Russian ice hockey cracks under pressure

The Russian men's hockey players were put forward as the host country's most important entry in the Sochi Olympics, the only team that really mattered to many here.

No one will ever know for sure the pressure they faced, only the humiliating ending they encountered.

Russia was holding its collective breath with this team, and was prepared to keep holding it through the gold medal game on Sunday, the grand finale before the closing ceremony.

Instead, all the air was let out in the most dispiriting way today, in a 3-1 quarter-final loss to Finland.

The Russians did not get close. They struggled in the preliminary round, losing to the United States in a shootout. They had to play a qualification game against Norway to reach the quarters. None of their games inspired much confidence.

It was always gold medal or bust for the Russians, who for the past 22 years have endured teams that looked strong on paper but could not find their way to a gold medal.

Between 1956, when it made its ice hockey debut, and its breakup in 1991, the Soviet Union won the Olympic gold medal in seven of nine appearances.

In 1992, a unified team composed of the splintered Soviet republics also won gold.

In the five Winter Games since, Russia has won two medals: a silver in 1998 and a bronze in 2002.

The pressure on the men to win an independent Russia’s first gold medal on home soil was seemingly greater than that faced by the United States in 2002 or Canada in 2010.

“Our fans are a little bit tougher, I think,” Sergei Fedorov, a forward on Russia’s 1998 and 2002 Olympic teams, said recently. “They don’t like when the national team loses.”

New York Times