International Capsules: New-look U.S. Olympic hockey roster picked

Not since NHL players started going to the Olympics 12 years ago has the U.S. team featured so many fresh faces.

Of the 23 players chosen Friday for next month’s games, only New York Rangers captain Chris Drury, New Jersey counterpart Jamie Langenbrunner and Detroit defenseman Brian Rafalski have Olympic experience.

Aging stalwarts such as Mike Modano, Bill Guerin, Keith Tkachuk and Scott Gomez will all be able to rest during the long break in February because they were left off the team that will head to Vancouver.

The infusion of up-and-coming players is hardly a surprise. Team USA general manager Brian Burke made it clear last summer is was time to turn the page on those who represented the United States time and time again.

"We’re going there to win," said Burke, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ GM.

He thanked those "warriors" when most veterans weren’t invited to the team’s orientation camp in August. Modano, the longtime Dallas Stars forward, and Montreal’s Gomez were in attendance, but didn’t do enough during the first half of the NHL season to earn a spot on the team.

The roster announcement was made at Boston’s Fenway Park following the Bruins’ 2-1 overtime victory over Philadelphia in the Winter Classic.

"We tried to pick a team based on the body of work, rather than how a team is playing now," Burke said. "We tried not penalize players off to a slow start."

The average age is 26.5 years. Rafalski is the oldest player at 36, while 21-year-old Chicago forward Patrick Kane is the youngest. That is quite a change from the former foundation that included then-44-year-old defenseman Chris Chelios four years ago.

Modano played in three Olympics, and Gomez was on the team for the 2006 Turin Games. Langenbrunner will be making his second appearance, but first since 1998, and will be joined by Devils teammates defenseman Paul Martin and forward Zach Parise.

Martin started the season as a virtual lock, but a broken left forearm curtailed his chances. Just when it seemed he would return last week, Martin had a setback in his recovery that made surgery necessary. When it was revealed he would be out another month, it seemed likely he would be kept off the roster.

The Los Angeles Kings are the only other NHL club to place three players on the squad: goalie Jonathan Quick, defenseman Jack Johnson and forward Dustin Brown.

The Americans’ greatest strength could be in goal, where Buffalo’s Ryan Miller is expected to be the No. 1 netminder. Should he falter, reigning Vezina Trophy winner Tim Thomas of the Bruins will be there to pick up the slack.

"I’ve been waiting my whole life for this," Thomas said after beating the Flyers. "To be named at your home park in front of your home crowd, I think this is a story that will be told the rest of my life.

"I found out this morning. I had to keep quiet or I would have been a blubbering mess."

The goalie trio should match up favorably with host Canada’s formidable goalie crew of Martin Brodeur, Marc-Andre Fleury and Roberto Luongo.

"You can argue Ryan Miller is the best goaltender in the National Hockey League, but Tim Thomas is playing as well as anyone," Burke said. "The goaltending position was probably the easiest one for us to get through. It’s one where we’ve got some depth.

"We’re excited about our chances."

Miller missed the Olympics four years ago because of a thumb injury that kept him out early in the 2005-06 season, but he is making up for that. He beat Atlanta in overtime Friday night to improve to 22-8-3.

"He has played really well, unfortunately several of those games have been against us," Burke said.

The 25-year-old Parise will be counted on for offense. He is coming off a season in which he had 45 goals and 94 points. So far this season, Parise has 17 goals and 25 assists.

He will be joined up front by St. Louis’ David Backes, Drury’s Rangers teammate Ryan Callahan, Ryan Kesler of Vancouver, Toronto’s Phil Kessel, Tampa Bay forward Ryan Malone, San Jose’s Joe Pavelski, Bobby Ryan of Anaheim, and Colorado’s Paul Stastny.

The remaining defensemen are Erik Johnson of St. Louis, Toronto’s Mike Komisarek, Brooks Orpik of Pittsburgh, and Nashville’s Ryan Suter.

Suter’s father, Bob, was a defenseman on the 1980 U.S. "Miracle on Ice" team that won gold at Lake Placid. His uncle, Gary Suter, played on the 2002 squad at Salt Lake City.

"It means a ton with the family tradition. I don’t think it has sunk in yet," Ryan Suter said. "I will be able to sit at the same table with those guys if I bring some hardware home."

The United States hasn’t captured the gold since 1980, and has only a 2002 silver medal since NHL players started going to the Olympics for the 1998 Nagano Games. The Americans finished eighth in Turin.

The team will be led by Toronto coach Ron Wilson. His assistants are Rangers coach John Tortorella and the Islanders’ Scott Gordon.

