Team USA was built to outwork, outplay opponents

Reporting from Vancouver, Canada — 

The panel of general managers who built the U.S. Olympic team knew what they didn’t have at their disposal.

They didn’t have a game-breaker like Canada’s Sidney Crosby or Russia’s Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin. They didn’t even have at their disposal what’s considered the best generation of American players, since Mike Modano, Jeremy Roenick, Doug Weight and their contemporaries have aged or retired.

But they made sure they had one asset in ample supply.

“One thing we said about this team is that it would play hard,” said Kings General Manager Dean Lombardi, who was an advisor to Team USA General Manager Brian Burke along with Nashville’s David Poile, Pittsburgh’s Ray Shero, Atlanta’s Don Waddell and Philadelphia’s Paul Holmgren.

“We said in all the meetings that we wouldn’t be able to match the star power of some of the other teams. That was one of the recurring themes. The focus Brian kept hammering on was that if we’re not going to match their star power, we’re going to have to play [hard].”

That tenacity, and the stellar goaltending of Buffalo’s Ryan Miller, helped the U.S. earn the top playoff seeding. The Americans will face Switzerland on Wednesday in the quarterfinals at Canada Hockey Place.

Like every other team in the Olympic tournament, Team USA had little practice before the Vancouver Games began. But most of the players knew each other from junior teams or the U.S. development program, so their camaraderie developed quickly.

Miller said the team’s tight bond was a sustaining force in its 5-3 victory over Canada on Sunday in the preliminary round finale.

“A lot of times when a team comes together and you haven’t been through something tight, the tendency is to bend, to break, and I thought we answered it,” Miller said. “Every time something went well for Canada we tried our best to answer and it worked out well for us. That’s a big positive for us.”

Just as Lombardi and the rest of Team USA’s brain trust planned it.

“Our feeling was they would be able to come together quickly and like each other. I think there’s a thing too because it’s not star-driven the team has more propensity to come together quickly. They need each other to win,” Lombardi said.

“It’s, ‘If we’re going to succeed, boys, we’re going to have to play together and play hard.’ They look around the locker room and it’s a classic case of they are a team and if they’re going to succeed as a team everyone has to do their job.”

Lombardi also said including Chris Drury on the roster was an easy decision despite his struggles with the New York Rangers this season.

“We got criticism for putting Drury there, but he’s part of those intangibles and as everyone knows he always shows up in big tournaments,” Lombardi said of Drury, whose resume includes pitching for a Little League championship team, an NCAA hockey title and a Stanley Cup championship with Colorado.

“That was one thing Brian was hammering on from Day One.”

Apparently, it hit home.

The Kings and Ducks each had a player figure in the scoring in Canada’s 8-2 victory over Germany, which sent the host team to the quarterfinals Wednesday against Russia.

Ducks defenseman Scott Niedermayer scored Canada’s seventh goal, darting out of the penalty box and into his defensive zone before turning the play up ice and scoring unassisted. Kings defenseman Drew Doughty had an assist on Canada’s third goal and a +4 plus/minus rating.

Ducks goaltender Jonas Hiller stopped two of three shootout attempts by Belarus on Tuesday to help Switzerland prevail, 3-2, and advance to a quarterfinal matchup against the U.S. Wednesday. Hiller had lost a shootout to Canada last week.

Ducks winger Bobby Ryan, who scored on Hiller in the teams’ preliminary-round matchup -- a 3-1 victory for the U.S. -- was asked if Hiller is capable of beating the U.S. on Wednesday.

“He definitely can, just like you saw him almost do against Canada. He’s that dynamic of a goalie,” Ryan said. “And if he’s hot -- and I’m fortunate enough to have seen him when he is -- he’s one of the best in the league.

“The bright side is I’ll be telling guys where to shoot.”

U.S. forward Dustin Brown of the Kings said the Americans didn’t expect by the physical play of the Swiss in the teams’ first-round game.

“They’re more North American than you might think going in,” he said. “I think that surprised us in the first game.”

He said he has seen plenty of Hiller not only here but in the Kings’ games against the Ducks.

“They key against Hiller obviously is traffic,” Brown said. “When you get traffic on him and make it hard for him to see the puck. . . . the same with every goalie, it makes it more difficult for him to make saves.

“He’s playing a really good game for Switzerland right now. If he’s seeing the puck he’s going to stop it. We need to make it difficult for him to track the puck and maybe some side-to-side plays. If you can move him side to side and have him try and track it at the same time that’s when you can find holes on him.”

helene.elliott@latimes.com