UNDER REVIEW
I can tell you exactly where I was at 5 p.m. on February 22, 1980.
I bet most sports fans – and maybe even those not into athletics – could, too, as it was one of those once in a lifetime moments that anyone who was alive to witness it remembers where they were at and what they were doing while the event was taking place.
It was three hours that transcended time.
In what was a different time and an entirely different era, the only people in the United States who actually were able to witness this truly miraculous event live were those who lived close enough to Canada and who were fortunate enough to have rabbit ears on their television sets that were able to bring the picture in clearly.
I was one of those fortunate ones.
Living in Toledo, Ohio, just 45 minutes south of the U.S./Canadian border, I could watch the feed of this event via Channel 9, the CBC affiliate out of Windsor. And my family had both the rabbit ears and the set-top converter box that you used to get a clearer picture.
Equipped with the then-state-of-the art technology that afforded me to watch this miracle actually take place, I laid on my side on the floor directly in front of our 20-inch television set. No blanket was needed to soften the floor, as our then-fashionable shag carpeting provided an ideal cushion. Completing my perfect viewing experience was a large bowl of hot-buttered popcorn and a huge mug of piping-hot chocolate that I had in front of me as I watched history in the making.
When the USA Men’s Olympic Hockey Team took to the ice to play the Soviet Union on that snowy, frosty February early evening, no one in their right mind thought that the American squad, comprised of amateur players who had been assembled less than six months before the event, could defeat what was arguably the best hockey team ever to play the game.
What the USA lacked in size, experience and confidence, the Russian national team had in spades.
Considered by Olympic standards to be amateurs, the Russian players were anything but novices.
You see in the nation then called the Soviet Union, young men were groomed – practically from birth – to be the best in any given sport.
Hockey was no exception.
The Soviet teams had a stranglehold on the Olympic Gold, having won the top prize in the past four Winter Games dating back to 1964.
This Soviet team gave no one in the capacity-filled Olympic Center in Lake Placid, N.Y., any reason to doubt that they would nab a fifth-consecutive Gold Medal at the conclusion of those 13th Olympic Winter Games.
There was just one major problem with that theory.
No one told that to the USA team.
And it was that USA squad, comprised of upstarts, made up of athletes who had only excelled at the collegiate level, that stood in the Soviets’ way.
The Americans were coached by a man whose collegiate success was well known to those who followed NCAA hockey at the time, but who was virtually an unknown to everyone else prior to the start of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games.
Herb Brooks, who was coach of the University of Minnesota’s men’s hockey team when he was recruited by the U.S. Olympic committee to lead his country’s Olympic squad, certainly became a household name, though, in the days leading up to that semifinal contest against the Soviets.
Choosing to fill his roster with players representing a cross-section of the universities with the greatest and proudest collegiate hockey traditions, Brooks certainly was unorthodox.
He liked to do things his own way.
It almost backfired on him, as U.S. Olympic officials were at loggerheads with him on many points, not the least of which was how quickly he assembled the team.
Once he had his squad, his abrasive – to say the least – personality certainly didn’t endear himself to the team he had hand chosen to go to the Olympics
Rough around the edges doesn’t even begin to cover how Brooks’ players likely felt about him.
Not one to mince words or cut corners, Brooks demanded that his team members played up to their potential.
When they didn’t, he had no problem letting them know that they had failed to meet his lofty expectations.
Take for instance an exhibition game vs. Norway in the fall prior to the Olympics where the team played to a 3-3 tie with their Norwegian counterparts.
A tie was simply unacceptable to Brooks, even if it was in an exhibition game.
So to retaliate against his squad, Brooks made them continue skating the length of the rink long after the crowds had gone and the lights were turned off in the arena.
That’s just how Brooks was.
His players learned to live with it.
It was either that or they didn’t play.
It was that same gritty demeanor, though, that worked to Brooks’ favor as the USA team prepared to take to the ice on that fateful day in February 36 years ago.
To say that the Americans were an underdog was the understatement of the century.
The Soviets had annihilated the USA, 10-3, in an exhibition game just 13 days before and there was no reason to expect a different outcome this time.
Except, again, no one told that to the Americans and, certainly, no one told that to Brooks.
In what can only be described as a speech for the ages, Brooks drilled into his team that, yes, the Soviets were the better squad on paper, but that the Americans, his Americans, were all born to be hockey players and they were the team of destiny on that given day.
That was the understatement of the year.
Patterning his American squad after the Europeans who had been quite successful in Olympic and World hockey play, Brooks led the upstart USA team to a 4-0-1 record to get to the semifinals.
