U.S. Beats Poland, Remains Unbeaten : Hockey: LeBlanc stops 24 shots during 3-0 victory, his second shutout of the tournament. Americans can win Pool A by defeating Sweden.

So heavily favored was the U.S. Olympic hockey team to defeat 12th-seeded Poland, Saturday’s game seemed little more than a warmup for the American’s preliminary-round finale against Sweden on Monday.

“We were watching the Finland-Sweden game (earlier Saturday) on TV, and guys were thinking, ‘After Poland this, and after Poland that,’ ” Shawn McEachern said. “Nobody was really thinking about Poland.”

It was a risky oversight. But thanks to McEachern’s first goal of the tournament and Ray LeBlanc’s shutout goaltending, it didn’t cost them two points.

“Ourselves, we’re our worst enemy in a game like that,” defenseman Sean Hill said after the United States scored a 3-0 victory at the Olympic Arena.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game, but we may have taken them too lightly at first. We believed in ourselves, and that’s what we’ve always done. It’s a great feeling to be in this position.”

In becoming only the third American team to win its first four Olympic games--the 1924 team was 4-0 at Chamonix, France, but lost the final to Canada and the 1960 team swept five games atSquaw Valley to win the gold--Dave Peterson’s squad is in position to finish first in Pool A if it defeats Sweden. The winner will face the fourth-place team in Pool B, which could be France, Norway or Switzerland; the runner-up will play the third-place team from Pool B, which could be the Unified Team, Czechoslovakia or Canada.

“We’re 4-0 and what we’ve won is four games. We’re in position to possibly do something that counts,” Peterson said.

“You’d like to have the highest seed you can have, because in theory, it gives you an easier game in the medal round. But if we play France, it would not be an easy game for us because they’d have the home fans.”

Nothing was easy for his team Saturday against the goaltending of Mariusz Kieca, a 22-year-old Krakow native playing only his fifth international game for the Polish team. Kieca held the United States scoreless until McEachern put in a loose puck from the slot at 14:47 of the second period.

Kieca was beaten again when Tim Sweeney sliced a sharply angled backhander over him at 17:39; Kieca was replaced by Marek Batkiewicz for the third period, apparently a victim of exhaustion.

“Once we started to pick it up a notch and play our own game, they couldn’t stay with us,” Sweeney said.

After Marty McInnis tucked Steve Heinze’s pass inside the left post with 6:53 to play, the only element in doubt was LeBlanc’s shutout. The 27-year-old minor leaguer took care of that by stopping seven shots during the final period and 24 overall, his second shutout of the tournament and the first time an American team has had two shutouts in the Olympics since 1936.

LeBlanc, who wasn’t made available for interviews after the game, has a goals-against average of 1.00. He has yielded only one goal in his last 201 minutes 15 seconds of play, since Italy’s Giuseppe Foglietta scored against him at 18:15 of the second period of the tournament opener.

“He’s made every save he’s had to make,” center David Emma said.

Anticipating that LeBlanc wouldn’t have to make many saves, Peterson had planned to pull him about halfway through the game and give Scott Gordon some playing time. That plan was scrapped because of the close score.

“The way the game was going, he wasn’t getting overworked, but he was getting work,” Peterson said. “It probably wasn’t a bad game for him to stay sharp.”

Peterson’s team has won eight consecutive games, including pre-Olympic games. Its final game before the tournament was a 3-2 victory over the Swedish Olympic team at Chamonix, a result that would seem to bode well for Monday’s game.

“We know they’re not invincible,” Hill said. “We have to bang them, slow them down. They’ll probably control the play a little more than us, so when we get our chances, we have to capitalize on them.”

Said Emma: “If you told us two months ago we’d be in position to be in first place, nobody would have believed you. We struggled a lot earlier, but we’re peaking now.”