Die Macht » was not really worried, the reason being I was just narrating

TORONTO -- Some time ago, I likened Team USAs chances at the World Cup of Hockey to a grand experiment.Because GM Dean Lombardi and his management team purposefully eschewed more talented players in the hopes of building an American team that could quickly become more than the sum of its parts, there was great anticipation about how the experiment would play out in Toronto.Well sum it up in one word: Kaboom.Two days after the U.S. was whipped 4-2 by Canada, which effectively ended its tournament just two games in, the dust is still settling around Team USA from the rafters. How long the reverberations from the disaster in Toronto will last -- well, thats a different matter altogether.Lombardi addressed the issues about how his team was built and why it failed so miserably at the World Cup for the first time on Thursday. Like Team USA head coach John Tortorella, he defended the roster construction.Fair enough. The razor-thin edge that Lombardi has always walked along with the?Los Angeles Kings?has been his devotion to his players. That kind of unwavering belief has earned him two Stanley Cup championships -- as well as contracts that will haunt him for years, and perhaps making winning more championships impossible.The reason we won [was because] we were a frickin team and that was a culture, Lombardi said of his Kings.Building a team for an NHL season is a different beast than building one to play in a brutally short tournament such as the World Cup, and in the end those differences werent fully recognized. Or if they were recognized, they were essentially ignored.Lombardi was predictably defiant in his support of his World Cup players.There were guys with tears in their eyes the other night and they were real, Lombardi said. I will always remember that. Some of the texts I got from players yesterday, I will treasure them the rest of my life. That is good stuff. Those are things you dont forget, even in failure. That part we got down. I told them I wish I had this group for a longer period of time, because I know we could have built that culture. But it didnt happen.The uncomfortable truth is that either heart -- which was which the key building block for this team -- cant trump skill or, worse, that Team USA simply didnt collectively possess the heart Lombardi or anyone else thought it did.When the Americans came out flat against Team Europe and lost 3-0 in a game they had to win to set themselves up for a trip to the tournament semifinals, it turned out that the lightly regarded Europeans showed greater heart.Lombardi bristled at the notion that somehow Team Europe, basically the hockey equivalent of a lean-to made out of branches and old string, with players pulled together from eight different countries, found a winning culture in a matter of days while Team USA, which included 14 members of the Sochi Olympic squad and nine members of the U.S. team that won a silver medal in 2010 in Vancouver, could not.But thats exactly what happened.So Team Europe will play against Sweden in the semifinals Sunday afternoon (1 ET, ESPN) while Team USA is headed home after a meaningless third preliminary-round game against the Czech Republic on Thursday night, with the echoes of sharp criticism from the media and needling from former players such as?Phil Kessel,?who was left off the World Cup roster, still ringing in their ears.Lombardi did admit that Team USA either didnt understand or properly respond to the urgency required to overcome a European team that was considered among the weakest of the eight teams in the World Cup field.Lombardi has seen his Kings team rally from a 3-0 series deficit to win a playoff series. Thats the proverbial 8-ball, Lombardi said.When Team USA lost to Europe? This felt like a boulder, Lombardi said. It was just really strange. Like, how can this happen so quickly, where your back is against the wall after one poor game?Lombardi suggested it was almost as though the team cared too much and became paralyzed by it.Isnt having heart the opposite of that?Isnt having heart rising above those kinds of setbacks, of pushing aside the disappointment to find success?If that is so, where was it?Few people in the game are as detail-oriented as Lombardi who built those two Stanley Cup winners as GM of the Kings and wanted desperately to pay homage to past U.S. hockey glory by building a winner here.He believed that in order to do that he needed a team that could compete with Canada. He believed that, lacking the skill that Canada possesses, his U.S. squad could balance the equation by adding more heart and character.Tortorella was brutally frank about the disparity between the two hockey neighbors.Ill be honest: were not as deep as Canada, skillwise, Tortorella said. Not sure USA Hockey will like me saying that, but its the truth. Its a situation where I still think, in our mind, we could not just skill our way through Canada.The problem with the theory is that it suggests that skill and heart -- or grit -- are mutually exclusive. For Canada, skill and heart are mutually inclusive. It can be so for the Americans as well, as it was 20 years ago when the U.S. beat Canada at the inaugural World Cup of Hockey in 1996.By the time the next best-on-best tournament rolls around, maybe it will be so again.Maybe Auston Matthews, Johnny Gaudreau, Jack Eichel, Shayne Gostisbehere, Vincent Trocheck and all the other shiny young Americans who have made Team North America the darlings of the World Cup will allow the U.S. team builders to rethink the formula for success at these kinds of tournaments -- or to simply bring their best players because they will represent the same kind of balance that Canada has enjoyed for an