Burke was joined by fellow NHL GMs David Poile (Nashville), Paul Holmgren (Philadelphia), Don Waddell (Atlanta), Dean Lombardi (Los Angeles), Ray Shero (Pittsburgh), along with Jim Johannson, the assistant executive director of hockey operations for USA Hockey, in choosing the roster.

"We had some difficult decisions to make, but that’s a credit to USA Hockey and depth of the player pool in our country," Burke said.

Winter Sports

Peterson flows with high risk-high reward life

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — He knew he had been lucky and wanted to earn his next chunk of money the "right" way. So, Jeret "Speedy" Peterson took the $550,000 he won during one, unbelievable night at the blackjack table and sank it into real estate.

That was in 2006, right before the bubble burst.

Sometime in 2007, Peterson filed for bankruptcy.

"It’s totally backward, right?" Peterson said.

By now, though, Peterson is used to backward — used to what it’s like to sometimes get rewarded for things he didn’t really earn and be penalized for things where his heart was in the right place.

Next month, he will be on his third U.S. Olympic freestyle skiing team, and the big issue that used to follow him — will he or won’t he throw his famous five-twist, three-flip Hurricane jump on the aerials course? — now seems kind of trivial.

Because even though freestyle skiing is what gives Peterson his pathway to occasional fame and more-than-occassional success, there is more to this 28-year-old than the Hurricane.

"I’ve been in counseling the majority of my life," he said. "I suffer from depression pretty bad. I’ve always had issues to tackle. I’ve been in and out of the hospital for suicide attempts. It’s something I’ve had to deal with on a daily basis. Luckily, I’ve had the friends and coaches and family who allow me to keep on track and not slip."

His 5-year-old sister was killed by a drunken driver when he was young. Peterson was also a victim of sexual abuse. They’re not topics he wants to delve into much in public, but he does say that despite his difficult childhood, growing up was not all bad.

"I was too busy to be depressed back then," he said.

His mom is a nurse and Peterson said he "always had this built-in responsibility to help other people." In 2005, he was living with a friend, trying to help him through some rough times.

A few months before the Olympics, his roommate committed suicide while Peterson was in the room.

"That not something I’ll ever get over," he said. "You just try to learn how to deal with it."

Part of dealing with it involved giving up skiing for a year and moving back to his roots — to Idaho — where he worked in construction. With the help of friends, including the first person who sponsored him in skiing, he learned drywall, tile, hardwood and electrical. He got a general contractor’s license. Worked hard. Built things.

"I just think he needed, as Bill Marolt always said, a little timeout," U.S. aerials coach Matt Christensen said, invoking the words of the CEO of the U.S. ski team. "He’s not the first athlete who’s needed that. I think I’m pretty good about reading where athletes are and how they need to be. He needed some time away from me. I knew it."

Peterson said the construction work was an "instant-gratification thing for me," where he walked into work, went at it hard, then walked away, able to see exactly what his labors had produced at the end of the day.

It’s far different feedback than what he gets out of his sport, where there is the occasional dose of instant gratification from landing a perfect jump or winning a gold medal, but very little of that in the thousands of small steps it takes to get to that point.

In aerials, skiers have to land in water for hundreds of training jumps before they can even think about moving to snow and the cold, hard ground. The practice resumes there. Coaches estimate a skier has to practice a single jump between 500 and 1,000 times before he or she can try it in competition.

There are injuries: Blown knees. Concussions. Shattered feet.

Peterson was an alternate for the 2002 team, but found himself with a starting spot in Park City when teammate Emily Cook broke and dislocated bones in both her feet during training less than a month before the games. Another reward Peterson didn’t exactly "earn" all by himself.

But that’s life in a niche sport that provides a decent living for those in the upper echelon, but, realistically, gets one big day in the spotlight — every four years at the Olympics.

And when that day is over — well, it can be hard to re-up, especially when you’ve been through what Peterson has.

"I knew I still loved skiing, I knew I wanted to go for another Olympics," Peterson said. "But I needed to get out of it. I wanted to just be a regular guy. I took time off because I wasn’t having fun, wasn’t being a positive contributor to my team, and that’s not good for anybody."

Peterson’s experience in Turin was not a good one.

He hyped his attempt at the Hurricane and turned that night on the mountain into an "Event," but didn’t nail the landing. He finished seventh, but said he had no regrets, that "I came to do the Hurricane, and I did the Hurricane" — a justifiable stance in a sport whose trendsetters aren’t always seen as such until years after the gold medals have been awarded.

But that story line got overshadowed by the fight he got into outside a bar later that night in the Italian Alps. He got arrested, got sent home early by the U.S. Olympic Committee, which had already endured embarrassments involving Bode Miller and feuding speedskaters Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick.

