MINNEAPOLIS — A.J. Mleczko and her U.S. women's hockey teammates will face their biggest challenge thus far in the 2001 Women's World Hockey Championship here Thursday night against Finland.
At a time like this, an athlete can use all the support and encouragement she can get.
For Mleczko, a 1998 Olympic gold-medal winner and Team USA's top-scoring defenseman this season, much of that support comes from her husband, Jason Griswold.
A former collegiate lacrosse player at Colgate, Griswold knows what it takes to be successful in competitive athletics. And while the couple just tied the knot last September, he has known Mleczko for 10 years. He knows what makes her tick.
But when the 25-year-old Mleczko takes the ice Thursday night at the Mariucci Arena, the face in the crowd she most wants to see won't be there. Griswold will be back home in Boston, working as director of advertising sales for an Internet company, as he has been all year.
The day after their six-day honeymoon ended — and they were lucky Team USA coach Ben Smith gave them that long — Mleczko joined her teammates for a season-long residency program at the Olympic training facilities in Lake Placid, N.Y., a 4 1/2-hour drive from Beantown in the best of weather.
Mleczko figures she should be used to being away from her hubby by now, but she's not.
"It is much more difficult than I think either of us anticipated," said Mleczko, who had an assist in each of the Americans' first two games of the tournament, easy victories over Germany and China.
Mleczko and Griswold didn't shy away from the separation because they did it for four years in college. Mleczko was voted the most outstanding women's college hockey player in 1999 and set the all-time career scoring record at Harvard, about a five-hour drive from Colgate.
"But it stunk through college," Mleczko said. "We thought maybe we could handle this because we'd done it before but it's different, especially after dating for so long."
Mleczko and Griswold made every effort to keep their wedding plans from conflicting with hockey. She was in frequent contact with Coach Smith as those plans evolved.
But well after the Sept. 23 wedding date was set, USA Hockey decided to spend nearly $2 million to establish the residency program during the 2000-2001 season, beginning 17 months before the Americans attempt to defend their Olympic gold medal in the 2002 Winter Games in Utah.
Mleczko is all for the residency program, which her teammates agree has put the U.S. in good position to capture its first world title this week. But a little more time with her new husband would have been nice.
"It was kind of a joke. When we planned the wedding, right after we told our parents, the next person I called was Coach Smith," Mleczko said. "He said September was fine because originally it was going to be in October, because I love the fall, and at that point we thought we'd go up (to train in Lake Placid) in November. But the date kept getting moved up.
"It was kind of out of our control."
Griswold visited his wife in Lake Placid on weekends, whenever he could, and joined the team's trip to Utah last November for the Four Nations Cup. They talk on the phone just about every day they're apart.
The long nights alone are about to end, however. Team USA's season will come to a close Sunday and Mleczko plans to spend the summer training, at home, in Boston.
For now, Mleczko and the unbeaten Americans are excited about meeting Finland, also 2-0 in the tournament so far. The Finns have finished third in all six previous World Championships. The U.S. has finished second all six times, but Finland showed last year it is not that far behind the Americans. In pool play, Finland led the U.S. 3-1 with 10 minutes remaining before a furious American rally resulted in a 4-3 U.S. victory.
The rematch, one year later, begins Thursday at 6:35 p.m. MDT. The winner will claim the top seed from Pool B for the medal round, which begins with the semifinals on Saturday. A victory against Finland likely will result in a U.S.-Russia matchup Saturday.
The U.S. and Finland will meet in pool play during the 2002 Games as well — Saturday Feb. 16 at 11 a.m. at the E Center in West Valley City.
E-MAIL: zman@desnews.com