Win Over Belarus Still Has U.S. Looking for Direction

NAGANO, Japan —  And where exactly is Belarus, whose hockey team began competing at the international level only in 1993 yet gave the United States a scare Saturday--and actually outplayed the U.S. at even strength?

“Good question,” U.S. defenseman Keith Carney said. “I’d need a map, but I think I can find it. Maybe.”

In other words, a U.S. team stocked with millionaires and favored to contend for a gold medal needed four power-play goals--two with two-man advantages--to subdue an opponent that has two NHL players on its roster and represents a country most Americans couldn’t pick out on a globe.

“We’re playing against a team you should beat and we’re going through the motions the first 10 minutes, like it’s ‘La-di-da,’ ” said U.S. Coach Ron Wilson, who called a timeout 8:50 into the game to jolt his players. “The whole team knew we weren’t sharp, that we were waiting for something. You can’t wait. You’ve got to wrestle it away.”

They were left to wrestle with their defensive demons Saturday at Big Hat arena after a 5-2 victory over Belarus that was nail-bitingly close.

“We’re just confused more than anything,” Brett Hull said.

That was obvious in their tournament-opening 4-2 loss to Sweden on Friday, which they shrugged off by saying their first three games merely determine seedings for the quarterfinals and won’t eliminate anyone from the eight-team field. But after another inconsistent effort that exposed their lack of discipline and discomfort on the wide international ice surface, there was reason to wonder whether their 1996 World Cup victory--won on NHL-sized rinks--was an accurate indication of their ability.

The road only gets more treacherous: a round-robin finale Monday against Canada, which improved to 2-0 with an impressive 3-2 victory over Sweden on Saturday, and the single-elimination quarterfinals, which will be played Wednesday.

“We came out and we’ve done a lot of talking,” Wilson said, “but there hasn’t been a lot of action. To this point we haven’t been working as hard or as intelligently as we could. . . . You worry because you don’t know what’s coming next. But all you have to do is improve every game. We could win the first three games, 10-0, 10-0, 10-0, and then lose Game 4 [the quarterfinal game], 2-1.

“So, in coach-speak, if these are our worst periods, we’ve got nowhere to go but upward. We’re a little frustrated right now because it hasn’t come maybe as easily as we expected, but we have to adjust.”

They didn’t adjust well to the style of Belarus (0-2), which mixes elements of the old Soviet slick-passing, puck-control game with North American combativeness gained from players’ ventures to the International Hockey League and other minor leagues. If not for two five-on-three advantages gained when NHL referee Kerry Fraser twice caught Belarus with too many men on the ice and a man already in the penalty box, the U.S. offense might have short-circuited altogether.

It ignited only when Pat LaFontaine won a faceoff from Belarus (and King) forward Vladimir Tsyplakov and passed to fellow 1984 U.S. Olympian Chris Chelios, who blasted a shot between goaltender Andre Mezin’s pads at 9:06, and again at 10:31, when LaFontaine banked a pass from Brian Leetch off the leg of defenseman Igor Matushkin.

Belarus halved that lead on a goal by Igor Karachun at 18:02 and kept pressing through the second period only to be halted by another U.S. power-play goal, by Leetch at 8:16 of the second period. Belarus again pulled within a goal when Vasili Pankov ripped a 45-foot shot under Mike Richter’s glove 27 seconds into the third period and controlled both ends of the ice until Sergei Erkovich’s cross-checking penalty gave the U.S. yet another power play, on which Hull used John LeClair as a screen to rip a 50-foot shot past Mezin with 6:15 left.

Less than a minute later, Andrei Kovalev of Belarus hit the post next to Richter, a valiant last gasp. Adam Deadmarsh clinched the first U.S. win of the tournament on a rebounder with 1:46 to play, but it was a hollow victory.

“We haven’t really put it together for any stretch,” LeClair said. “I think we’re trying to be too fancy and we’re thinking too much. I never believe that those first [round-robin] games don’t mean anything. We want a good seeding for the quarterfinals.”

Richter, designated by Wilson the No. 1 goalie, said he and his teammates aren’t worried about the first two games or about Canada seeking to avenge its World Cup loss to the U.S.

“What’s past is past. We have to establish ourselves as a hungry, hard-working team,” he said. “We improved [Saturday], but we’re still not where we want to be. Canada will be a great game, and the intensity is certainly going to be up there.”

Said Wilson: “I don’t think you can overemphasize this game. We want to play well. Sometimes you can’t control the result but you can control how well you play, and we didn’t play that well today. We always had the lead. Had we fallen behind, we might have had some difficulty. We stopped believing in ourselves and doing things that make us a good team, like forechecking, skating and driving to the net.

“It’s a matter of baby steps for our team, trying to improve in certain areas. Our confidence grew in the last 10 minutes of the game tonight, and we hope we can take it from there.”