Peterson said not a day has passed when he doesn’t hear something about his ouster from Italy. He doesn’t want to downplay it, says he wishes he could have those moments back. But to act like that’s the worst jam he’s ever been in — well, that wouldn’t be true either.

"Where I was going was unhealthy and not productive and I was unhappy," he said. "I was struggling with depression, struggling with alcoholism. I had a lot of post-traumatic stress that I wasn’t dealing with in the correct way."

He sips on soda instead of whiskey now, and feels like he’s going in a better direction.

He will make no grand promises about whether he’ll throw the Hurricane in Vancouver come February. But having wrapped up his Olympic spot at trials last month, he can focus more on practicing the Hurricane without having to worry as much about the more dependable four-twist jump that most of his competition will bring to the games.

"He’s a little more cautious and he’s not going to go in there as a full-blown cowboy," Christensen said. "Some of that comes with maturity. But you can’t change his personality. If he’s fired up and things are good, nothing’s stopping him from doing it."

When the Olympics are over, Peterson will move on, and he’s sure the gold medal he wins or doesn’t win won’t define him.

That’s not to say he doesn’t still dream of hitting it big.

"I want to start my own company, be a venture capitalist, make a lot of money and use that money to support kids," he said. "Kids make me happy. I want to take all the hard work and determination and dedication I have for the sport and carry it over to somewhere where I can really make a difference."

-- Eddie Pells

Snowboarder in critical condition after accident

SALT LAKE CITY — A publicist for Kevin Pearce says the American snowboarder remains in critical condition at a Utah hospital after sustaining a head injury while training in Park City.

Danielle Burch said Friday that Pearce’s condition hadn’t changed since Thursday night.

Pearce, a top-ranked halfpipe rider with a good chance of making the U.S. Olympic team, was knocked unconscious when he hit his head during a training run on Thursday.

He was taken to University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City, where he underwent surgery.

The 22-year-old from Norwich, Vt., was preparing for next week’s Olympic qualifying events in Mammoth Mountain, Calif.

Schlierenzauer wins 27th career World Cup event

GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany — Gregor Schlierenzauer has won the second stop of the Four-Hill Tour by beating Austrian teammate Wolfgang Loitzl.

Schlierenzauer earned his 27th World Cup win on Friday, scoring 277.7 points on jumps of 136.5 meters and 137.5 meters. Loitzl, last year’s tour winner, had 277.5 points after jumps of 135 meters.

Two-time Olympic champion Simon Ammann of Switzerland was third with 277.4 points despite soaring a hill-record 143.5 meters in the second heat. His first jump was 132 meters.

Andreas Kofler of Austria finished fourth and leads the tour standings after winning the opening event three days ago.

Ammann leads the overall World Cup standings with 529 points, 18 ahead of Schlierenzauer.

Majdic, Northug win prologue races at Tour de Ski

OBERHOF, Germany — World Cup leader Petter Northug of Norway has won the 3.7-kilometer prologue of the Tour de Ski, and Petra Majdic of Slovenia took the women’s 2.8-kilometer race.

Northug crossed the line in 7 minutes, 37.4 seconds on Friday. Marcus Hellner of Sweden was next in 7:38.2 and Axel Teichmann of Germany, last season’s winner of the event, took third in 7:39.4.

Majdic clocked 6:35.3 to beat Natalia Korosteleva of Russia, who finished in 6:37.4. Justyna Kowalczyk of Poland was third in 6:41.6.

The Tour de Ski consists of eight races in 10 days in Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Auto Racing

Dakar Rally makes symbolic start in Buenos Aires

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Thousands gathered at the Obelisk in the center of the Argentine capital to watch the symbolic start of the Dakar Rally, a 215-mile drive to the city of Colon on Friday.

The real racing on the 5,600-mile journey across Argentina and Chile begins on Saturday for more than 350 cars, motorbikes, quads and trucks, with the finish set for Jan. 16 back in Buenos Aires.

The rally was moved to South America in 2009 because of safety concerns and the possibility of a terrorist attack in Africa.

Organizers said Friday that 362 vehicles passed scrutineering — 134 cars, 151 motorbikes, 25 quads and 52 trucks. However, the field was reduced by one after the bike of Argentina’s Javier Pizzolito caught fire.

Last year’s winner, Giniel De Villiers of South Africa, leads the favorites. The 2009 champions in other categories also return: Spanish motorcyclist Marc Coma, Czech quad driver Josef Machacek, and Russian truck driver Firdaus Kabirov.

Teams from Volkswagen and BMW are the favorites. Volkswagen boasts De Villiers, as well as former world rally champion Carlos Sainz from Spain and Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah.

BMW has French driver Stephane Peterhansel behind the wheel, a six-time champion on motorbikes and three-time winner in cars of the Dakar Rally in Africa, plus Nani Roma of Spain.