Byline: Bob Kravitz Rocky Mountain News Sports Columnist
NAGANO, Japan -- The U.S. hockey team has a problem. It's John LeClair, the lumberjack left wing of the Philadelphia Flyers. It seems he snores so loudly, it can wake the dead. (Wait until they find out Ottawa's Shawn McEachern is a sleepwalker.)
``The walls in the (athletes' village) dorms are very, very thin,'' said Jeremy Roenick of the Phoenix Coyotes.
If U.S. coach Ron Wilson listens closely enough, he says, he can hear Lou Lamoriello, Team USA's general manager, making deals on his cell phone for his team, the New Jersey Devils. And he can hear his assistant, Philadelphia's Paul Holmgren, talking hockey in his sleep.
This might be, in Wilson's words, a ``dream tournament,'' but nobody in Nagano is acting like a Dream Team. This is the Olympic experience the NBA Dream Teamers never had - living in the athletes' village, sharing small dormitory rooms, trading laughs with Jamaican bobsledders and Russian figure skaters. And this is why the arrival of NHL players is so much more palatable, so much more intriguing than the overbearing presence of the NBA Dream Teamers, whose idea of spartan living was having their room-service filets overcooked.
``Yeah, we're roughing it,'' Roenick said. ``But you know what? Nobody has complained at all about it. And if you asked them again, I can guarantee you every guy would say that if they had to do it all over again, they'd rather live in the Olympic village and have this experience than stay in some first-class hotel.''
Colorado's Adam Foote wasn't quite ready to declare his love for this new lifestyle, but he wasn't dissing it, either. ``We're all used to hotels, being spoiled, silver spoon in our mouths,'' he said. ``I'm not used to not having room service. But I think it'll be good for us, and I think the guys will enjoy it. It's not the Olympics if you're not part of the whole experience.''
Is this any way for a millionaire hockey pro to act?
``It isn't bad at all,'' said Avalanche wing Adam Deadmarsh. ``We've got a little TV there - although we can't understand what they're saying. The food court's right there. It's very convenient. I'm not eating any sushi; I like my food cooked. But I saw a McDonald's when we got in, so that made my day.''
Said Roenick: ``You know what this reminds me of? Hockey camps during the summer when we stayed at a college and we all lived in the dorms. When you think back to those days, those were the good times in life . . . This brings us back to those days. We wanted this part of the Olympic experience. We wanted to see the other athletes. I mean, I want to sit down at breakfast next to the bobsledders from Jamaica and ask them, `So, like, how do you practice for bobsled?' ''
Already, the Olympics have made some strange bedfellows. Consider this:
Colorado's Joe Sakic and Detroit's Brendan Shanahan, on opposite ends of hockey's most heated rivalry, not only are sharing an apartment, they're sharing a bedroom.
``Yeah, I lost the toss,'' Sakic said, smiling. ``(Tampa Bay's) Rob Zamuner got his own room. I got a roommate.''
Isn't that beautiful?
Here's Sakic, the highest-paid man in all of hockey, making $17 million this season, and he's sharing a cubbyhole with a Detroit Red Wing.
And enjoying it.
``We're all Team Canada guys,'' Shanahan said. ``It's natural that nationalism takes over here. We're pros, but here, we're amateurs. That's what it's all about.''
Can you imagine hearing that from Shaquille O'Neal? From John Stockton? From anybody in the NBA?
And don't tell me the NBA players couldn't have survived in the athletes' village without an armed security force. When the Canadian team got off the bullet train in Nagano on Tuesday, Wayne Gretzky was mobbed by Japanese fans. ``I couldn't believe how many Japanese people have hockey cards,'' defenseman Raymond Bourque said.
The NBA Dream Team might have worked once, the only reason being to sell the game on an international scale. Anymore, though, it is stale and boring and uninteresting.
Here, the hockey players are a welcome addition because they seem to understand they are just part of the show, no more special than the Lithuanian luger sitting across from them in the village cafeteria. There are no arguments about Nike athletes wearing Reebok duds, no complaints about four-star service in five-star hotels. And the competition will not be a glorified exhibition like the NBA Dream Team against Slovakia. This should be the greatest display of tournament hockey in the history of the sport.
And when it is over, these players will look back fondly at two crazy weeks on the other side of the world, when they shared a million laughs and dozens of bad meals. They will remember something the NBA Dreamers will never recall: A true, once-in-a-lifetime Olympic experience.
