long to realize that he’d get on the ice, and, like a clockwork, the other team would have a great scoring opportunity.
Even when he seemed to be having a good game like the one against the Czech Republic, he would mar it by taking a stupid penalty and doing bone-headed things like banging opponents into the boards after the play was already completed. He easily had the worst hockey IQ of anyone on the blue line (and probably the entire team), and his teammates suffered for that. Just ask Miller, whose shutout against Slovenia was ruined with some help from Orpik’s ability to give up an untimely goal.
I probably wouldn’t hate Orpik so much if he had been used in a properly limited capacity, but since Bylsma insisted on employing him as a shutdown man with top minutes that sours my impression of him since he could not fulfill the role Bylsma shoved him into. He did bring a physical dynamic to the blue line and he is reasonably fast skater, but he wasn’t deployed in a fashion where his strengths could outweigh his weaknesses. As it stands, because of his own failings and his excessive misuse, Orpik ranks as a disaster on skates and comes away with a D- on my report card.
Justin Faulk, C: As with Stepan, the C is not so much a reflection on Faulk’s ability (I think he is a promising young defenseman, and I would have vastly preferred him to get ice time over Orpik) as it is a testimony to the fact that I did not have a chance to evaluate it, because he spent much of the tournament as the undressed extra defenseman. When he did get a bit of ice time at the end of the Olympics, I thought that his performance was quite good. He has my respect for being ready to step in when Martin fell ill and for not making a stink about being the undressed defenseman for basically the whole tournament. I gave him a C, but he is a blossoming talent, and I hope to see him representing the USA in international hockey again.
Ryan McDonagh, A-: Overall, McDonagh had an impressive Olympics. For the most part, he and Suter made a strong shutdown pair, and, during the game against Slovakia, I thought that he and Shattenkirk were our best defensive pairing that match. He had a couple of great moments made for the highlight reels like his leapfrog defensive work off the boards in the game against Slovakia and the goal he scored for the USA. The low points of his tournament were his own goal off Suter’s skate in the game against the Czech Republic as well as the momentum-dropping two goals he and Suter allowed within eleven seconds of each other during the match against Finland. Still for a young defenseman thrust into a top pairing in the Olympics, he turned in a remarkable performance, and sometimes I even felt like he was a better defenseman than Suter, which is why I ultimately decided to mark him with an A- to Suter’s B+.
Kevin Shattenkirk, A-: During the Olympics, Shattenkirk was actually able to improve the esteem I held him in, because, prior to the tournament, I thought of him as a one-dimensional offensive defenseman who was shaky in his own zone. His time in Sochi showed me that he is a lot more competent in his own end than I had believed, and he was very successful when paired with McDonagh and Fowler. He had a few bad turnovers, and he would occasionally make head-scratching decisions like shooting the puck into a knot of opposing players instead of passing it to his partner, Fowler, but, other than that, he left a positive impression on me. I hope that he can take some pride in a strong Olympic debut, and I’m happy to give him an A- for his good tournament.
John Carlson, B: For me, Carlson was a mixed bag this Olympics. His best game was his first, where he did well when paired with Fowler, and he scored the opening goal in the rout against Slovakia. Unfortunately, he struggled after that, and I simply can’t ignore the fact that he was on the ice along with Orpik for a considerable number of goals against, because his poor positioning was a factor in at least some of those goals if my memory serves me accurately. That being said, he did prevent a mistake Fowler made when pinching the puck from turning into a goal at the end of the Canada game, which left a powerful positive impression on me. On a whole, I thought that the strengths that Carlson brought to the team outweighed his weaknesses, and I look forward to seeing him continue to develop as a defenseman.
Cam Fowler, A: Fowler had a great Olympics. He contributed to the offense with a lot of outlet passes, a noticeable amount of shots on goal, and one power play goal where he made the smart decision of racing up to join the offense closer to the opposing net in the game against Russia that he’ll probably define as the high point of his tournament. The defensive side of his performance was also really strong, as illustrated in the fact that only one goal against the Americans was scored while he was on the ice, and he finished the Olympics with the highest plus-minus stat (plus four) of any USA defenseman. My main criticisms would just be his shot (it still could be improved in terms of power and accuracy) and his occasional hesitancy, especially when he is quarterbacking a power play, which sometimes slowed the team’s momentum. That’s why I continue to say that Fowler is a better defenseman at even strength than he is on the power play, although he can certainly fulfill the role of a quarterback on the power play, and that, when quarterbacking a power play, he is wiser to focus on distributing the puck to forwards than on putting a ton of shots on goal himself. Those are fairly minor quibbles, though, and they don’t detract from Fowler’s overall very impressive tournament. My eyeball and the stat sheet both agree that he wasn’t one of team USA’s weak links on the blue line, so I’m comfortable giving him an A for his work in Sochi.