entire generation.Who knows, maybe the memory of this experiment gone so horribly wrong in Toronto will become a historic turning point for American hockey.An explosion that cleared land for a new future. Wholesale Vapormax . Detroit and Boston are deadlocked, 1-1, and Tigers manager Jim Leyland could be forgiven if he was caught rationalizing instead of dissecting how his club could blow a 5-1 lead late in Game 2. Clearance Air Vapormax . Coach Tom Thibodeau says the former MVP will probably start travelling with the team in the next few weeks. Rose tore the meniscus in his right knee at Portland in November and was ruled out for the remainder of the season by the Bulls. https://www.cheapvapormaxoutlet.com/ .com) - Following a late-game loss to the reigning NBA champs, the Toronto Raptors will look to sustain their recent high-level play as they travel to Indiana to take on the Pacers. Vapormax 2020 . -- Ohio States Urban Meyer has never had any issue acclimating to the biggest stages in college football. Vapormax From China . The 20-year-old Pelicans big man glanced up and smiled widely at the well-wishers -- a fitting end to a day he wont soon forget. Davis responded to his selection earlier in the day as a Western Conference All-Star with 26 points and 10 rebounds, and the New Orleans Pelicans overcame a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat the Minnesota Timberwolves 98-91 on Friday night. MS Dhoni, Indias limited-overs captain, has spoken of how the disappointment of the first-round exit in the 2007 World Cup, and the angry reception the players received upon their return home, played an important role in shaping his personality in the public domain and as a cricketer.When we landed in Delhi, there was a lot of media. At times, people feel that we are not emotional enough about it, but I always felt, as sports persons, you have to be strong enough to go through everything and it has to be within yourself, Dhoni said. It is not about coming for a press conference and crying about stuff, or crying in the field about what has happened.India had crashed out of the tournament in the Caribbean after losing their group matches against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and having beaten only Bermuda. Dhonis house, which was under construction in Ranchi at the time, was pelted with stones in the aftermath of the exit.At that point of time, when we landed, we had to get out in a police van. I was sitting next to Viru [Virender Sehwag] paaji. It was evening or night time, Dhoni said. We were travelling at a decent speed - 60 or 70 kms - and thats quite a bit for India, that too on the narrow roads. And, you know, media cars around us with their cameras and the big lights on top, it felt as if we had committed a big crime, maybe like a murderer or terrorist or something. We were actually chased by them.After a while, we entered a police station. We went there, we sat for a while and then we left in our cars after 15-20 minutes. That actually had a big impact on me and I channelised the aggression to become a better cricketer and a better human being.Dhoni was speaking in New York, ahead of the release of his biopic - MS Dhoni: The Untold Story. The press conference at Fox Building in Manhattan was unlike the usual ones Dhoni is used to giving. The number seven jersey and the India cap were replaced by a greyish black suit and a silver tie. The movie, which set to release worldwide on September 30, is about Dhonis journey from when he started playing cricket to the 2011 World Cup.A group of Dhoni fans, dressed in their best attire, were huddled outside Fox Building, with big smiles on their facess.dddddddddddd They had won a contest and made their way from Chicago and other parts of New York to collect their prize: a meet and greet with Dhoni.The change in atmosphere was evident as Dhoni walked in with his wife Sakshi, and Arun Pandey, the producer of the film.It is a very simple story and that is the beauty of it, Dhoni said about the movie. One thing I told Neeraj [the director] was, this story should not be to glorify me. It is about the journey of a professional sports person and thats what it should be about.Talking about how he told his lifes story to Sushant Singh Rajput, the actor playing him, Dhoni said it was challenging to go back in time and reconstruct the story because he hardly spent time dwelling on the past. More than the physical attributes and the characteristics, Rajput wanted to know what I was thinking at different points of time in life and to explain that was hard and nostalgic, Dhoni said.I was a bit worried initially when the whole concept of the movie came in, but once we were in, I was not really worried, the reason being I was just narrating my story. I was just telling Neeraj that this is what happened.Pandey, the producer of the movie, recounted an anecdote that told him Dhonis story was important. It was when he saw Dhoni talk to a child at an airport in India - the question was less than 15 seconds, but Dhoni gave the kid an eight-minute answer, he said. Pandey met the childs parents two years later and learnt how Dhonis one interaction had inspired him.Dhoni spoke of how important it was for him to have a steady Railways job after he finished high school to give him the stability to pursue a risky career in cricket. He also talked about how it was important for parents in India to encourage their kids to take up sports seriously. Pushing for sports in the long run - thats what will bring India medals, he said.How to keep things simple in life? Often, you hear legends talking about watch the ball, hit the ball, and thats how simple it is, Dhoni concluded, when asked what had worked for him, as a cricketer and as a person. ' ' '