12 YEARS LATER, U.S. HOCKEY STILL UNDERDOG

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992                   TAG: 9202210074
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK TV/RADIO SPORTS COLUMNIST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
12 YEARS LATER, U.S. HOCKEY STILL UNDERDOG
Twelve years after the "Miracle on Ice," no one is expecting today what more than the French have come to know as deja vu.
After all, times changed when Boris Yeltsin pulled that Russian power play while Mikhail Gorbachev was short-handed.
However, the meltdown in the Cold War hasn't changed much about the anticipation of today's Olympic hockey semifinal game between the United States and the Unified Team. CBS understands. The network will add to its scheduled 116 hours from the Albertville Games with a live telecast (11 a.m., WDBJ Channel 7).
Mike Eruzione, who played for the U.S. gold-medal team that enthralled and stunned with its 1980 performance in Lake Placid, N.Y., has spent the past two weeks trying not to call the Unified Team the Soviets or Russians. Eruzione is the CBS hockey reporter and will work today's game with Mike Emrick and John Davidson.
"You can't compare the situations," Eruzione said Thursday by phone from the French Alps. "They're not the enemies anymore. When we played in 1980, the Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan. They were the bad guys. Now, we're giving aid to their government.
"This also isn't a Soviet team people are in awe of anymore. When we played them, the Soviets were older and were coming off three straight Olympic victories [gold medals]. This is a young team they have now. It's a team that hasn't proven anything yet."
Eruzione is correct, but the U.S. team is again the underdog. And, despite the changes in the former U.S.S.R., the anticipation in this hemisphere is fueled not only by reaction to an unbeaten U.S. team, but also to the lingering thoughts of U.S.-Soviet competition.
They still can shoot nuclear warheads, can't they?
Actually, the U.S. team has accomplished about what was expected. The Americans were seeded fourth in the hockey competition, behind Sweden - already eliminated - the Unified Team and Canada. The U.S-Unified winner plays the winner of today's Canada-Czechoslovakia game (3 p.m., TNT cable) in Sunday's gold-medal game. The losers meet for bronze Saturday.
"The U.S. team is certainly the underdog against the Unified Team," said Davidson, the former New York Rangers goalie. "If you take a statistical look at the teams, the Unified Team controls it except in the goaltending category. It may come down to whether [goalie] Ray LeBlanc has a chance to keep the U.S. team in the game.
"The U.S. has to be really careful of the top two offensive lines on the Unified Team, and the Unifieds get a lot of offense from their defensemen, too. In the tournament, the U.S. defensemen have 37 shots on goal, the Unified defensemen 102.
"You know the U.S. team will play with emotion and aggressively, but there's a fine line between playing with emotion and taking unnecessary penalties. Or, will the Unified Team fracture under the pressure because they're an even younger team than the U.S."
Emrick, the play-by-play man, has had one of the gutsier performances of the Olympics. He fell on the ice on steps outside the arena in Meribel, then went inside and called Monday's U.S.-Sweden tie with his right arm in ice. After the game, he went to a hospital and learned he had a broken left radius. The arm will be in a cast for another 4 1/2 weeks.
Emrick was asked about Al Michaels' inspired ABC telecast call at the end of the U.S. victory over the Soviets in 1980 - "Do you believe in miracles . . . YES!" - and said he has thought about what he might say should a similar circumstance occur today.
"Al painted a masterpiece," Emrick said. "It would be like painting the Mona Lisa and then bringing it out 12 years later and saying, `We want you to paint it over again.' You can't do that. Al made a piece of art that hangs in a gallery by itself."
So, today, many U.S. workers will be taking a three-period lunch, on ice. The Unifieds are coming, the Unifieds are coming, and more Americans viewers will watch LeBlanc, Clark Donatelli and Moe Mantha than will see Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull and Mario Lemieux all season.
That's something for the NHL to chew on.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB