Guest Post: The Miracle on Ice

Today marks the 44th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, the single biggest sporting event of my lifetime. My friend Wayne Coffey wrote the essential book on the Miracle called, The Boys of Winter. If you have not read it, you can stop right here and order it from your favorite bookstore. Wayne suggests The Bookstore Plus in, yes, Lake Placid, which I would have to say is pretty much the coolest place to order this particular book.

But, of course, you can get it at Amazon and other such places.

Wayne has kindly offered some thoughts on the moment and the book. I was thinking about this the other day: There are probably only a handful of events in my life where I vividly remember exactly where I was and exactly what I was feeling. And, frankly, most of them are sad. I remember exactly where I was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I remember exactly where I was on 9/11. I remember exactly where I was when President Reagan got shot. I remember exactly where I was when Brian Sipe threw the Red Right 88 interception against the Raiders.

I’m not saying that the Miracle on Ice victory over the Soviets is the only happy moment that has left that sort of mark on my memory. But it is the first one that comes to mind.

Twenty-two years ago, my editor at Crown Publishers and I were brainstorming book possibilities. He was keen on one idea in particular—a chronicle of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team and its epic triumph over the Soviets in Lake Placid. I tried to talk him out of it. Like virtually every other American, I had been mesmerized by the game and its geopolitical implications, the way it lifted the spirits of a nation that was reeling from the Iranian hostage crisis and runaway inflation and a malaise that was almost palpable. I just thought we knew everything we needed to know about the so-called Miracle on Ice and there was nothing much to add.

The editor, a man named Pete Fornatale, stayed on me. He believed that by digging into the backstory there could be much more gold to be mined. I just want to go on the record with this:

Pete was right. 

And I’ve never been more wrong in my life. 

Sportswriters tend to be loose with superlatives. Too many games and players are called “the most this” or “the greatest that,” and too often athletes and teams are instantly anointed as the best in the history of the world. Yes, the superlatives might be warranted at times, but it’s also true they have been cheapened by overuse. I am here to report that what happened in a remote village in the Adirondack Mountains of New York 44 years ago—on the night of Feb. 22—was not overhyped in the least. Sports Illustrated hailed it as the greatest sports moment of the 20^th century. I might put it second, behind Jackie Robinson’s Dodgers debut on April 15, 1947, but let’s not quibble.

For sheer improbability, it's hard to imagine another sporting event topping that Friday night in Lake Placid, in every regard. Look at where it took place… the smallest venue in Olympic annals—a one-stoplight town with 2,000 residents, almost 30 miles from the nearest interstate, close enough to Canada, you could get French stations on your radio. Never again will there be an Olympics in a place this small. 

Look at how it was televised… on a three-hour tape delay, and it was still possible not to know the outcome when the puck dropped. (I didn’t.) Try that in 2024, and let me know how it goes.

And look at the matchup itself. If the game were played in today’s gambling-obsessed culture (don’t get me started), the Soviets probably would be giving -6 goals. They had—superlative alert—the greatest collection of hockey talent ever assembled. One year earlier, they defeated Scotty Bowman’s NHL All-Stars, 6-0. In their last four Olympiads, their record was 27-1-1 and their goal differential was 175-44. They had players like Boris Mikhailov, Helmut Balderis and Valery Kharlamov, and future NHL stars Sergei Makarov and Viacheslav Fetisov. In net was Vladislav Tretiak, the planet’s premier goaltender.

“It’s David against Goliath, and I hope we remember to bring our slingshots,” U.S. coach Herb Brooks said.

(Photo by Steve Powell /Getty Images)

Brooks’ team was comprised almost entirely of college kids, average age 22. They had talent, for sure, but it was not a fair fight. Not even two weeks before, in an exhibition game against the Soviets in Madison Square Garden, the U.S. lost 10-3., It honestly could’ve been worse. People thought Brooks, a brilliant hockey strategist and innovative thinker, had lost his mind, scheduling such a game. But he knew exactly what he was doing, and later admitted as much to Ken Dryden, who was in the ABC booth that night alongside 35-year-old Al Michaels. Brooks called it “a ploy.” He wanted to let his players see how good and fast and strong the Soviets were, and how good the U.S. needed to play to beat them. But more than that, he believed it would make the Soviets overconfident.

