We all think back fondly to that 1980 Miracle on Ice game.
But the reality is, most of the time American and Canadian college kids were getting shellacked by Soviet and Czech professionals 16-2.
Between the ‘72 Canada Cup and the ‘80 Olympics they lost only ONE GAME to a North American PROFESSIONAL team (the Winnipeg Jets, led by Bobby Hull and a bunch of Swedes)
IMO if the Soviet coach probably blew that 1980 game by pulling Vladislav Tretiak, one of the most accomplished goaltenders of his era, in favor of Boris Myshkin (who???)
One thing I came away with after reading that book -- and Mike Eruzione said the same thing in an interview he did when Disney was filming the movie "Miracle" in the early 2000s -- was that the U.S. victory over the Soviets wasn't nearly as big an upset as it was originally made out to be. Several reasons for this:
1. U.S. coach Herb Brooks put together a team made up of the exact type of players he expected to match up well against the Soviets (small and fast, but stronger than their size would indicate, and in superb condition).
2. Brooks also knew that Soviets were likely to be a very complacent team, since they had been so successful for so long and really had nothing left to prove.
3. The U.S. team was described as a bunch of unknown players because they were young kids who were mostly still college-aged, but in retrospect they were a much more talented group of players than anyone gave them credit for. Thirteen of the U.S. players went on to play in the NHL, a number of them were All-Star caliber players, and five of them had long NHL careers (Neal Broten, Dave Christian, Mark Johnson, Ken Morrow and Mike Ramsey). In fact, some folks might be familiar with the scene from the exhibition game in Norway in the fall of 1979 where Brooks punished the team for their poor play by making them run skating sprints on the ice long after the game was over (even after the lights in the arena were turned off). Brooks had scheduled a series of exhibition games in Europe that fall to coincide with NHL training camps for the 1979-80 season. He knew many of his players were likely to get lucrative offers from NHL teams and leave the Olympic team if they played an exhibition schedule in North America during those months.