And once there, the USA team had to come from behind to tie the game with the Soviets at two after the first period.
After falling behind 3-2, the Americans were going to have to do the unthinkable to even the game out once more.
They did.
Having already forced the replacement of Viktor Tikhonov, who is considered to be one of the greatest goalies to ever play the game, the Americans knotted up the score once more on a Mark Johnson power play goal. They followed that up with a goal by the team’s captain, Mike Eruzione, that gave the USA a 4-3 lead with 10 minutes remaining.
The Americans never looked back.
The rest is history.
Just two days later, the USA team went on to defeat Finland, 4-2, to win the Gold Medal and solidify the ‘Miracle on Ice’ as the greatest sports moment ever.
But don’t just take my word for it.
In 1999, Sports Illustrated named the ‘Miracle On Ice’ as the top sports moment of the 20th century.
The reasons were varied.
Yes, that win versus the Soviets was truly a miracle, but not just for the obvious reasons.
You have to look further, look deeper, to truly view the victory in its proper context.
At the time, the U.S. was in the middle of a deep recession, the likes of which wouldn’t be seen again for another 28 years.
Gas prices were at a then all-time high.
Fuel was rationed and long lines at the pumps had become the norm.
Unemployment was running rampant.
And to top it off, Iran had been holding more than 60 American diplomats hostage for 110 days and they would remain captive for another 334.
Morale was at an all-time low.
What that American victory did on that cold, February Friday, was give people hope. It raised their spirits. It transcended a simple sporting event.
It allowed citizens to believe that the USA could rise above its problems.
It made Americans believe the country could be great once more.
For the players on the ice, it may have been a simple hockey game, but for the rest of the country, it was much more than that, so much more.
So even 40 years later, that moment when Al Michaels uttered those classic words ‘Do You Believe in Miracles’ as the last seconds ticked off the clock, is still etched in our brains.
It certainly is etched in mine.
And since the Soviet Union wouldn’t allow ABC to move the game to primetime because it would have aired at four in the morning back in Russia, most Americans only saw the contest on tape delay.
Most, but not all.
I was one of the fortunate ones who was able to witness the game live and to watch the great Olympic moment following the victory when goalie Jim Craig skated around the ice draped in the American flag.
It’s doubtful, though, that a tape-delayed broadcast of the game diminished the impact of the victory even one little bit.
In an era where people didn’t have cell phones, where most didn’t have cable and before the internet was around to spoil those special television moments, most Americans likely thought they were watching a live broadcast anyway.
Trust me, countless replays of the game and even a movie that – for the most part – accurately depicted the events of the day and the months leading up to it, haven’t diminished that moment for me.
It still gives me goosebumps.
It still makes me cry like a baby.
As I get older, I often wish that I could go back in time and relive my youth or change things I have done in my life.
One thing I’ll never want to change, though, is that feeling I had, that I still have, when I look back at the USA win.
It may seem absurd to put that much stock into what is seemingly just a simple sporting event.
But, you see, that’s just it.
For those who were alive, it was more than just a game, more than just a win on the ice.
It allowed the country to dream again and to believe that dreams could come true.
And that in and of itself is sort of ironic when you really start to consider it.
In subsequent years, the Olympics started allowing professional players to participate in the Olympics.
I definitely agree with what was attributed to Brooks at the end of the 2004 film, ‘Miracle,’ and that once these so-called ‘dream teams’ were permitted to compete, the country seldom achieved the dream.
Personally, I know that no matter what has happened in the years following the ‘Miracle on Ice,’ one thing has never been able to be taken away from me.
For at least one cold, snowy, weekend in February 36 years ago, a dream was complete and was allowed to come true.
I can safely say that anyone who witnessed the historic moments of that weekend feels exactly the same way.
About the Author
A native of Toledo, Ohio, Allan graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in communication, with emphasis in print media, from The University of Toledo. While at UT, he was editor in chief of the campus newspaper and was named Outstanding Journalism student at the University.
Upon graduation, he worked at several newspapers and public relations firms in Ohio and Michigan and was the recipient of two Associated Press awards for journalistic excellence.
Allan’s love for sports started at an early age when traveling to New England to visit his grandparents and being taken to numerous Patriots and Boston Red Sox games.
He moved to Florida in 1992 – at about the same time that the Tampa Bay Lightning came to town – and instantly became a Bolts fan, as Allan’s love for hockey dates back to watching Hockey Night in Canada with rabbit ears via the CBC feed from Windsor, Ontario.
He has previously covered the Lightning on a freelance basis. In addition, he covered the Bolts at Top Sports Report, where he also published a bi-weekly op-ed column on a variety of sports topics.
