WINTER OLYMPICS : In Hockey, a New Deal for 1988

They were American dreamers in 1984, too guileless to understand they were about to disappear through the thin ice of overwrought expectations.

“People get mixed up--they forget 1984,” said Ed Olczyk, who was only 17 years old when he went to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, with a United States hockey team commissioned to duplicate a miracle. Innocents abroad.

“When people talk to me about it now, they’re so excited, they say, ‘You were great,’ ” Olczyk said. “They think I was on the team in 1980 and won a gold medal. I tell them, ‘No, no, I played in ’84.’ They ask, ‘How did you do?’ I tell them, ‘We finished seventh.’

“That’s when I get embarrassed.”

Olczyk is in Toronto now with the Maple Leafs, one of 10 members of the ’84 team who went on to perform in the National Hockey League. But in spirit, at least, he will be here tonight, when the puck drops for another U.S. Olympic hockey team unburdened by gold-medal plating.

“They have no shoes to fill, really,” Olczyk said of the ’88 version of Team USA, which meets Austria in its opening-round game in the Saddledome. “They just have to go out and do the best job they can. No one is expecting them to do anything.”

Perhaps that’s why Team USA Coach Dave Peterson, a 57-year-old Minnesotan who taught high school business courses for 27 years, asked that his players be willing to walk before they skate. Many mornings during the six months preceding their arrival here, Peterson roused his players from bed and made them accompany him on a half-hour stroll.

“He said we had to walk because he needed a walk,” said Team USA winger Clark Donatelli, with a laugh. “It was all right--it was something to do. You just put on the Walkman and go.”

One step at a time. That was a lesson that may have been lost on the ’84 team, which stumbled badly in its first game--a 4-2 loss to Canada--and never regained its balance.

It didn’t help, Olczyk said, that they played the day before the opening ceremonies.

“At the time, we really didn’t know what was on the line,” Olczyk said. “Every game was life and death, and we didn’t treat it that way.”

Instead, said Scott Fusco, one of two players on the ’84 team who have come back for an encore, they treated it almost like a vacation.

“Foreign country, different food--it was all new,” Fusco said. “Now, when Corey (Millen, the other ’84 returnee) and I stepped off the bus, we knew what was going on. The circus atmosphere is not new.”

Neither is it to Peterson, who in ’84 was an assistant to Lou Vairo, a Brooklyn-born hustler who thought the Olympics would be a stepping stone from his roller-hockey roots to a job in the National Hockey League. Peterson is making no promises.

“I think we’ll play very well,” Peterson said here Friday at a press conference, wearing the same red, white and blue sweat suits as his players, albeit with an elastic waistband stretched somewhat farther. “But I have no idea how we’re going to do.”

They should have few problems tonight with Austria, the 11th-seeded team that imported its coach, Ludek Bukac, from the Czech national team, and six of its players from Canada. And with an assist from ABC, which coaxed the International Olympic Committee into allowing six teams--three from each division--to advance to the medal round instead of four, Team USA should have a shot at a medal.

The Czechs and Soviets, who are Team USA’s next two opponents, are in the same division, but a win against West Germany should put the Americans in the medal round.

That may not be as easy as it sounds, however, according to Sweden’s Tommy Sandlin, coach of the No. 1-seeded team here. The West Germans, reminded Sandlin, beat the Czechs in the Izvestia Cup Tournament in Moscow in December.

“They’re a very experienced team,” Sandlin said. “They play similar to the U.S. team. They’re a hard forechecking team and they work all the time.”

The biggest difference in this U.S. team and those that preceded it is the presence of professionals, who are being allowed for the first time. Three pros are on the roster--goalie Chris Terreri (New Jersey Devils), winger Steve Leach (Washington Capitals) and defenseman Peter Laviolette (Indianapolis Checkers, a minor league team that no longer exists).

In all, NHL teams own the rights to 21 Team USA players, most notably defenseman Brian Leetch, a 19-year-old from Connecticut, who was the No. 1 pick of the New York Rangers in 1986.

“In my opinion, in three or four years, Brian Leetch will be a winner of the Norris Trophy,” said Olczyk, referring to the NHL award that goes to the league’s best defenseman. “I played with him overseas, and he has unlimited talent.”

Leetch is point man on a power play that scored 31% of the time.

“He seems to prefer pressure situations--when you think there isn’t anything more he can do,” Donatelli said, “he somehow gets the job done. He hasn’t let us down all year, and I don’t think he’ll start now.”