SARAJEVO, Yugoslavia -- Team Canada forward Pat Flatley grasped for the words to describe his ejection from Sunday's bronze-medal match against Sweden, but found it impossible to explain something he didn't understand.
The 20-year-old Toronto native was tossed out of the crucial game at 15:19 of the second period, after linesman Bernd Schnieder of West Germany doubled over in apparent pain and told Soviet referee Yuri Kurandin he had been struck in the chest by the player's stick.
'I brushed up against him,' said Flatley, after Team Canada dropped a 2-0 decision. 'That was the natural way I turned to go back to the bench. What do you want me to do? Stop dead and go back to my bench. I might have hit him with my elbow or whatever.
'But I would have had to do something a lot worse than that to make him crawl down and practically keel over dead.'
A first-round draft choice of the New York Islanders, Flatley believes the linesman took a 'dive' but was mystified about the motivation for such a move.
'I don't why. I don't what to say. I don't understand what happened or what was going on out there,' he said. 'I never heard of that. The officials don't take dives, as far as I can see. I would have practically shoot him with a gun to make him ... the guy was practically half dead. I know I didn't do nothing.
'I don't know what was wrong with him. I don't know what he did. I don't know why he did it. And for a game like that, a bronze-medal game, it hurt me a lot and it hurt our team and it hurt everything ... It's stupid.'
Flatley, a key member of the University of Wisconsin team which won the 1982-83 NCAA championship, had been described by Team Canada assistant coach Jean Perron before the tournament as the only player on the squad who was a threat to score every time he was on the ice.
Head Coach Dave King conceded the rugged forward's absence had its effect on the club.
'We lost Flatley and that takes out one of your top goal scorers and that really hurt our attack,' he said. 'All of a sudden, we had to juggle our lines. I think we knew then it might really be tough then without Flatley's scoring.'
Flatley felt the team could have still accomplished its goal without him.
'The team played hard,' he said. 'We still had enough chances to win. It's not like I would have made the team win or anything. I hope I could have helped in whatever way I could. But we generated enough chances to still win the game, and the luck wasn't with us today.'
The whole situation left the Flatley stunned.
'I feel horrible,' he said. 'Six months of ... this is the biggest game of my life. I just don't know how to feel about it yet. It's just terrible.'
