King Bows to Japanese Hockey

As coach of Canada’s Olympic hockey team in 1984, 1988 and 1992, Dave King was burdened with the expectations of a hockey-mad nation that considered it abject failure if he didn’t bring home a medal. In Nagano, as general manager and co-coach of the Japanese men’s team in its first Olympic appearance since 1980, his goals are much different.

“Our focus is just trying to be competitive,” he said. “We’re way over our heads. We just hope to win a game. If we can do that, that would be a gold-medal performance.”

King has spent much of the last two years helping the Japanese hockey federation upgrade its program in preparation for these Games. Besides learning Japanese, he has learned valuable lessons about the cultural differences between North America and Japan.

“Here, you respect your opponent, and a sense of fair play is very important in the Japan League,” said King, who is on leave from his job as an assistant coach of the Montreal Canadiens. “It’s important to play hard, but very fair. The Japanese culture is outstanding. They live together in harmony and learn to work together. There’s very little crime in this country and a lot of respect for one another--which isn’t necessarily good for the [hockey] results.

“It’s been a wonderful experience. In Japan, no one stands above the crowd. Everyone is equal. In North America, there’s a star system. Here, no one gets more preference. And there’s a big difference in the way teams treat referees and opponents and the way opposing teams treat each other. It’s not at all what you see in North America.”

King said Japanese hockey has improved dramatically in the last few years and estimated that the top teams are on a par with good American college programs. Seven players on the Olympic team are what is called “Japanese Heritage” players, Canadians or Americans whose ancestors were born in Japan. Six of them are grandchildren of Japanese-Canadians who were held in internment camps in Lethbridge, Canada, during World War II, and many have minor league or college experience.

“They bring that effort, that belief that the team can beat somebody,” King said. “The difficulty with Japan in international competition is, they have a bit of an inferiority complex because they never believed they could compete.”

King is hoping a respectable performance here will raise the profile of hockey in Japan and help increase the game’s popularity.

“One of the papers here had a poll where they asked 4,000 people which Olympic sport they most wanted to watch, and hockey was eighth,” King said. “Nordic combined was ahead of hockey. That doesn’t mean they don’t like hockey, they just don’t know much about it. This is a tremendous opportunity for the country to get focused. If we play well, that will create interest among young boys and girls and among sponsors too.”

*

The U.S. women’s hockey team, which makes its Olympic debut Sunday against China, has found a new pastime in the Olympic Village: surfing the net at a facility specially set up for athletes to get and send e-mail.

“The other day, a bunch of us went over there at 9 a.m.,” forward Tricia Dunn said, “and half the team was already waiting on line to get in there. . . . I’ve been getting all kinds of e-mail from people I haven’t heard from in years. The most bizarre was from my residence hall director at the University of New Hampshire. She wrote that she remembered seeing me skate and was so happy to see I’m at the Olympics.”

*

The hospitality of Japanese people drew raves from the U.S. women’s hockey team.

“Their politeness is incredible,” forward A.J. Mleczko said. “The fact that they wear surgeon’s masks when they have colds so they don’t spread their germs says so much about them.

“When you go up to get your food, they say, ‘Thank you.’ I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t do anything for you, why are you thanking me?’ It’s just their culture, I guess.”

Forward Lisa-Brown Miller said she was overwhelmed when the team was departing Osaka for the final leg of its journey to Nagano and she looked out the window of the plane to see the ground-service workers lined up and waving.

*

While most members of the U.S. women’s team plan to go back to school or find a job after the Olympics, Brown-Miller has something different in mind. She plans to take her honeymoon, which has been delayed by almost 2 1/2 years.

Brown-Miller was married Aug. 19, 1995, a day before the national team’s training camp began. She had to choose between enjoying her newlywed status and trying out for the team. She packed her skates and reported to camp.

“John [her husband] said, ‘You’re going to camp. We’ll have a honeymoon later,’ ” she said. “But John and I are finally going to go to Hawaii after this is over.”

*

Defenseman Alexander Karpovtsev of the New York Rangers will not play for the Russian Olympic team because of a wrist injury. Sergei Gonchar of the Washington Capitals is a likely replacement.