KEEP AN EYE ON: Drew Doughty. There's a sense in some corners that the 20-year-old was brought on board to be the seventh defenseman. Dismiss that notion immediately. Doughty is the picture of effortless poise in the NHL and was Canada's most effective blueliner at the 2009 World Championships. "He might not be [top six] when the tournament starts, but watch him at the end," one scout told SI.com. "He lives for the challenge of playing the Malkins and Ovechkins and Sedins. He has the mental toughness that you need for the big games."

Jack Johnson figured that when he's a little old man, retired from his life as a pro hockey player, he might as well be a little old man with memories of walking in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, not a little old man wishing he had.

And so, the boisterous Los Angeles Kings defenseman, who has often marched to the beat of his own drummer (his refusal to leave college early irked Carolina Hurricanes management and led to his trade to the Kings), is set to become what is believed to be the first NHLer to march in the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.

It's not going to be easy, but, heck, that's what makes it so special.

"I had a feeling it wasn't very common, but I had no idea I would be the first," Johnson told ESPN.com this week.

The NHL Players' Association cannot confirm Johnson is the first hockey player to take part in the opening ceremonies, but USA Hockey officials said Johnson will be the first American NHLer to take part in the event. "The stars kind of aligned for me," Johnson said.

This is the first Olympic Games that includes a clause written into an agreement between the NHLPA, NHL and the International Ice Hockey Federation that specifically spells out that players are allowed to take part in the opening ceremonies provided there isn't a conflict. Johnson is the only one to actually make it happen.

The opening and closing ceremonies, which will be held at BC Place, are big parts of the Olympic experience, Johnson said. And if the opportunity is there to take part, "why waste it?"

Johnson said the idea first came to him shortly after he was named to the U.S. team on Jan. 1. He looked at the Kings' schedule and Olympic schedule, then looked at a map and decided to go for it.

Johnson and the Kings will play in Edmonton on Thursday night. He asked the Kings if it would be OK to miss practice on Friday to facilitate a quick trip to Vancouver. Coach Terry Murray and the rest of the Kings were supportive in his quest and gave him leave. Johnson contacted USA Hockey about the logistics of taking part in the ceremonies and officials started to work on the itinerary:

• Johnson chartered a plane to make a two-hour flight from Edmonton to Bellingham, Wash.

• A driver will meet him in Bellingham and take him across the border and into Vancouver, eliminating the distinct possibility of getting lost or snarled in traffic.

• If things go according to plan, Johnson will meet USA Hockey officials at about 3 p.m. at the athletes' village with Johnson's USA gear. Johnson will change and jump into the queue with the rest of the American Olympians, who are taking part in the ceremonies. The ceremonies should be completed by 9 p.m. PT.

• Johnson will jump back in his vehicle, drive back to Bellingham and fly home.

• He will join his teammates for their last pre-Olympic game Saturday night in Los Angeles against the Colorado Avalanche before flying back to Vancouver on Sunday. The Americans will have their first on-ice session that day, leading up to Tuesday's tournament-opener against Switzerland.

If you hear the familiar strains of the "Mission Impossible" theme music playing while you're reading this, Johnson insisted he's had nothing but support in trying to make this part of the Olympic dream a reality.

"I've had a lot of people helping me so that it's not 'Mission Impossible,'" he said. "Truthfully, I didn't get any resistance from anyone. Whatever I imagine [the ceremonies to be like] probably isn't going to be close to what it's like for real."

From fire to ice, nothing seems to be going right at the Olympics.

The torch malfunctioned. Warm weather turned the slopes and the event schedule to slop. A Zamboni had to ride to the rescue from Calgary following a meltdown at the speedskating rink.

By Tuesday, the Glitch Games were in full swing: 20,000 standing-room tickets for the snowboarding venue were voided because fans had fallen between the bales of hay under the melting layers of trucked-in snow.

Want to take a picture of the Olympic cauldron? Make sure that camera is pressed up against the chain-link fence - provided there's room to squeeze in and a Vancouver 2010 banner isn't in the way.

Organizers expect to unveil a plan Wednesday to address the rising public outcry and bring people closer to the flame, the most distinguished and enduring symbol of any Olympics.

"Perhaps," conceded Renee Smith-Valade, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee, "we did underestimate the degree to which people would want to get close to it."

Perhaps. At a press conference, a Canadian TV reporter asked organizers why the flame was hidden behind "a ratty-looking prison-camp fence." And the Globe and Mail newspaper chose to allude to another Olympic city - Berlin.

Addressing the head of the Vancouver Games, the paper cried: "Mr. Furlong, tear down this fence!"

Of course, no scheduling or logistics issue - or sporting event, for that matter - seems significant in light of the death of a Georgian luger on the first day of the Olympics.

And, to be fair, there have been bright spots. Moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau gave Canada its first gold medal in three home Olympics. NHL superstar Sidney Crosby has the Canadian men's hockey team looking for gold. NBC ratings have been strong.

But aside from that, it's been one problem after another for a games governed not so much by the Olympic creed as by Murphy's Law. Shades of Atlanta.

