Clark Donatelli said the following after the loss to Czechoslovakia.  It
dealt with the comments he and other Team USA people made about the officiating
Friday.
 
"If I offended anyone in America, I'm sorry.  I feel that I said something
I shouldn't have.  I don't regret it...that's how the hockey team felt.  But
I didn't want to offend anyone, either."
 
After printing this, Boston Globe writer Kevin Dupont (who also poses as a
knowledgeable hockey person for The Hockey News) went on to rake Donatelli
over the coals again and rehash all of his comments, as if we didn't already
know.
 
Give the guy a break, he realized he made a mistake and he owned up to it.  I
was happy to see CBS ignored this clearly emotional outburst in its recap of
the team's performance tonight and focused on the positive aspects. But
Dupont loves controversy and wasn't about to pass this up.  (Mike Emrick's
piece on the 1992 Olympic hockey tourney was absolutely superb, BTW.)
 
The only thing I have to add is that I hope Clark said something similar to
the Swedish referee & to Sweden, even if it was done privately.  I'm sure
he regrets having said it and he should let the Swedes know he feels that way,
just so as not to leave any bad memories.  I doubt he got very good ink in
Sweden for what he said, and I bet he would get a lot of respect from the
people there if they knew he sincerely regretted it.  He's too good of a
guy to let that tarnish him in any part of the world - although if you read
rec.sport.hockey, the Swedes think he is a Ninja Turtle. :-)
 
Interesting that Dupont chose to ask Peterson if he'd be back for Lillehammer.
First, that's not up to him right now.  Second, the answer should be NO.  It's
time to give someone else a shot.  But we should be hearing something soon,
it's only about a year before it is time to start choosing the 1994 team.
(Peterson effectively dodged the question.)
 
BTW, there was a note in the paper that Mike Dunham would be playing one of
Maine's two games next weekend.  I would love to hear the reception he gets
when he steps onto the ice next weekend.
 
Congrats to the Unified Team, although I doubt anyone following them will
read this.  That was a remarkable team we saw.  I wonder how they would have
done against the Soviet teams of the past, but still this team faced Canada's
strongest team in many years and a determined Team USA, among others.  Too
bad Juneau, Woolley, Ratushny, etc. didn't get to wear gold, but they earned
silver and shouldn't hang their heads.  Getting back to EUN, the CBS guy who
said the strongest memory he'd have of these Games was of the proud EUN
athletes who stood on the victory stand and had no flag or anthem to honor
them - he said exactly what I thought everytime I saw this.  Imagine if you
were competing for the US (or whatever your home country is), won your event
and then had to endure that.  It was very sad.  And for many of those people,
their future as they return home is very uncertain.  I wish there was some
way they could know that those of us who really enjoyed the Winter Games,
were touched by their performances as if they were our own athletes.  (That's
how I feel, anyway.)  But they'll likely return home and never know this. :-(
 
Not to get off the subject of HOCKEY-L, but the strongest memory I seem to
have isn't of LeBlanc or of Team USA, or Alberto Tomba or Paul Wylie
(although Wylie was a great story!).  It's that Russian ice dancing pair that
won the gold medal.  Not long ago we seemed to have the impression that the
Russian/Soviet athletes were nothing but robots.  Maybe we knew it already by
now, but those two showed the world (me, at least) that their names and
countries may be different, but they're no different from us.  And I guess that
is what the Olympics are all about.  On to Lillehammer.  Too bad it's not
always every two years.
---
Mike Machnik    [log in to unmask]   mikem@{beanpot,bubba}.ma30.bull.com