In keeping with the whining tone of America’s relations with many of its international competitors, the players and their pugnacious coach Dave Peterson came up with a conspiracy theory to explain their loss. The villain was the notoriously sinister Sweden, which had a $1.5 billion balance-of-trade surplus with the United States in 1990, and whose team played to a hard-fought tie against the Americans in the elimination rounds. A particularly savage check by Sweden’s Mats Naslund knocked U.S. defenseman Greg Brown senseless during the game (he ended up with a broken nose and 12 stitches across the forehead), and afterward Peterson ostentatiously refused to shake hands with the Swedes. By coincidence, it was a Swedish referee who sat four Americans out for penalties in the decisive third period of the 5-2 loss to the Russians, leading U.S. captain Clark Donatelli to make the outrageous charge that “the Swedish hockey team couldn’t beat us so they made sure the Swedish ref stuck it to us.” But if his teammates had been better able to control the puck-the Russians had possession the great majority of time-the Americans wouldn’t have had to take as many penalties. And it was a Canadian referee who put four Americans in the penalty box at the same time in the closing minute of their 4-1 win over France.
The fact is, the Russians were very, very good. LeBlanc stopped 50 shots, using virtually every part of his anatomy including his head on three occasions, but his teammates managed only 18 shots on the Russian goal. Take away the Unified’s two power-play goals and the Americans would still have lost. Twenty-four hours later, a disheartened Team USA took the ice against Czechoslovakia to contest the bronze medal. Again, they were badly outshot and lost 6 to 1. Shortly after the third period began, LeBlanc, after playing more than 400 minutes of Olympic hockey in which he faced nearly 300 shots, skated off the ice and sat down to a smattering of cheers.
His moment in the international spotlight over, the shy, mumbling 27-year-old from Fitchburg, Mass., can look forward to resuming his career in cities like Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne–while Russian defenseman Dmitri Mironov begins negotiations with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Mironov’s agent, Martin Heller, expects the 26-year-old from Moscow to be worth at least $1 million on a multiyear contract. It’s a strange, strange world-even without miracles.
