Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 22, 1992 TAG: 9202220048
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JIM LITKE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MERIBEL, FRANCE LENGTH: Medium
LEBLANC GIVES GOLDEN EFFORT, BUT U.S. MIRACLE ON ICE ENDS
The statistics tell how many shots he stopped, but not how he stopped them:Diving. Sprawling. Crawling. Straight up. With his face. With his chest. With his arm. With his elbow. With the more conventional means of defense afforded a goalkeeper - leg pads, blocker and catch glove.
But mostly, Ray LeBlanc stopped them with his heart.
He came to the Albertville Games as a 27-year-old journeyman minor-leaguer with a wife and two children back home and an off-season job.
No matter how the bronze medal game goes today, he leaves them a hero.
"I did all right. I did my best and I gave an honest effort and that," LeBlanc said, "is all I can ask."
Fifty-five times, from every angle imaginable,Unified Team marksman had the net behind him in their sights; 50 times, LeBlanc got in the way. That as close as Americans could get to a miracle on ice Friday, though it was easy to overlook because of the 5-2 final score.
We can assume that his body ached mightily by late afternoon, but we can be certain that his spirit ached more. He refused a request for interview, preferring the solace of the locker room instead, and he sent a teammate out to relay a few comments.
"He's fine," defenseman Guy Gosselin said, "and he's certainly got less to hang his head over than the rest of us.
"What happened to him today was a little bit too much to ask of anybody. In a manner of speaking, we hung Ray out to dry."
For most of the first two periods, LeBlanc was nearly as enigmatic to the Unified Team shooters as the smile on the Mona Lisa. He caught buzzing wrist shots from the slot with the apparent ease of a man stretching after a long sleep. He moved post to post with stunning swiftness. He dug in against the slick stickhandlers, shooting out the right body part at exactly the right moment.
In one sequence during a Unified Team power play that began some five minutes into the second period, LeBlanc, like a snake, flicked out a leg pad to block one shot, jumped to his feet in time to get his chest in the way of the next, then barred the door by pouncing on a third shot after stopping it with the cage covering his face.
So admirably did he perform that Nikolai Borstchevski, the Unified Team author of the last of those three shots, came over and with grudging respect, tapped the seat of LeBlanc's pants with his stick.
That respect would turn to frustration later - at one point in the third period, Unified Team defenseman Darus Kasparaitis would plow into LeBlanc after being denied twice from close-in - and then back to respect again.
"I liked the way the United States' goalie performed in this game," Unified Team assistant coach Igor Dmitriev said. "But the outcome of the game is based on a whole team, not just the goalie."
And the referees.
The final period began with the score 2-2 and one American already in the penalty box. By the time it ended, the referees sent four U.S. skaters off the ice, and at least two of them had no legitimate business being there.
With the man advantage, Andrei Khomoutov drove home the last of three Unified Team shots from point-blank range for a 3-2 lead. At that point, you could see that the fast-tiring Americans had little or no comeback left in them. The referees made sure of it by sending two more to the penalty box.
"We were in the box the whole third period, and you can't win games in the box," LeBlanc said. "Finally, they started capitalizing on it."
Whether LeBlanc will be able to do the same with his brilliant performance remains to be seen. The sum of his experience in the National Hockey League is one game with the Chicago Blackhawks, and he spent even that shining moment watching from the bench.
For all the moments of glory he has known here, LeBlanc is still a man with limited prospects. When he arrived, property of the Indianapolis Ice and already an old man in a young man's game, he said he was not ready to give up hockey - even if it meant another winter's worth of slow buses and fast food and waiting for the reward that would make it all worth it.
In one sense, though, he already has that now.
\ AUTHOR Jim Litke is a sports columnist for The Associated Press. at a Pepsi bottling plant in Indianapolis that he needs to make ends meet.