USA Hockey welcomes pressure of golden expectation

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ARLINGTON, Va.—Most of Monday was about establishing Team USA's gold-medal expectations for the Sochi Olympics. That didn't stop Dustin Brown and Peter Laviolette from waxing nostalgic over some nine-year-old bronze.

Of the 48 players USA Hockey invited to off-ice workouts and meetings, 16 were a goal away from gold at the 2010 Games in Vancouver. Four were part of the World Junior championship team earlier this year. One—Brown—was a third-place finisher at the 2004 World Championships. Laviolette, an assistant for Sochi under Dan Bylsma, was the coach of that team. Both look back on it with obvious, genuine fondness; Laviolette called it "one of my great experiences in hockey."

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That's worth remembering when you listen to general manager David Poile, who has the ultimate say in which 25 players actually make the roster: "We're not going into Sochi as an underdog. We expect to win." The expectations have changed since 2010—and certainly since 2004.
That team featured Brown, who was 20 years old. Keith Ballard was in college. Brett Hauer spent the previous season in the Swiss league. The goalies were Mike Dunham, Ty Conklin and Alex Westlund. In short, it didn't look like much of a medal contender. In the end, though, the look of things didn't matter much.
"They were a terrific group that came together and really played hard for their country. In the end, that's what it's about,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," Laviolette said. "They were all from different places, different coaches, different whatever, different roles, and that team bought in. And that team got it done in two weeks. Not the ultimate experience, but it's still something I look back on, and I was proud to be associated with that group."
It was a group that eliminated the Czech Republic in front of 18,000 fans in Prague, then beat Slovakia in a shootout before losing to Sweden in the semifinals. Not bad at all. The team's leading scorer, for the record, was Richard Park. He had a long, solid career as a defensive center.
"We probably weren't the best team there, or the most skilled team, but we ended up coming home with a bronze medal," Brown said.
This time,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], they probably have to come back with a little more, and they're cool with that. To a man,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the players and staff welcome the pressure. This isn't 2010, either, when then-GM Brian Burke went out of his way to play down outside expectations, even if he, his coaches and the guys who actually played the games wanted more. The secret is out.
"Brian did a terrific job from the outside taking the pressure off the U.S," Poile said. "I don't think we snuck up on anybody, but it didn't feel like anybody was giving us much of a chance. We give Brian all the credit for that. I don't think that's possible (again)."
If it was,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it's not anymore. The U.S. might have the deepest bunch of goaltenders in the tournament,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and Poile's leadership group is focused on building a team tailor-made for the larger international ice surface while also taking past production into account. That means emphasis on skating and puck-moving ability. The forwards aren't as good as, say, Canada's,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but whose are? If nothing else, the rhetoric has changed.
"That's a credit to USA Hockey, and the standard that they expect. I think there's a difference between hoping you're gonna win and expecting you're gonna win," Brown said. "Expectations internally, which are probably the most important, are that we expect to win. That maybe wasn't the case 15 or 20 years ago, but that's kind of evolved, just based on the growth of the game and USA Hockey."
Another reason to think that standard is realistic: Nobody in camp is older than 33. Fourteen were born in the ‘90s. That's a lot of guys in their primes and a bunch more who are years from it. Compare that to 2010, which was widely viewed as a transitional phase between the Bill Guerin/Chris Drury generation and the guys who currently make up the program's core. This time, there's a middle ground.
"There's maybe a changing of the guard that's still in the process, but we'd like to, as a group of American hockey players, not have a change of the guard. You'd like to see some of the younger guys mixed in with the older guys and a constant evolution," center David Backes said.
Evolution—and, maybe, alchemy.