Sarah Tueting was as blunt as a stick save.
“I want to play,” said the Winnetka native who tends goal for the U.S. women’s hockey team. “I didn’t train all these years to ride the pine.”
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Tueting will be in goal Thursday against China. It is her turn. It is all about taking turns with U.S. women’s coach Ben Smith. This season he has rotated Tueting and the other Sara–DeCosta–the way he did with the same two netminders four years ago in Nagano, Japan.
If the rotation holds and if the United States reaches the gold-medal game against rival Canada, as everyone expects, it will be DeCosta in the net. Sarah and Sara know it.
In fact, they say they’ve been counting backward from the gold-medal game since, oh, December, if not the entire pre-Olympic tour when they were going 32-0, including 8-0 against Canada.
And they certainly were counting down once they arrived in Salt Lake City and DeCosta beat Germany 10-0 Tuesday. That was the first of what figures to be a five-game tournament, meaning the starter in the opener would play the odd-numbered games, and the gold-medal game would be No. 5.
But here’s the thing about Smith’s rotation: He did the same thing in 1998 until it came time to face Canada for the gold medal. Smith then picked Tueting because she’d had a better showing against Canada in the preliminary round.
“Sara is a great teammate, a great kid,” Tueting said. “She handled it very well.”
Tueting handled the gold-medal game very well herself. She held on for the U.S. during a taut 2-1 game, making a brilliant pad save on Canadian captain Stacy Wilson with 70 seconds to go. This allowed Sandra Whyte to ice it with an empty-net goal for a 3-1 victory and the first women’s hockey gold medal in Olympic history.
Smith said he would change the rotation this Olympics “if somebody started looking like they were starting to dominate in that position or if somebody was not healthy.”
So far the goalies couldn’t be more even. Tueting went 14-0 with a goals-against average of 1.14 and a save percentage of .917 in the pre-Olympic tour. DeCosta was 17-0 with a glitzy 0.65 goals-against average and gaudy .955 save percentage.
But the real barometer of Smith’s decision might be their play against Canada. Both went 4-0. Tueting gave up seven goals to DeCosta’s six, but she made 96 saves on 103 shots compared to DeCosta’s 71 saves on 77 shots. Tueting had a higher save percentage, .932 to .922, a sign of poise under pressure, even though DeCosta posted the only shutout of Canada.
“I feel like I’m playing great hockey right now and I’m where I want to be,” Tueting said. “I can’t control what [Smith] decides. As a competitor, of course I want to play.
“And if Sara plays, I’ll be 100 percent behind her like she was [for me] in ’98. That’s what great about our relationship. We can be psyched for each other. But of course I want to play. Like any great athlete, I want to be a part of it.”
Indeed the goalies are the best of friends, having more in coming than a mask and a blocker pad.
“We have so many similarities,” Tueting said. “We both love pineapple pizza, we both think the same way about a lot of things, like boys, families.”
And competitiveness.
“Sarah has taught me so much,” said DeCosta, 24. “On tour it’s just her and me, and I go to her for little things that help me. In practice I’d be down at the other end and she’d be making amazing saves, so I’m thinking, `All right, I have to pick my game up at this end.”‘
Tueting has about 10 relatives and friends from home coming to the Games. But potentially watching, not playing, the championship game frustrates her, especially when it appears to be the last Olympic go-round for the goalie who turns 26 in two months and seems compelled to figure out what her neurobiology studies at Dartmouth will yield.
“Right now I’d say this is it,” Tueting said. “But I said this in ’98 too. That’s what’s I’m telling people: Don’t let me do this again. It depends if we win or not. The reason I wanted to play was because it was in the United States. How many athletes get a chance to do that? That’s really why. It’s a long four years. I want to be home in Chicago.
“Anybody offering me a job, I’ll take it.”
Apply with coach Smith. See if there is an opening in net next week.
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