Americans Earn Golden Chance

In the 16 years since a bunch of American college kids upset the vaunted Soviets and won the Olympic gold medal at Lake Placid, N.Y., no American hockey team has come as close to winning a major international tournament as Team USA is today.

Its 5-2 victory over Team Canada Thursday, which sent the best-of-three World Cup of Hockey finals to a dramatic resolution Saturday in Montreal, was not the stuff of miracles, as the 1980 triumph seems in retrospect. Thursday’s triumph was crafted with speed and sweat and brilliant defensive play, a cool performance in the face of 21,273 fervently patriotic Canadians in the caldron of the sold-out Molson Centre.

John LeClair of the Philadelphia Flyers, a former Montreal Canadien, scored two goals and goaltender Mike Richter of the New York Rangers stopped 17 shots in the third period and 35 overall to move the U.S. team to the brink of what may be its greatest hockey moment. Fans at the Molson Centre waved signs that read, “It’s our game,” but the U.S. is ferociously challenging that claim.

“A lot of people haven’t given us credit,” said LeClair, who has goals in five of Team USA’s six games and is the tournament’s scoring leader with 10 points. “People say Canada plays with a big heart, and they do. But we have a lot of heart too.”

Canada was missing its emotional leader, Mark Messier, who was confined to his hotel room because of stomach flu. That, however, was not excuse enough for Canada’s failure to blunt the U.S. players’ speed and keep LeClair from crashing the net. “You’re not going to replace a Mark Messier,” Canadian winger Theoren Fleury said. “But somebody had to step up and play a big game.”

No one’s game was bigger Thursday than LeClair’s. LeClair converted the rebound of a shot by defenseman Gary Suter during a power play at 7:06 to give the U.S. the early lead it so eagerly sought.

Canada matched that at 9:23 when Brendan Shanahan took a drop pass from Eric Lindros and ripped a shot from the top of the left circle during a power play, but LeClair gave the U.S. a lead it never relinquished at 1:20 of the second period. For his sixth goal of the tournament, LeClair got behind Paul Coffey and deflected a shot Bryan Smolinski had taken from the top of the slot.

“I think he wants to prove to everybody he doesn’t need Eric Lindros [as his center] to be a great hockey player.” U.S. Coach Ron Wilson said.

Brett Hull, also a standout for the United States, padded the lead to 3-1 at 15:24 on a breakaway that resulted when Chris Chelios blocked a shot by Canadian defenseman Adam Foote and sent Hull in alone on Curtis Joseph.

Joe Sakic brought Canada within a goal at 14:48 of the third period on a power-play goal, but the rugged U.S. defense held firm. Keith Tkachuk and Scott Young clinched it with empty-net goals.

Said U.S. center Mike Modano: “Tonight we had more speed in our game than [in the 4-3 series-opening loss]. We played simple hockey. We weren’t out there to be pretty, just to win. We’ve got a great opportunity and we don’t want to pass it up.”

“It would be easy to say, ‘We’ve accomplished a lot. We’ve had some bad breaks. Lights out, we’ll take the next step at Nagano [at the 1998 Olympics],’ ” Wilson said. “But we want to do it now. The scene is set for us. If we’re going to beat anybody, we wanted to be sure we beat Canada.”