Jimmy Howard, C-: Just as Faulk’s and Stepan’s scores are more reflective of my lack of an opportunity to access their abilities rather than a condemnation of their Olympic efforts, my grade for Howard is just a testament to the fact that I did not have a chance to see him in action because Quick and Miller played all the games. I give Howard props for accepting his position as a third goalie without complaint and for being ready to step in if injury or extremely poor performance on the part of the other USA goaltenders necessitated it.
Ryan Miller, A: In the only game that he played this tournament, Miller nearly had a second Olympic shutout. (I’ll blame Doc for jinxing him on national television just as he so often did when Marty Brodeur was in his prime and on the verge of another shutout.) Miller also was a good sport about Quick getting the nod as starting goalie, so I feel like giving him an A for his performance in this tournament is justified.
Jonathan Quick, A+: Even if there were moments when his aggressive style did not work as well on international ice as it does on the smaller sheets of the NHL, Quick was in his playoff form throughout the tournament. He was particularly brilliant in the shoot out against Russia, where he went one-on-one against many of the best forwards in the world, and in the game against Canada. He all but stood on his head for that game, and it is amazing for me to think that he might have stolen that match for the USA if Kessel or some other forward had managed to bury a shot or two in Price’s net. All a team can ask from a goalie is that chance to win when they shouldn’t, and Quick definitely offered that. Quick made it possible for the USA to be competitive, but, sadly, they could not reward him with goals when it counted the most. He can have an A+ from me even though it doesn’t come close to being as special as a medal.
Quick Overview of Everyone’s Grades:
Leadership Core:
Dan Bylsma C-
Zach Parise D+
Dustin Brown B-
Ryan Suter B+
Forwards:
Ryan Kesler B+
Patrick Kane D
David Backes A
Ryan Callahan C+
James Van Riemsdyk A
Joe Pavelski A+
Phil Kessel A+
Max Pacioretty B
Paul Statsny A
T.J. Oshie A+
Blake Wheeler B-
Derek Stepan C (Nota Bene: Mainly a result of him being the undressed extra forward, not an indication of his performance.)
Defense:
Paul Martin C
Brooks Orpik D-
Justin Faulk C (Nota Bene: Mainly a result of him not playing, rather than an indication of his performance.)
Ryan McDonagh A-
Kevin Shattenkrik A-
John Carlson B
Cam Fowler A
Goalies:
Jimmy Howard C- (Nota Bene: An indication of the fact that he never played, not a condemnation of his performance.)
Ryan Miller A
Jonathan Quick A+
Apples to Apples: Comparison of Everybody’s Grades:
For all calculations of total numbers of players in each category, any player in the leadership group (Parise, Suter, or Brown) will not be counted again as a forward or a defenseman.
A Players:
David Backes
James Van Riemsdyk
Joe Pavelski
Phil Kessel
Paul Statsny
T.J. Oshie
Ryan McDonagh
Kevin Shattenkirk
Cam Fowler
Ryan Miller
Jonathan Quick
Total Number of Leadership Core A Players: 0
Total Number of Forward A Players: 6
Total Number of Defenseman A Players: 3
Total Number of Goalie A Players: 2
B Players:
Dustin Brown
Ryan Suter
Ryan Kesler
Max Pacioretty
Blake Wheeler
John Carlson
Total Number of Leadership Core B Players: 2
Total Number of Forward B Players: 2
Total Number of Defense B Players: 1
Total Number of Goalie B Players: 0
C Players:
Dan Bylsma
Ryan Callahan
Derek Stepan
Paul Martin
Justin Faulk
Jimmy Howard
Total Number of Leadership Core C Players: 1
Total Number of Forward C Players: 2
Total Number of Defense C Players: 2
Total Number of Goalie C Players: 1
D Players:
Zach Parise
Patrick Kane
Brooks Orpik
Total Number of Leadership Core D Players: 1
Total Number of Forward D Players: 1
Total Number of Defense D Players: 1
What the Stats Say:
Our goalies were not a problem for us, since both of the goaltenders who saw ice time in the Olympics received A’s, and Howard, the only goalie who was not an A player, got a C merely because he never got any time in the tournament for me to judge his value to the team beyond not being a nuisance and being prepared to step in if necessary.
For the most part, our defense was strong, as we had three A players, a B and C player who only earned a C owing to his lack of playing time, and merely one D player, who, unfortunately, saw way too much ice time to the detriment of the team.
Our forwards were fairly solid. Six of them were A players, and two were B players. Two more were C players, and one of those was a C player only because he did not receive enough ice time for me to draw too many conclusions about his overall value to the team. What really killed the offense in the end may only have been that the D player had no production to speak of when the scoring well of the A players ran dry.
Our leadership core was a weakness for this team. At best, in the case of the two B players, it was reliable but not spectacular. With the C coach, it was borderline competent, and with our D captain it was just downright disgraceful. Our leaders failing to lead as expected was the downfall of the USA team in Sochi at least according to my grade book.
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