I knew I needed to go to Moscow to get the Soviet perspective on the game. The first person I interviewed was Makarov. Over lunch, I asked whether the team was concerned about the U.S. beating them.

“What can change in two weeks?” he said.

Viktor Tikhonov, the Soviet coach, said through an interpreter that no matter what he tried, he could not get 10-3 out of his players’ heads.

I learned other fascinating things on the trip to Moscow. The U.S.’s best player was Mark Johnson, the center from the University of Wisconsin. He was nicknamed Magic (yes, the original Magic Johnson was a hockey guy). He scored the first of his two goals in the game with one second left in the first period, beating two defenders and Tretiak to the rebound of a 100-foot slap shot from U.S. defenseman Dave Christian. Tikhonov was so incensed that he benched Tretiak in favor of backup Vladimir Myshkin, a move akin to pinch-hitting for Babe Ruth in Game 7 of the World Series. The players were furious. So was Tretiak. Sitting in a tiny, spartan office in a Moscow rink, Tikhonov called it “the biggest mistake of my career.”

“The decision was the result of getting caught up in emotions,” he told me.

I would’ve loved to have asked Herb Brooks about the MSG game, about how he united his team in mutual disdain for his motivational methods and the way he sometimes treated them, about his famous pre-game speech (“You were born to be hockey players. You were meant to be here. This is your time,” as memorialized by Kurt Russell in Miracle.) and a million other things. We were scheduled to talk on the phone at 8:00 PM on Aug. 11, 2003. Herb Brooks died in a car accident near his Minnesota home that afternoon. Instead of interviewing him, I attended his memorial service in the Cathedral of St. Paul. The whole team turned out. Captain Mike Eruzione gave one of the eulogies and joked that at that very moment, Brooks was telling God how he should run things. 

“I firmly believe he loved our hockey team, but we didn’t know it,” Eruzione said.

So many players and their families were generous with their time and memories as I researched The Boys of Winter, among them Ken Morrow, Dave Silk, Buzz Schneider, Neal Broten, Mark Johnson and John Harrington. Jim Craig, who made 36 saves that night in the game of his life, could not have been more accommodating, and neither could his backup, Steve Janaszak, who had been an All-American and national champion for Brooks at the University of Minnesota. Janaszak was the only athlete in those entire Olympic Games who never competed in his sport. Not even for a second. He handled it with remarkable grace. It helped that he met his wife in Lake Placid.

“I had the best seat in the arena and in the locker room for the greatest sporting event of the century,” Janaszak said. 

I visited homes and rinks in the Iron Range of Minnesota, Winthrop, Mass., and plenty of places in between. Winthrop was—and is—the home of Eruzione, who scored the winning goal with 10 minutes left after Mark Pavelich did the muck work on the boards and centered it to him. Eruzione’s shot was a wobbly, wrong-footed wrister that his teammates still tease him about.

“Eruzione” means “eruption” in Italian. That was exactly what happened in that hilltop arena—since named for Herb Brooks—after Eruzione’s goal. Chants of “USA, USA” could be heard out on Main Street, the building throbbing with joy and anticipation. Officials for Tass, the Soviet press agency, were so freaked out that they locked the door to their office. Five minutes dwindled to three and then two. Every player I talked to said they were the longest minutes of their lives. The U.S. forwards did spectacular work keeping the Soviets pinned in their own end. Now the clock was down to 30 seconds, then 20, and when it got to the final 10, Michaels began to count down. The scoreboard showed: USA 4, USSR 3. The clock hit zero. 

“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” Michaels said. 

The U.S. players jumped the sideboards and threw their gloves and sticks in the air and dogpiled on top of Craig. Herb Brooks turned and walked down a corridor to Locker Room 5, where he had given his famous speech. He went into a bathroom stall and had a good cry. I’m glad I listened to Pete Fornatale.