Posted on Sun, Feb. 19, 2006

U.S. women's hockey team, without Granato, playing for bronze

BY ANN KILLION

San Jose Mercury News

TURIN, Italy - The U.S. women's hockey team is going in the wrong direction.

Gold medal in 1998. Silver medal in 2002. And today, at best, a bronze.

"The program has gone backward since 1998," said Cammi Granato on Sunday. "USA Hockey needs to take a look at the reasons why."

One of the big, glaring reasons why is that Granato spent Friday night in a television booth, instead of on the ice. She had to sit by helplessly and watch her team's shocking semifinal shootout loss to Sweden.

In today's bronze-medal match, the most important woman ever to play hockey in this country will be sitting, not skating. She'll be an NBC studio analyst when the United States plays Finland.

"The good thing that can come out of this is that changes have to be made," said Granato's brother, Tony, by telephone Saturday. "The only positive is that USA Hockey can't kid themselves anymore and pretend that everything has been done the right way. ... Someone's got to be held accountable."

And Tony, the former San Jose Shark and current Colorado Avalanche assistant who played for USA Hockey, thinks the person responsible is coach Ben Smith. Smith has headed the women's program for the past decade and is presiding over its decline. That shouldn't be happening, considering the growth in the number of girls playing hockey in our country.

"I have issues with the head coach," Tony said. "I think his time has run out."

Smith's worst coaching move came last August. That's when he undermined his team by abruptly cutting Cammi, saying that at 34 she was too old - despite having never indicated that her job was in jeopardy. His move stunned the rest of the team, who viewed Granato as their captain, leader and inspiration. When team members talk about Granato, they constantly say how much they miss her.

Granato may not be the player she once was, and all sports teams must move toward youth and speed. But the move was too abrupt, ripping at chemistry, confidence and team loyalty. Granato still has plenty to offer, both on the ice and on the bench. The nation's all-time leading scorer knows more about hockey and has been around longer than Smith - which is probably precisely the reason she's gone.

The American shootout loss to Sweden on Friday was the biggest upset of the Olympics. No one expected it. The two best teams in the world are Canada and the United States, by a large margin. The Americans had never lost in international play to a team other than Canada.

And, in the final analysis, the loss can be blamed on coaching.

Sweden - which will play Canada in the gold-medal game today - wasn't expecting this to be its year. But the players seemed to know each American's tendencies and were prepared for everything. Granato had been at their practice a day earlier, and watched them work on their shootout skills.

"I was thinking, `It will never come down to that,'" Granato said.

But it did. In contrast to the Swedes, the Americans looked helpless late in the game, uptight and unprepared. And in the shootout, they looked as though the idea of such a conclusion had never occurred to them.

"I had a lot of different emotions," Granato said. "I was mostly stunned that it happened."

Does Cammi think she would have made a difference against Sweden?

"I can't say that," she said. "But I felt like I could have. I felt helpless watching."

Her brother was more blunt.

"I know they could have used Cammi in there," Tony said. "You can't just take away that kind of leader and think you can recreate that presence. The girls were put in a position by USA Hockey that made it really tough to succeed."

Instead of having Cammi's calm veteran presence on the ice in overtime, the Americans were increasingly uptight and lost.

Instead of having her savvy scoring touch available for the shootout, the Americans were a disaster, missing all four penalty shots.

"I was always in the shootout," Cammi said. "The last penalty shot I took was the game-winner in the Four Nations Cup."

Granato only has praise for her former teammates and reiterated how badly she feels for them. She's spoken to most of them since the loss. And she fully expects them to beat Finland today for the bronze medal.

"They need to get up for the game," she said. "When your whole focus has been getting to the gold-medal game, they have to find a way to be up for the bronze-medal game."

That could be a tall order, because this is not the game where anyone expected them to be. Certainly not Granato.

But then, she didn't expect to spend the Olympics in a television studio, watching the team she pushed so far forward go backward.

U.S. women's hockey team suffers from bad coaching

Ben Smith's bad coaching can take a huge chunk of the blame for the U.S. women's hockey team not even making it to the gold medal game.

As a shock to most, Smith decided to leave legend Cammi Granato off the U.S. roster last summer, as well as steady blueliner and fellow veteran Shelley Looney while keeping a no-namer like Helen Resor on the roster.

Resor did nothing for the U.S. but make poor decisions and take unnecessary penalties.

Canada has a long list of older players including 40-year-old Danielle Goyette, but Smith thought it unimportant to keep his veterans.

The worst part of this whole ordeal is the fact that nothing was spoken about Granato not making the team because she was a commentator for NBC. It's really too bad.

It would be like leaving Mia Hamm off the U.S. women's soccer roster and not mentioning it on television once during the World Cup.

The whole time they were recapping the U.S. losing to Sweden in a shootout I was waiting for Granato to belt out a huge, "I told you so!" She deserved something.

Shutting down veterans and finding "diamonds in the rough" has been a long-time coaching tactic of Smith.

This year it was Resor who flopped and Sarah Parsons who turned into a gem.

There were plenty of other average forwards who were just decent and stayed on the roster instead of Granato.

It just seems idiotic when Granato could have played just as well, and would have brought a leadership presence that the U.S. sorely missed.

Also, was there any logical reason to keep the best scoring line in college history apart?

All the NBC commentators kept ranting on and on about how deep the U.S. team was but Smith figured he would separate ex-Gophers Krissy Wendell, Natalie Darwitz, and Kelly Stephens.

They were back-to-back NCAA champions playing on a line together and last season in just 40 NCAA games they had 294 combined points and scored 118 goals together.

Seems downright silly to keep them apart, doesn't it?

But he's the mastermind that made history, as the U.S. lost to a team other than Canada for the first time ever.

-Lindsay Czarnecki

These came after the game.