Both the flag and the name seemed vaguely swarthy to me.  After some research, I discovered that Kazakhstan's population is 47% Muslim.  Strictly speaking, they're not Arabs since the country is largely Russified, but the World Trade Center wasn't filled just with Americans, so, according to the example set by the terrorists themselves, a little ideological slop is permitted here.  Electronic Arts helped validate my disrespect for Kazakhstan by not even bothering to spell it right.

With the opponent chosen, I next had to lay the ground rules for the game:

I tried to call the tournament "USA!", but NHL 2002 didn't accept the punctuation, so I had to settle for what you see.  Since this is supposed to be a tournament that, like Rollerball, replaces war - which I guess I forgot to tell you - I turned off all the penalties.  In other words, anything goes, and Allah help the hockey players of Kazakhstan because I left injuries on.  Though you can't see it here, I also turned off icing, offsides, and 2-line passes.  If you're not a hockey fan, those are all things that in various ways contribute to a more generalized rule against killing other players. 

One thing I've learned from slobs vs. snobs sports movies such as  Ernest Goes To Camp and The Replacements is that, while heart doesn't hurt, cheating is the real prequisite for winning against all odds.  Whether it's suiting up a football-playing donkey for the big game or, more absurdly, having a girl on your team, breaking the rules is the only way to really guarantee victory.  To most accurately simulate that, I set the game to beginner, a decision I felt would surely give me the edge I'd need.

I had planned to make the tournament one-on-one, but the game requires a minimum of eight teams.  I decided that each bracket would represent an International coalition, which ended up giving Operation Infinite Goals a truly global sense of solidarity.

Representing us, we first have Team USA, for obvious reasons.  Next in line, the glittering jewel of America's unofficial states, Canada. Rounding out our team are Belarus and the New York Rangers. 

On the side of evil, we start with Kazakhstan.  Second in line is Japan, who you may remember from the time they attacked the U.S., though I'm sure they'd like to forget about it since, afterwards, we fucked them up pretty bad. 

There are only two things that all the peoples of the Earth can agree to hate equally: the gross inequity of hate itself and the French.  So France is number three.  The fourth spot was a tight race between Germany and just having France again.  Germany can thank Hitler for just barely squeezing them in.

If you studied the game setup screen, you may be wondering at this point how I can justify giving Kazakhstan home ice advantage when Operation Infinite Goals' stated strategy is a combination of premeditated deck-stacking and outright cheating.  The fact is that I can't.  I simply felt that beating Kazakhstan in their own home would make the defeat that much more humiliating.  I did, however, develop a two point strategy for countering Kazakhstan's home ice advantage.

First, I made a surprise, last minute substitution: Team USA, too busy cleaning up the mess left by Islamic madmen, was replaced by the much, much, much better Team Canada. 

Second, thanks to NHL 2002's "Create-a-Player" feature, Team Canada's aging goaltender, Patrick Roy, was traded for Jason, who is invincible and already has his own goalie mask.

Thanks to Pit of Horror dot com for providing Jason's vital statistics.   I jacked up all of Jason's attributes to maximum so as to accurately simulate how totally unkillable he is.  However, I left his defense score kind of low to reflect how many times it appears that he's dead.