Olympics-Ice hockey-US women bid to shake off bad memories of Decker injury

MILAN, Feb 3 (Reuters) – The United States hope to banish the memory of the serious injury that turned their Olympic dream into a nightmare four years ago, with a “next person up” mentality guiding them through the Games pressure cooker. 

One of the greatest ever to put on the U.S. sweater, Hall of Famer Brianna Decker left the ice on a stretcher minutes into the Americans’ Beijing opener in 2022, after she collided with an opposing player behind the net.

Fans’ worst fears were confirmed when the Olympic gold medal-winning forward was ruled out for the remainder of the tournament and the U.S. never got back to their best level, with an inconsistent power play undermining their efforts. 

The defending champions went on to suffer a bitter defeat to old rivals Canada in the gold medal game and Decker retired from the sport a year later.

“We were navigating the tournament with a big skill loss for ourselves. That was really difficult,” said Hilary Knight, who will compete in her fifth Olympics in Milan. 

“It taught us that it’s sort of a ‘next person up’ mentality and you really have to rise to the occasion and you have to fill shoes and be adaptable and really play out the tournament as the momentum presents itself.”

Staying fit is a challenge unto itself, with the growing popularity and rising level of the women’s game prompting the tournament’s expansion, with players spending more time on the ice.

Ten teams faced off in 2022, compared to eight in 2018, with gold medal winners Canada playing seven games in Beijing compared to the five games that the U.S. played when they won in 2018.

Roughly 30% of U.S. athletes across all sports finish the Games injured or ill, the USOPC’s Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Finnoff told reporters ahead of the Games, for which the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee  is taking 15 cargo pallets of medical supplies to Italy.

Angela Ruggiero, who guided the U.S. to gold in 1998 and competed in four Games, said players have to be mentally prepared to adapt if a player goes down.

“The second you lose a player like Decker, everyone knows that’s a big impact on the team. But at the same time, it’s all head games. You have got to go in thinking, well, anyone can do this, anyone could play, anyone to get the tap on the shoulder,” she told Reuters. 

“That chemistry is such an important piece. I don’t think you can underscore the impact that a player like that had on the team. You’d like to think you can adjust quickly, but it’s hard.”

Caroline Harvey, the youngest player on the U.S. roster in 2022, said the U.S. team had turned the page since Beijing.

“We lost, we came up short, but this go-around is going to be different and we want the gold of coming back to the U.S.,” she told Reuters.

(Reporting by Amy Tennery in Milan, additional reporting by Daniel Fastenberg in New York, editing by Ed Osmond)