Davis sixth block also became his 17th rebound.

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. Mitch Wishnowsky Jersey . In Europe, top teams seem to be largely happy with their squads after spending nearly $1 billion in the off-season. And although English league clubs are unlikely to splash cash in January, Arsenal and Chelsea could be tempted to strengthen their squads with new strikers. Doug Cunningham Jersey . The winner Saturday will remain in the elite 10-team field next year. "We talked about wanting to be disciplined and stick with our game plan and good things will come," Draisaitl said, who had two goals for the victors. http://www.custom49ersjersey.com/custom-charles-haley-jersey-large-388d.html . As the crowd erupted, Davis knocked the ball off the glass and back into his hands. With 1:14 to go in overtime, Davis sixth block also became his 17th rebound. That, along with his 32 points -- which tied a career high -- proved too much for Denver to overcome, and the Pelicans held on for their third straight victory, 111-107 on Sunday night. Dwight Clark Jersey . 1 position. The Mustangs (6-0), who beat Queens 50-31 last weekend, earned 17 first-place votes and 287 points in voting by the Football Reporters of Canada. Western was last ranked first in the country in October 2011. Gary Lewis Jersey .Y. -- Leading 3-0 with only 11:25 left, the Colorado Avalanche committed a seemingly meaningless penalty to give the New York Islanders a power play. Aviva Premiership champions Saracens are opening their own secondary school.The school will be in Colindale after the club responded to calls for further high school options in the London Borough of Barnet.The Saracens High School Free School Trust will now work with their various partners to deliver their plans.Saracens chairman, Nigel Wray, said: What a marvellous opportunity we have been given!At the Saracens Hiigh School we will utilise our sporting beliefs to create a unique school environment where every individual student matters, academic achievement is important and a real emphasis is placed on teamwork and the creation of great memories.dddddddddddd.The hard work starts from this point. ' ' '