GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The dad jokes in the Team USA locker room are on them.
“I mess with the older guys sometimes … There’s a lot of joking back and forth,” said forward Troy Terry, who isn’t yet of legal drinking age, and doesn’t look old enough to drive a car.
That doesn’t, however, mean the wisecracks his hockey elders direct at him are all G-rated. “I don’t think I can tell you,” he said.
Terry and Ryan Donato are the babies on an American squad built around 39-year-old former NHL star Brian Gionta and a bunch of guys that probably could sneak into your Thursday-night beer league without suspicion of being ringers until they laced up the skates and hit the ice.
But the Americans will only go as far as these two college boys take them. Donato is from Harvard. Terry is a star at the University of Denver. Donato was born into a famous hockey family. And the sport that Terry’s father loved was football.
In a knock-out round game Tuesday against Slovakia, the Americans won 5-1, because Donato punched home two goals with a shot that packs a heavyweight punch and Terry dazzled with three assists that evoked the sweet cooing of ooh’s and ah’s from the crowd at Gangneung Hockey Centre.
“We both said: ‘We’re going to be the young guys, but that doesn’t matter. We’re going to try to make an impact,’” noted Terry, describing the pact made with Donato.
Donato was born in April 1996. Terry, who won’t celebrate his 21st birthday until September, is even younger. The two college stars skate for the USA on either side of center Mark Arcobello, who is almost 30.
I call ’em The Peach Fuzz Line. Does it fit? Maybe not. But, believe me, U.S. coach Tony Granato has heard far worse suggestions.
“The Diaper Line?” said Granato, arching an eyebrow in disapproval.
For a hockey tournament whose buzz was killed by the decision of the NHL not to send its marquee names for the first time since 1998, what Donato and Terry bring is big talent that will unquestionably translate to the pro level. Donato has a big shot that’s going to make him a big star with the Boston Bruins. Anaheim drafted Terry, who waggles his stick and creates the magic that makes Donato look good, with the 148th overall pick in 2015.
“Terry sees the ice really well. (Donato) shoots it really well,” Granato said. “They’re both players that have been on a big stage before, so they can talk through the experiences they’ve been through as kids … And they’re both extremely gifted players that are going to be in the NHL real soon.”
The death of the U.S. men in the medal chase was greatly exaggerated. I buried them after they got shot full of holes in a 4-0 loss to Russia during group play. I wasn’t the only one. The team obviously read the prognosis of their imminent demise, and it irked Terry.
“I won’t call them doubters, but we had some people that were pretty skeptical about our team,” Terry said. “We don’t really care what people say, we have a lot of belief in our team.”
The rout of Slovakia allowed the Americans’ medal dreams to live for one more day, for a quarterfinal match-up against the Czech Republic at high noon Wednesday in South Korea.
From the outset of the Olympics, even when the U.S. team was having trouble linking passes much less scoring, Donato insisted it was going to be a long tournament, because that’s the way a kid raised in a hockey home is taught how to think.
OK, maybe it’s not too late for the Peach Fuzz Line to uphold another of the sport’s hallowed traditions, and start growing playoff beards.
Terry has the right stuff to pull off an upset against the Russians, the Canadians or anybody else in the tournament. So I can picture him standing on the podium, with an Olympic medal around his neck. But with a face covered by a beard?
Now that would require a miracle.
