United States Reclaims a Victory, 6-3 : Hockey: Americans take early lead, then fall behind Italians before third-period rally.

Steve Heinze held his stick high in the air for what seemed like an eternity, showing U.S. Olympic teammate Ted Donato he was open for a pass in case Donato hadn’t heard him shouting the news.

“I gave a yell,” Heinze said, “but I think he saw me. Ted Donato is just an unbelievable passer. You don’t have to do much when you’re playing with him.”

Donato gave his linemate the puck, and Heinze gave the U.S. Olympic hockey team a 4-3 lead it refused to relinquish. Heinze took Donato’s pass from the right corner and jammed it past Italian goaltender David Delfino 7:02 into the third period, lifting Team USA to a 6-3 victory Sunday in its Pool A opener at the Winter Olympics.

“We had played well in the second period. We just played a little tentative,” Team USA defenseman Bret Hedican said of a time in which Italy scored two goals and took a 3-2 lead. “We had 20 minutes to score a goal, and I didn’t think about any doubts. We had to believe in each other and we did. This was just another adversity we had to try and climb over.”

Overcome it they did, to the delight of the flag-waving U.S. partisans in the lively crowd of 5,445 at the Olympic Arena. Tim Sweeney intercepted an errant pass and broke in alone on Delfino for a 5-3 lead 95 seconds after Heinze’s goal, and C.J. Young’s power-play goal at 13:41 quashed a valiant effort by the eighth-seeded Italians to skate with their faster American counterparts.

“I thought we were controlling the play, so I wasn’t really worried going into the third period,” said Sweeney, who was loaned to Team USA in December by the Calgary Flames. “I knew coming into that third period I had to step forward as a veteran on the team and get things going.”

Coach Gene Ubriaco’s Italian team, built around 15 Canadian imports, erased an early 2-0 U.S. lead on Bruno Zarrillo’s goal off a rebound at 18:12 of the first period and a screen shot by former Toronto Maple Leaf Bob Manno 23 seconds into the second. Italy surged ahead, 3-2, when Mike DeAngelis sent Montreal-born forward Giuseppe Foglietta in from the blue line for a breakaway backhander with 1:15 left in the second period, but the fourth-seeded U.S. team regrouped and regained its poise during the intermission.

Clark Donatelli, the U.S. team’s captain, tied the game at 1:41 of the third period when he positioned himself in the slot to take a pass from Sweeney and jab a 10-foot shot past Delfino, a native of Medford, Mass. Team USA squandered a power-play chance before Heinze, who attended Harvard, set up his former Boston College rival Donato for the game-winner.

“We knew we had to come back, and we showed a little character,” said Heinze, who scored 18 goals in 49 games primarily as the third-line right wing. “There wasn’t too much yelling in the locker room, just guys telling each other we had to play our game.

“The first game of the Olympics, anybody is going to be a little uptight. We knew we could play better, and we did. But we know we’ll have to keep getting better when we start facing some of the other teams.”

Italian Coach Gene Ubriaco said his team’s competitive performance demonstrated the improving quality of Italian hockey.

“We just ran out of gas,” said Ubriaco, a Canadian who played for three NHL teams and coached the Pittsburgh Penguins for a season and a quarter. “We had a lot of players who did not have their best game. . . . We were uptight in the first period and just couldn’t seem to get our feet on the ground. We couldn’t do what we wanted to do. Obviously, you have to give the Americans credit for that. We were willing, but we weren’t able to think as clearly as we can usually.”

U.S. Coach Dave Peterson said his team “stayed with the plan pretty well” after falling behind.

“We told (the players),

“Put a smile on your face. We have 20 minutes to get one, and when we get one, we’ll get the next one,” Peterson said.

“Mentally, it’s probably a pretty good confidence builder. We came out of the gate and got two (goals) and thought it would be easy, but it turned out to be a real dogfight. That you can come from behind and win it does a lot for your confidence.”

In other games, Sweden, the defending world champion but never an Olympic champion, got two goals from former Calgary Flame Hakan Loob in a 7-2 victory over Poland. And Finland beat Germany, 5-1.