Aaron Falk: USA vs. Russia ice hockey feels like an impostor without NHL players

Gangneung, South Korea • There he stood, chin jutting out, chest puffed, stoic as the day he crossed the Delaware, only this time he was taking a picture with a woman at a hockey game.

“My name is George Washington,” he said then paused. “… I’m not entirely sure of my middle name. I should have Wikipedia’d that.”

Few could have represented better the red, white and blue of Team USA hockey Saturday night: dressed the part, passionate and, well, not exactly the real deal.

When the NHL decided last April to keep its players off Olympic ice this year amid concerns over costs and injury risks, it hurt plenty of countries. The Canadians would love to have Sidney Crosby in South Korea. The Swedes would love to have Henrik Lundqvist in front of the net. But no men’s Olympic hockey team seems to have taken a worse hit than the USA’s.

That was clear enough Saturday as the Russians — or at least the Olympic athletes from that country — thoroughly handled the U.S. in a 4-0 contest.

The atmosphere inside the Gangneung Hockey Centre was unlike almost any other Olympic event, where spectators tend to politely cheer their nation’s athletes and the opponent is almost always a judge or a clock. Olympic hockey is a different beast. Long before the puck dropped, fans stood in long lines for drinks and tried to outshout their rivals.

U-S-A!

RUS-SI-A!

“It’s a different kind of camaraderie and brotherhood and rivalry,” David Schuessler, the Florida native who came dressed as General Washington, said about Olympic hockey.

Capt. Adam Harpham, an Oklahoman who has been stationed at the Yongsan Army garrison in Seoul for the past two years, traded his uniform for something out of Uncle Sam’s closet for the game. His wife, Amanda, was dressed like the Statue of Liberty.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Harpham said.

But it could.

For the Russians, the gold-medal favorites in men’s hockey, this tournament is the best chance to sing and wave the flag their athletes are not allowed to compete under at these Olympic Games. This version of Team USA isn’t in the same league.

This isn’t Lake Placid in 1980. This isn’t T.J. Oshie’s shootout heroics in Sochi. This is Pyeongchang 2018, and the Americans will be long shots to even reach the quarterfinals after finishing 1-1-1 in the group stage.

The Americans opened Olympic play by letting Slovenia rally for an overtime victory.

“They had a different team,” Slovenia’s Blaz Gregorc said when asked to compare the U.S. team of four years ago to now. “They had a lot of NHL players and now they don’t have them. For sure, they have a little bit worse team than they did in Sochi, but they still have a really good team.”

It’s not the best the nation has to offer, though.

This U.S. squad is either short on experience — Harvard forward Ryan Donato has been the team’s best scoring threat — or its experience came too long ago; captain Brian Gionta has played in more than 1,000 NHL games but at age 39 isn’t the player he once was.

And while the Russians are without their NHL stars, too, their roster is heavy on players from the world’s second-best league. One of those players, former New Jersey Devils star Ilya Kovalchuk, scored two of the Russians’ goals Saturday.

“I still have some gas in my tank, and I hope I score some more,” he said afterward.

These Games mark the first time in 20 years the NHL hasn’t been represented on Olympic ice, and that position undoubtedly will be an issue when the league and its players hammer out their next collective bargaining agreement. With those players, the U.S. would have been considered a medal contender in Pyeongchang. Without them, those hopes are all but shot.

Yes, it’s true that a team of American amateurs has won before. To this day, that run in Lake Placid in 1980 — and Team USA’s victory over Russia — remains one of the country’s greatest Olympic moments.

Before the opening faceoff Saturday, Justin Hooten, of California, and two of his friends stood in line for beverages, wearing Team USA jerseys they’d had custom made in Korea. They turned their backs and stood together, spelling out “NEVER FORGET MIRACLE” and the number “1980”.

The closest they’d get to a miracle was only having to pay $4 for a beer at a major sporting event.

“You can’t beat that,” Hooten said.