The canceled tickets at Cypress Mountain - 28,000 in all - mean about $1.5 million in lost revenue for the games, and disappointment for people who spent $50 to $65 to see events like the halfpipe and snowboardcross.

They'll get refunds, although anyone who bought secondhand may be out of luck. Fans whose tickets were still good, and who went up the mountain Tuesday to see events, were treated to blinding snow.

Athletes weren't spared, either. Timing foulups marred both biathlon events Tuesday. A Swedish woman was held up at her start gate for 14 seconds, and two of the men went off too early. Officials later corrected for the errors.

"It is embarrassing," said Norbert Baier, the International Biathlon Union's technical delegate. "Why do we have this incompetence?"

The competition schedule, meanwhile, looks like it's been run over by a bobsled.

On Tuesday alone, the men's super-combined, up in the mountains at Whistler, was postponed because of an overnight snowstorm. The snowboardcross finals were rescheduled. Women's downhill training was canceled.

This after downhill training was postponed repeatedly earlier in the Olympics because of wet weather that messed with the snow. It's been so mild that locals have jokingly called it the Vancouver Summer Olympics.

"It's getting ridiculous, for sure, how much changing of the schedule and shuffling around has been happening," said Thomas Vonn, husband and coach of Lindsey Vonn, a multimedal favorite.

Then again, each day of canceled training gives Vonn's badly bruised right shin more time to heal. For everyone else, the delays are a mounting annoyance.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the worst, this is a 10. That's for sure," said Patrick Riml, head coach of Canada's women's Alpine team.

"Wouldn't mind racing already," American Alpine skier Ted Ligety tweeted.

Even the little things are going wrong. A spigot went off at the luge track, spraying a section near the finish as a German racer was getting ready to start her run. She had to wait two minutes, then slid to a bronze.

Indoors, it's the ice escapades. At the Richmond Oval, the speedskating venue, the resurfacing machine went on the blink Monday. Instead of a track as smooth as glass, it left piles of slush and pools of water.

So the Olympics, which has a sponsorship deal with Olympia ice resurfacers, had to call in a replacement - a Zamboni from a whole province over in Calgary, specifically designed for the size of a speedskating oval.

Vancouver organizers say they're responding as best they can to problems mostly out of their control.

"It's a little like losing your luggage," Smith-Valade said at a press conference where she was bombarded by questions about all that's gone wrong. "It's not whether the luggage gets lost - it's how you deal with it."

All this started on Friday night, at the opening ceremony, where the traditional climax, the lighting of the Olympic flame, was a bust because of a hydraulic failure.

One of the four legs of the indoor cauldron failed to rise out of its trap door in the floor, leaving the structure weirdly unbalanced and one of the final four torchbearers standing around awkwardly with nothing to do.

It's been enough to draw comparisons to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the gold standard of glitchy games. The press in Britain - which gets the next Olympics, in London - has questioned whether these are the worst games ever.

The International Olympic Committee insists it has no second thoughts.

"If we had the decision again, we would take the same decision," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "It would come to Vancouver."

Not having backups for equipment isn't good. The inside torch not going up, ?? it worked in practice.

The outside torch, not letting people close to it is for safety reasons, but that fence used is unreal.

But the problems at Cypress Mountain have been only partly due to weather. Buses have broken down or gotten lost on the way up, with fans waiting for hours in the cold and darkness to return to Vancouver, and spectators, who are barred from bringing their own food and drink, waiting for more than an hour just for a warm beverage.

VANOC officials said it would have been impossible to have additional customer-service facilities at the relatively small site, a response that fueled criticism of Cypress Mountain's selection as a venue.

The additional Cypress cancellations announced Tuesday — now totaling 28,000 tickets — stemmed from the closure, for all remaining events, of the standing-room area for snowboard and freestyle skiing events.

That viewing area, which accommodated about 4,000 fans, was built by packing tons of snow on top of bales of straw, but persistent rains have washed away much of the snow, said Caley Denton, VANOC's vice president for ticketing.

As a result, the remaining snow cover is so thin, people walking across it have slipped up to their knees or higher in gaps between the straw bales. Denton said crews considered ways to reinforce the area, but "at the end of the day, we just came to the conclusion that it's just too unstable."

VANOC will refund the purchase price of the tickets, $50 to $65 apiece, but only to the original buyer. Anyone who bought tickets at an inflated price on the secondary market is stuck.

Sunday, some fans didn't get word of the closure until they had traveled to the site.

Even the display of the Olympic caldron, on an industrial-looking space on the Vancouver waterfront, has been a target of widespread criticism.

Throngs line up for blocks to get a view of the flaming sculpture, only to end up photographing it through a chain-link fence. Writer Michael Smyth, in a Tuesday column in The Province, said, "The caldron is a symbol of the human spirit, so why keep it locked up like a caged animal?"

VANOC is taking that criticism to heart, Smith-Valade said, and will reconfigure the display to give passers-by a better view. Details of the display, which will include a viewing platform, will be announced Wednesday, she said.