U.S. hockey teams antics anger fans

I'm getting the hell out of this country.

If that men's hockey team is the best this country has to offer, I don't want to be a United States citizen anymore.

Our hockey team was outclassed by everyone at the tournament, both on the larger international ice surface and off.

The Americans and two Canadians who had dual citizenship finished the tournament with a record of 1-3, losing against the Czechs, the opener against Sweden and a game against Canada which the Americans controlled most of. Our only victory came against the international hockey "superpower" of Belarus, but even that game could have gone either way until American-by-convenience, not-by-birth Brett Hull scored with less than seven minutes left in the contest.

They never played like a team. Passes that had the potential to be spectacular either bounced over sticks or missed the mark completely. Players frequently overlapped each other, leaving the offense in trouble and the defense in disarray. American goaltender Mike Richter, who held the dubious job of keeping the U.S. in every game, had to basically pray on a rosary every time an opposing player skated into the zone to make sure he'd come up with a save.

They basically sucked.

But what sucked the most was the attitude of the team.

They didn't care. They knew they were the world champions and the entire world and their grandmothers would be gunning for them, but they still could not have cared less. They walked around Olympic Village acting like they were the baddest thing since Andrew "Dice" Clay, continuously flapping their mouths, creating great locker room material for opposing teams. And, although I enjoyed the comments our boys made, I didn't enjoy the fact they couldn't back up those words on the ice.

And then came the reports of American players trashing their rooms, something which the CBC seemed to get a real kick out of by mentioning it every other minute. I don't think a room in Japan has been trashed like that since Twisted Sister last toured that country.

Their poor attitude not only hurt our medal chances, but also the progress that American hockey has made in the past decade.

If "Team USA" could have made it to the gold medal game, especially if they won it, millions upon millions of Americans would have stayed up late Saturday night to watch it. Hell, there was already interest in the tournament. The Canada-USA game two Sundays ago had the highest rating for a hockey game broadcast on network television since the 1996 All-Star Game in Boston.

If the U.S. had won gold or silver, there would have been a lot more interest shown when American NHL television contracts are up at the end of this season. There would have also been some network interest shown in the World Cup to be played in 2000. Both of these events would have generated huge amounts of money for the NHL, money that could be used to combat rising player salaries.

But that's not going to happen now.

Just because the Americans put on a worse performance than Jewel singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl (and she was lip-syncing), everybody is quick to jump to the conclusion that the break in the NHL season was a monumental mistake. I think the mistake lies in the fact that we sent these bums over to Japan in the first place. Their attitude only helps to solidify the world's perception of us as being "Ugly Americans"-- people who don't care about history and honor and respect like other cultures do.

And that will be America's legacy at these games.

American forward Keith Tkachuk said that the trip to the Olympics was "the biggest waste of time . . . ever"

Well Keith, for all of us who stayed up until 4 a.m. to watch our hockey team try to win the gold, we wasted our time too.

And for that, we will be eternally grateful.