TORONTO -- After only two games at the shiny new 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Team USA has no hope of advancing beyond the three-game preliminary round.
No hope.
Now there's a notion that resonates in the aftermath of its soul-sucking 4-2 loss to host Canada on Tuesday night. Two straight uninspired losses have opened up the team and the process by which it was selected to widespread ridicule.
"I don't worry about that stuff," U.S. defenseman Ryan Suter, near tears, said after the loss. "I worry about the guys in the room. I think we're all disappointed. I feel like we let our country down. We let ourselves down. It's just disappointing. You come into this not knowing how many more chances you're going to get, and to be out after two games is extremely disappointing."
Team USA didn't come to Toronto as a favorite in this tournament, but did anyone expect it would exit so meekly?
Certainly not GM Dean Lombardi and his management team that went off the grid in avoiding high-skill players in favor of players with character, grit, leadership.
Through two games, the Americans displayed very few of those qualities.
They have scored only two goals and held a lead for exactly 1 minute, 30 seconds.
So, was this about picking the wrong players?
Or the wrong coach?
Or both?
One of the most humbling parts of this debacle is that ostensibly this U.S. team was built to face down the international giant that is Canada. The Americans knew they couldn't match them skill for skill, so they hoped to beat them with truculence, a favored term of Brian Burke, who built such a team in 2010 that earned a silver medal (losing in overtime to Canada in an epic gold-medal game).
But if that was the case, why was Brandon Dubinsky not in the lineup against Canada on Tuesday? A longtime foil of Canadian captain Sidney Crosby, there seemed to be no reason for Dubinsky to be on this team if he wasn't going to play against Canada.
Better to have scorers Phil Kessel, Tyler Johnson or Kyle Okposo.
And what of Dustin Byfuglien, the big Winnipeg Jets defenseman who was a healthy scratch from the first game, a 3-0 loss to lightly regarded Team Europe that put the U.S. in a must-win position Tuesday night? His play Tuesday explained in part why he was scratched, as he lost track of Matt Duchene, allowing the Canadian forward to tie the score less than two minutes after Ryan McDonagh had scored the Americans' first goal of the tournament.
Just sitting around the house tonight w my dog. Felt like I should be doing something important, but couldn't put my finger on it.
— Phil Kessel (@PKessel81) September 21, 2016
There have always been risk and reward issues with Byfuglien, and yet he was among the first 16 players named last March, presumably to provide offense and a physical presence.
And yet it's as though there was as disconnect between the coaching staff and the management team as to how this team was supposed to come together. When the team went 0-for-4 on the power play in the first game, it seemed that Byfuglien's absence was a problem.
Then when he was on the ice, his presence was a problem.
Better to have had defensemen Justin Faulk or Kevin Shattenkirk or Cam Fowler, all of whom played in Sochi? The answer now seems unequivocally yes.
Even the goaltending choice seemed to have been misguided.
Jonathan Quick was stellar in the team's first pre-tournament game against Canada, which assured him the job, even though he was only ordinary against the San Jose Sharks in a first-round playoff loss last spring, while the Tampa Bay Lightning's Ben Bishop led his team to the 2015 Stanley Cup finals and then the Eastern Conference finals last season and has a .927 save percentage over the past two playoff years.
Not that Quick had much help, but at one point Tuesday he'd allowed three goals on six Canadian shots.
Up front, bringing Johnson, a proven playoff performer, would have allowed captain Joe Pavelski to stay on the wing, where he has had tremendous success for the Sharks.
But what is undeniable is that the players who were in Toronto simply weren't good enough.
Defending scoring champ Patrick Kane continued his struggles offensively in these best-on-best tournaments, going without a goal in two games. He did not score at all in Sochi.
He seemed unsure of himself, passing up a glorious chance to shoot on a 3-on-1 in the second period, the U.S. trailing 3-1, to make a pass that went awry.
"I obviously didn't do my job this tournament and produce offense and help create goals for the team," Kane said.
Was it the winger or was he never put in a position to succeed?
USA coach John Tortorella never found the right combination of players to unleash Kane's magnificent skill. He tried Montreal Canadiens captain Max Pacioretty, who has had a dreadful tournament, as well as James van Riemsdyk and others.
Certainly Tortorella is a lightning rod for the significant discontent with the American collapse. When he was named head coach, he was between jobs and the feeling was that his emotion would serve Team USA well in a short tournament with so little margin for error.
But shortly after being named to the post, Tortorella got the head coaching job with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The strange thing is that Tortorella had a top-notch coaching staff working with him, including Mike Sullivan, who is coming off a Stanley Cup win with the Pittsburgh Penguins in June, and yet this team never found any kind of rhythm.
Even small things, like not pulling Quick in the third period when the U.S. was trailing by three but went on a power play.
"Yeah, it's disappointing, frustrating," Tortorella said of the team's performance thus far. "All different types of emotions. Yeah, I think we let some people down. It's on my watch. I certainly feel responsible for that. So yeah, it's really disappointing."
And here's the thing, as the Americans contemplate a final meaningless preliminary round game with the Czech Republic on Thursday (8 p.m., ESPN2).
Everything was tilted the Americans' way at this tournament to give them the best chance of success.
They were slotted in the softest of the two World Cup of Hockey pools with lesser hockey lights Team Europe and the Czech Republic. They didn't have to play back-to-back games. They got two days off to prepare for Canada.
But whatever breaks had been given them were not nearly enough to overcome the myriad flaws this team possesses.