Sentence Correction (SC) | Re: The U.S. hockey team won the Olympic gold medal

gmatexam

True, the adverbial modifier does modify the team's win. However, the more serious fault of A is that the modifier relegates the inspiration to an auxiliary status while unduly considering the win itself as the core; On the contrary, the verb 'served to inspire' is more forthright and therefore is crispier as you have rightly made out. One can see the V-A-N rule in full swing.

Thanks for the nice point.