WINTER OLYMPICS : Norway Gets Out of Way : Team USA Battles to 6-3 Win; Key Game Is Sunday

Out of the Norwegian wood they come, every four years, to form a hockey team.

Sigurd Thinn is a carpenter. So is Stephen Foyn. Roy Johansen teaches school, Truls Kristiansen is a student. Arne Billkvam owns a cab company, Tommy Skaarberg sells sports equipment.

Petter Thoresen, a mason, is playing in his third Olympics. He is the most experienced player on Norway’s Olympic team. He has played in all of 50 games. There are only 18 indoor rinks in the entire country. A year ago, there were only 12. Before coming here, the team practiced only three weeks--a week in August, one in October, the last in December.

“When we come here,” said Tore Jobs, the assistant coach who, like the head coach, Lennant Ahlberg, is a Swede, only Jobs speaks English and Ahlberg doesn’t, “we lose money.”

When they come here, they usually lose, too, and Friday night was no exception, as they fell, 6-3, to Team USA, a win that kept alive the Americans’ medal chances.

In Oslo, you don’t win too many kronor betting on Team Fjord, but for more than half the game Friday, the Norwegians played the United States even. From Oshkosh to Orlando, they had to be wondering if this were going to be 1984 all over again, when Norway completed a meltdown of the U.S. icemen with a 3-3 tie.

It wasn’t, due in good measure to Lane McDonald, a Harvard boy whose hockey roots can be traced to Los Angeles, where his father, Lowell, was a winger on the original Kings in 1967. Lowell McDonald scored the first three-goal hat trick ever by a King at home--which, at the time, was the Sports Arena--and may have been the first King to wear a helmet.

“My dad has told me stories about how he used to take my brother and I in our pajamas to Laker games,” said McDonald, who followed a two-goal performance against the Soviets with another two-goal night against the Norwegians, including the goal that broke a 2-2 tie at 15:02 of the second period.

Team USA, which outshot Norway, 34-13, added goals by Craig Janney and Corey Millen in the next five minutes, and Millen--the leading scorer in the Olympics with 10 points (5 goals, 5 assists) after going pointless in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia--put in one more in the third period.

The win now sets up Sunday’s showdown with West Germany, a game one Calgary newspaper--striving to reach Olympian heights in hyperbole--likened to a rematch of World War II. Scott Fusco, another Harvard grad, smiled at that one.

“I just hope the result’s the same,” Fusco said.

Don’t bet on it, cautioned Jobs, who suggested the outcome of Friday’s game might have been different if referee Heribert Vogt of France hadn’t waved off an apparent goal in the second period.

After Thoresen, the mason, jumped on a pass that caromed by U.S. defenseman Brian Leetch to score a short-handed goal to make it 1-1 23 seconds into the second period, Geir Hoff, a student, challenged U.S. goalie Mike Richter with a hard shot from the right side. Richter made the save, just as U.S. winger Todd Okerlund and Erik Kristiansen--one of two men on Norway’s roster who lists his occupation as full-time hockey player--came hurtling toward the net. Before they arrived, however, knocking the net off its mooring, the puck got there first, caroming off Okerlund’s skate.

But Vogt waved off the goal, a gesture akin to invoking the wrath of Thor. Did Vogt explain his call to the steaming Scandinavians? Jobs shook his head.

“He was scared,” Jobs said. “It was a very bad game. You look like a bad loser when you complain about the referee, but today we played against six men.

“We are here to learn, but we are very sorry to see the referees are here to learn, too.”

If Team USA had learned anything from its defensive breakdowns in its losses to the Czechs and Soviets, it wasn’t terribly apparent. Billkvam, the taxi man, found more open ice than he usually finds open road to score Norway’s second goal at 10:41. That answered the goal scored by Tony Granato on a 2-on-1 with Brian Leetch at 8:49.

And Rune Gulliksen split right between defensemen Greg Brown and Jeff Norton to cruise in alone on Richter for Norway’s last goal at 5:03.

Richter, who the day before had thought third-string goalie John Blue might start, suggested the team picked up some bad habits by playing college teams instead of going to Europe and playing tougher competition.

“Sure, it’s over now, but I scratched my head about the schedule,” Richter told Jay Greenberg of the Philadelphia Daily News, “and a lot of guys on the team felt the same way . . . We were beating teams, 15-0, and getting away with horrible, horrible mistakes.”

They won’t have that luxury against the West Germans, who were beaten Friday by the Soviets, 6-3, but rested their No. 1 goalie, Karl Friesen, for his date against the United States. The Germans are, if nothing else, realists. They have an 0-63-1 record against the Soviets.

“I’ll retire as soon as I beat the Russians,” said Xaver Unsinn, the West German coach.

If the Soviets beat the Czechs Sunday, Team USA must beat the West Germans by at least two goals or it will be retired, too.

“If they are as anxious to score against West Germany as they were against us,” Jobs said, “they will have problems. They must have a little more experience and patience, or there will be many breakaways, and West Germany will win.”

One of these days, Norway--which has lost all four of its games by a total of 28-7--will win one, too. They play Austria, another four-time loser, on Sunday.

“This is the game we came here to play,” Jobs said.

This time, the Swede who coaches the Norwegians might as well have been speaking for the Americans.