NAGANO, Japan -- Stunned and embarrassed, angry and beaten, one by one the NHL millionaires peeled off their Team USA jerseys and packed for home.

"I'm

Mike Modano and his U.S. teammates have a lot of apologizing to do. (Allsport)

sure I'm going to be apologizing for a long time. I'm sure we're going to hear about it for a long time," Mike Modano said. "That part is going to be tough to deal with. But what's done is done."

What's done is the U.S. Olympic hockey team, the dream team of dream teams, the team that beat Canada in the 1996 World Cup. A team that couldn't miss, but did.

Six 50-goal scorers and 17 other NHL stars weren't enough to stop the Czech Republic and were beaten 4-1 Wednesday in the quarterfinals of the first Olympic tournament featuring NHL players.

There was no way to excuse it and no one tried.

JOHN LECLAIR, THE NHL'S second-leading goal-scorer who was shut out in four Olympic games, said the team just didn't play hard enough.

"I don't see how anybody can go home," he said, ``and say we gave it our best shot."

Said Brett Hull: "The pressure was there, no question. But we should thrive on that; we're professional athletes."

Not just professional athletes, the best.

The same Team USA that was expected to emerge with a gold medal -- or at least silver -- instead heads home in sixth place.

"It was the biggest waste of time -- ever," U.S. alternate captain Keith Tkachuk said.

"WE DESERVE TO BE OUT of it. We didn't play well from the start. ... This is awful, it's devastating. From the opening shot, we weren't (good) enough to do anything. We were just a big disappointment."

The United States finished 1-3 and was outscored 12-4 by the three good teams it faced. Now, the record medal-less run extends to five Olympics. The U.S. team hasn't won so much as a bronze since the 1980 Miracle on Ice gang captured gold in Lake Placid.

The Americans took 39 shots at Czech goalie Dominik Hasek, but only Modano could score. They made defensive mistakes that led to three goals. And they didn't get enough clutch saves by Mike Richter to give themselves a chance to defeat Hasek.

Like an octopus in a goalie's mask, Hasek seemingly had eight padded limbs. Flopping and scrambling, jumping and lunging, he was almost impossible to beat from any angle.

"Our big guns couldn't find a way to score," U.S. coach Ron Wilson said. "When you outshoot teams, it's a matter of finishing your opportunities. We didn't and you live with it. We feel we let a lot of people down."

THE LOSS CAME ONE DAY AFTER the U.S. women's hockey team won the sport's first Olympic gold medal by beating Canada 3-1. Many of the women were in the stands to watch the men play, and like most of the pro-American crowd at Big Hat Arena, they filed out in stunned silence at game's end.

"Everybody's shocked and disappointed," Modano said. ``A lot of guys are frustrated, thinking it was a waste of time ... to come over here at all."

When it was over, Tony Amonte broke his stick over the boards and flipped it onto the ice. Heads bowed, the Americans shook their opponents' hands and dejectedly left the ice.

"We came here with expectations of gold," Wilson said. ``It's something that will always be in the back of your mind: What if?"

WHAT IF THE TEAM HAD TRIED just a little harder to win the round-robin games that established the quarterfinal matchups? One more victory ... and they would have avoided Hasek.

"We had to play better in the preliminary round" to get a higher quarterfinal seed, U.S. captain Chris Chelios said. "We put ourselves in position to play against the best goaltender in the world. If we had finished higher and peppered Finland with (39) shots, I don't think we would have lost."

Said Wilson: "I kept saying the first three games didn't matter. Now I look back and we should have done things differently."

Few picked the Czech Republic as a serious gold medal contender, but it is 3-1, a lone loss coming 2-1 to Russia in round-robin play.

HASEK, MVP IN THE NHL last season, has won three Vezina trophies as the league's top goalie. Using his unique, scrambling style, he has allowed only five goals in the Olympics.

Seeking its first medal since the split of Czechoslovakia after the 1992 Olympics, the Czech Republic will meet either Canada or Kazakstan in Friday's semifinals. Czechoslovakia won three silvers and three bronzes but never a gold.

So instead of parlaying some of the world's best talent into the international hockey world's biggest prize, the U.S. players walked out of the Big Hat for the last time with sadness in their eyes and sorrow in their voices.

"Some people took it for granted that things were going to be easier," Modano said. "Now it seems like it's over before we ever got started."