Why couldn't we win more than one game? How could we tie Latvia? Why did we look, sound, and play so pathetic? After all, we won silver in 2002. Now I know. Our hockey players eat too much.

Perhaps they should be dubbed the Olympic Donut Eating Team or Yankee Cordon Bleu. Soup's on and on and on, for the US Olympic Hockey Team. I sense this because I dreamed I traveled with them during the Torino Winter Games. I didn't know, but I found out, that the US Olympic Hockey team bills journalists for players' meals. This insures a close, working (eating?) relationship, as the writers and bruisers often chow down together. Take it from me, a 240-pounder, Olympic hockey players are served enough on the road to feed Peking for a week.

Soon after our plane landed in Italy everyone was served dinner--a hotel buffet stretching from the hotel to ancient Rome. Naturally, Doug Weight, Rick DiPietro, and Jason Blake saved room for midnight snacks: a dozen or so chocolate chip cookies, Pinguino, and pounds of Tiramisu.

Then it was up for a breakfast that would have lasted all winter in Valley Forge. Each player ate six fried eggs, a great mass of potatoes, and a steak bigger than a face-off circle. By the time that was chewed and washed down with a couple quarts of hazelnut-chocolate cappuccino, griddle cakes arrived. There were ten or twelve per eater, each stack surmounted by a hunk of butter as big as a hockey puck and dripping with melting filberts of chocolate.

The American hockey players needed Brett Hull and Brian Leetch, all right, not for goal scoring, but to help the guys squeeze into their pants before a practice session.

After a practice session, the team training-table lunch had enough ingredients the food section in the Sunday, New York Times.

First, there were coolers full of soft drinks and beer. Then they began feeding time with an Italian hoagie, which requires a 300-pound bench press to hoist. That was followed by spaghetti, manicotti, fettuccine al fredo, raviolis, and enough baguettes to choke Paul Prudhomme. No doubt it was all politically correct, a nod to our host country.

Next we had a platter of Corsican fish, then a huge Sicilian roast beef that was quickly reduced to the bone. Then came a mountain of Piemonte potatoes, a swamp of Italian green beans, black-eyed peas and steamed polenta. To top it off, there was not just one pack of Turin chocolate confections, but two packs. And if this wasn't enough to hold over our guys such as Chris Drury, Derian Hatcher, and goalie Robert Esche, crème brulee swimming in cream and figs the size of Caesar's wreath were available.

Dinner was a real power play: The minestrone had so much bread broken into it that it was more solid than liquid; we had half a calf; potato halves filed with cheese sauce, cauliflower in cheese sauce, and Alka-Seltzer in cheese sauce. I kept seeing US players in a funhouse mirror. Tom Sundae, theU.S. coach was too busy eating to be interviewed.

I couldn't stomach another bite. But when the waiteress said, "How about some strawberry swirl cheesecake?" I said, "Sure!" She brought not one, but three pieces…and I devoured them. I felt like all of us were in an Alpo commercial. No crumbs were left.

Flying home we began our descent early, probably because we each had gained ten pounds. Growing restless, our hockey players waged a plane, pillow fight such that the captain announced we would circle endlessly if it weren't stopped. That's when I spied one last snack pack that had rolled under a seat. Boston Forward, Bill Guerin, and Red Wing defenseman, Chris Chelios, were fighting over it. It was not pretty.

Soo...we wonder why our US Olympic hockey players didn't have the lean, hungry look and intensity to win gold. They had plenty of excuses; but I'm telling you, we feed them too much. At the Torino rate of consumption, the only time the team will ever win a medal is if it comes with coupons for a year's supply of chili, per player.