By nature, the U.S. is an underdog in Olympic hockey. Its team is a sometime thing, a pickup squad of former college stars who have retained enough interest in the game to stay in shape and to steal necessary time away from their careers. The Russians are more organized: their team is the cream of the most professional amateur hockey leagues in the world. So are the Canadians, by instinct and circumstance the world's best hockey players, who can draw their team from a galaxy of highly organized postgraduate amateur leagues.
This year, trouble dogged the U.S. team. Coach Jack Riley upset...
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