When Thayer Academy (Mass.) coach Tony Amonte sizes up the U.S. Olympic team’s chances in Sochi, he does so with an understanding of how difficult it is to be successful on the big ice.
Thayer Academy coach Tony Amonte has loads of Olympic memories to draw upon. His players at the Massachusetts prep school don't seem to have many questions about the silver medal winner's experiences.
File photo by Dave Arnold
When Tony Amonte sizes up the U.S. Olympic team's chances in Sochi, he does so with an understanding of how difficult it is to be successful on the big ice.
And then, bluntly, he takes aim at the travel.
"I was just talking about it with someone the other day," Amonte said. "The travel is what gets you. I went to Nagano [when] I was playing in Chicago. I'm pretty sure we finished up in San Jose. I flew all the way back to Chicago because my first son was just born. I wanted to see him for a couple of days. And then flew back up to San Francisco, to Iceland and then to Nagano.
"And then a five-hour bus ride from Nagano.
"So it's a tough trip," Amonte continued. "It wears on the guys. As you see, guys are already going down injured in this tournament. It's a lot to ask of NHL players to travel that much. It takes a toll on your body as well. But it is the Olympic experience. Everyone wants to do it. You do what you got to do."
He feels for those in Sochi.
The two-time Olympian and current coach at Thayer Academy (Braintree, Mass.) knows exactly how hard it is to compete in the Olympics. And for Team USA, which has grand aspirations after a stellar preliminary round, he also understands quite frankly how hard it is to acquire a gold medal. He went 0-for-2 in 1998 and 2002. He earned a silver medal in Salt Lake City, falling to Team Canada 5-2. In Nagano, the United States finished fifth overall.
Amonte also won a champion with the U.S. in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, helping fell host Canada by two games to one in the tournament final in Montreal.
See the MaxPreps "From Students to Sochi" homepage, with links to more Olympics content
He's been excited about what he's seen this year, a journey that continues with a quarterfinal against the Czech Republic Wednesday morning.
Amonte competed in Nagano and Salt Lake City.
File photo by Dave Arnold
"I've been watching it every day," he said. "Since the women started. It's great hockey. It's fun to watch when you have the best players in the world going at it. So it's a tournament that, if you're a hockey fan, you almost have to watch to see what's going to happen.
"But yeah, I'm always interested to see what's going to happen on the big ice. If the North American players can translate what they've done on the smaller sheets over to the bigger ice. It doesn't seem to have hindered the U.S. team at all, thus far. "
In Amonte's playing days, he was a five-time NHL all-star and is a U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame member. He has 10 Olympic games under his belt. And while the 43-year-old may be resigned to his post-professional playing career as a high school coach and sometimes TV analyst, he's not that far removed from his playing days. He last played in 2008 and he barely missed playing in the 2006 games in Torino.
But for some reason, even as the NHL season is on pause and the Olympic fervor is at its fever pitch, his players at the prep school near Boston haven't yet grasped that he has a connection to these games.
"No one's really asked," he said.
It could be that the Tigers are too caught up in their own success in the Independent School League. It's Amonte's fourth year leading a program that he also played for while in high school. The Thayer Academy Tigers have finally become a competitive team again in one of Massachusetts' highly touted leagues. The ISL feeds players into Hockey East schools as well as the Ivy League.
And right now, the Tigers are the toast of the league. At 19-4 and sitting atop the division, Thayer Academy's success is a far cry from the single-digit win seasons Amonte experienced as he got started as a coach.
As a prep player, Amonte teamed with another Hockey Hall of Famer, Jeremy Roenick, to lead Thayer to back-to-back New England titles in the late 1980s.
John Barry
File photo by Dave Arnold
"Yeah it's a pretty good turnaround," he said. "The best part of it is my senior class was my first class four years ago. So this team has seen the bad times. Now to be able to turn it around and have a great senior year means a lot to those kids.
"They put a lot of work in over the last four years. We'll miss them when they're gone. This is the class that really helped turn around our program and get things headed in the right direction."
Their success has been noted on the collegiate level already, too, with growing interest from scouts and coaches. The Tigers' Lincoln Griffin became Amonte's first player to commit to college as a sophomore last season when he gave his verbal to Northeastern. And there are sure to be more on the way. John Barry, a senior defenseman who has been with Amonte since the beginning, is the leading scorer in the ISL among defensemen.
"He's just had a great season, both defensively and offensively for us," Amonte said of Barry. "He's a guy who has just come along in four years. He's steadily progressed over the years. He continues to get better and it's nice to see a kid like that go out there and accomplish what he has set out to do."
See our feature on Amonte from 2012
The U.S. Olympic team has its own goals to accomplish, with the team's sights set on the gold medal after starting 3-0 through the preliminary round. The gold medal has evaded the U.S. since 1980, with only Amonte's 2002 team and the 2010 Americans earning medals since. Both times the U.S. lost to Canada in the gold medal match. But Canada, despite going 3-0 through the preliminary round as well, shouldn't give cause for the U.S. to overlook its European competitors, Amonte said. Travel may play a part.
Lincoln Griffin
File photo by Dave Arnold
"Let's just look at the last few Olympics," he said. "Every time it's in [North] America, you have a Canada-U.S. final. When it's been overseas, it's been a quite a different experience I think for everybody."
He points to Nagano in 1998, a Czech Republic-Russia final. Then there was 2006 in Torino, a Sweden-Finland final.
"It's a different game, it's a different experience and you know, the North American teams are going to have to put in an extra effort to win the gold," he said.
With the difficulty so high to medal, Amonte cherishes his silver from the games.
"It was memorable in Salt Lake City for me in 2002, just because you're playing on home ice and it's a great tournament from the get-go for the U.S. team. We got off to a great start, obviously we ran into a great team in Canada in the final. But all in all, it was a great tournament. It was nice to come out of there with a medal. And doing it in front of the U.S. fans, doing it in front of your family, it was nice to be there."
If only his players knew.
Zuri Berry is a sports writer and producer for The Boston Globe's Boston.com. He can be reached at zuri@zuriberry.com. Follow him on Twitter @zuriberry.
