Dan Wetzel echoes a point that Eric McErlain has been making for some time now.

First, Wetzel:

Here is what this bizarre concept did for USA hockey. With the NHL playing on Sunday, the team couldn't gather for the flight to Italy until Monday. They arrived Tuesday, got a grand total of one, single-hour practice and, just like that, played on Wednesday.

U.S. coach Peter Laviolette wanted to spend time on the trans-Atlantic flight going over game plans but the players were so exhausted that he had to scrap that.

"I feel that all I (can) do it put in short-term plans," Laviolette shrugged.

Gee, and you wonder why Latvia, which has a real team that has been together for months, forming bonds, working on timing, learning to trust each other, wanted this more. How couldn't they?

Team USA isn't a national team. It isn't even a team. It is just a collection of guys. This is not something that should be representing our country. This isn't the best we can send here.

And McErlain:

Think of it this way: In 2002, Team Canada, Team USA, Russia and Belarus* played six games total in order to determine the medal winners. This time, each team will play five games in the preliminary round, and every serious contender will play a minimum of six games before the end of the tournament. For the top four squads, it will mean nine eight games each over ten or 11 days to determine the medal winners. Click here for the ridiculous schedule.

That's too much to ask of these players in the middle of the season. One more time: Cancel the World Juniors in Olympic years and send the kids to skate for gold.

The primary concept behind using pros in the Olympics stemmed from the fact that other countries, especially thee Soviet teams of the 80's, weren't exactly sending amateurs for their hockey and basketball teams. By any measure, they were seasoned professionals. Other European countries started doing the same.

So in 1992, we decided we had to flex our muscle in basketball. And thus, the concept of the Dream Team was adopted.

The NHL decided to co-opt this concept in 1998 and admittedly, it was one that I was onboard with initially. From a marketing persepctive, it made sense.

Three Olympics and no tangible marketing gains later, it's time to declare this experiment failed and go back to building actual teams that, as Wetzel points out, have months to build that precious element of team chemistry and allowing coaches to actually formulate gameplans for the Olympic tournament.

That's not to say I'm opposed to the idea of NHL pros playing in any International tournament. I still have fond memories of the Canada Cup which morphed into the World Cup of Hockey. The reason the quality of play was so high in those tournaments is because just as basketball does for any international tournament, it was played in the offseason right before NHL teams opened up training camps.

Which gave the players a chance to become an actual team as opposed to just a collection of great players.