Posted on 02/21/2018 7:30:58 PM PST by Alberta's Child
Years before I ever heard of Lake Placid or the Olympics, before I knew the name of a single Russian hockey player, I was a kid in Massachusetts who wanted to be the next Bobby Orr. I grew up skating on Holmes' Pond, which took its name from our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Holmes, who owned it. A man named Phil Thompson, our postman, was the person who told me I should try organized hockey in the Easton Junior Hockey League. He had already been working on it with my mother. He was a fine postman and an even better salesman.
The game we played against the Russians in Lake Placid twenty-five years ago has been acclaimed and saluted in every way possible, but for me, it has always felt like a passage on ice, the attainment of a dream that started on Mrs. Holmes' pond.
It's impossible for me to separate the miracle that we achieved as a team with the memories and gratitude I have for all the people who helped me get there, from my mother and father, my sisters and brothers, to ten years' worth of coaches and friends and teammates. You don't make a journey like that alone. You make it with a lot of love and sacrifice. That's probably why I was searching the stands for my father after we won the gold medal against Finland. It was a moment that was begging to be shared.
I don’t believe those Winter Games in Lake Placid will ever be duplicated. I don't say that because we beat maybe the greatest Soviet hockey team ever assembled, or even because Eric Heiden won five gold medals, a performance that I honestly think dwarfs what we did. I say it because there weren't doping scandals or judging scandals or an Olympic Village that was overrun with millionaires and professionals in Lake Placid. Herb Brooks, God rest his soul, wasn't coaching a Dream Team. He was coaching a team full of dreamers. There is a big difference. In Lake Placid, it didn't feel as if the Games were being run by corporations. It felt as if at the heart of them was a brotherhood of athletes, the best in the world, deep in the Adirondack Mountains.
I've visited quite a few places that have hosted the Olympics in the past, and you almost can’t tell that the Games were ever there. You aren't in Lake Placid for more than a minute before you are flooded with Olympic memories, whether it's from seeing the Olympic Arena at the top of the hill, or the oval next door where Heiden skated into immortality. Whenever I'm in town, I like to go out at night when it's dark and quiet and the shops are closed, and stand in the middle of Main Street. I close my eyes and in an instant it takes me back to that magical Friday night of February 22, 1980 -- to the memory of walking down that same Main Street with Mike Eruzione and our fathers and other family members, and ABC's Jim Lampley interviewing us as we went. Snow was falling, and everywhere you looked people were waving flags and chanting, "U-S-A, U-S-A." We were in our primes, athletically and physically. We were surrounded by people we loved, getting loved some more by people we didn't even know. We had just done the impossible, and we were happy to be alive and thrilled to be Americans and thrilled to think that Herb was right: maybe we were meant to be here. It's a feeling you wish everybody could have at one point in their lives.
Being in that goal on that Friday night was the pinnacle of my athletic life, the greatest joy I have ever known as a hockey player. It was the culmination of a journey, and then other journeys followed, for all of us; that is what this book is really all about—the journeys that brought us to that semifinal game against the Soviet Union, and those we’ve taken since. Sometimes people ask me if I wish I could go back and do it again, if some part of me is sad that I will never experience that pinnacle again. You can't look back. You can’t dial up euphoria on demand, or try to re-create what happened a quarter century ago. You move forward and you live your life and try to be a better person every day than you were the day before. You take each day as a new journey, even as you are grateful for the ones you have already had.
One of the greatest sporting moments EVER.
That's the humility of a hockey player, I tell you.
Thank You so much for posting this :)
When U.S. Olympians were real men and Americans still had dreams.
Indeed. I'm reminded of a story told by Kevin Lowe, then of the Oilers, after the Islanders beat them for the Stanley Cup in 1983.
(paraphrasing, since I don't recall the exact quote)
"I went to their locker room afterwards to congratulate them on their win, expecting to see them whooping it up and wildly celebrating ... instead it was rather quiet and subdued, the Islander players sitting there with ice packs on their bumps and bruises, groaning from exhaustion .... it was then that I realized what it takes to win the Stanley Cup"
~ MM ~
LOL, my favorite Herb Brooks quote was: "...You've got a million dollar set of legs and a ten-cent fart for a brain..."
Love the Brooks quote. You could fill pages with them. LOL.
"Arrive at the net with the puck and in ill humor"
I'm inclined to agree. What Heiden did will never be duplicated.
“If you lose this game, you’ll take it to your f....... graves! *walks out of the locker room, then returns* Your f........ graves!” - Brooks after the US was down 2-1 to Finland at the end of the second period of the final game.
This may be the most memorable because it was all over TV:
Mike Eruzione said -- and this was around 2003 when they did the interviews -- that the astonishment of their victory diminished over time because in retrospect the U.S. team was much better than they realized. He knew how good they were after seeing some of those players go on to long, solid NHL careers over the next 15 years.
Center Neal Broten achieved an unusual distinction when he won the Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils in 1995. He was the first player -- and maybe still the only one -- to win an Olympic gold medal, the Stanley Cup, and an NCAA hockey championship.
Man, so many personalities in hockey...anyone who loves hockey just adores the movie Slapshot, because it has every single stereotype in it!!!
And the personalities...Herb Brooks...Don Cherry...
I went to the winter carnival in 1987 in Quebec City in 1987 and went to the NHL All Stars vs Soviet Union...it was so frickking cold...we drove up in a camper we rented. there were four of us, and three of us were named Bob. My neck hurt so bad because the whole trip, someone would say “Bob...” and all of us would twist our heads around to see who was being addressed. The guy at the camper rental gave us a thing of anti-freeze for the toilet and said “Whatever you do, don’t let the toilet freeze!” Well, it froze.
When we arrived in Quebec after 8 hours, I wanted to go for a walk. I got all bundled up and walked into this park. I got about 100 yards, and realized there was no other human being outside anywhere, and then I realized how damned cold it was, and turned around and went back. It was damned cold.
The first night we got up there, the heater on the camper wouldn’t work right...I woke up in a down bag after a night of heavy partying, and my bag and my hair were frozen into an inch of ice inside the window!
We went to the NHL Hall of Fame (road version) and had to wait an hour outside in something like 20 below zero cold...and every single person looked like a prehistoric beast with steam coming out of our mouths and noses, jumping around like eskimos doing some kind of bizarre snow dance in an attempt to keep warm.
When we got inside, we made a beeline to a table where Gump Worsley was signing autographs...he looked at us, and said “Were you people waiting in line out in that cold to come in HERE? You people are f**cking crazy.”
I burst out laughing...that, coming from a guy who played old time hockey with no mask!!!!!!
Ah. I miss the old hockey days...
I just watched it again for the first time in years a few weeks ago.
Loved it. Just loved it.
I've played hockey with some very flaky guys, and I even have a personal Herb Brooks story for you. I'll send it by Freep-Mail tomorrow.
Good night, all!
One thing that cannot be overlooked, is that the US team had months to prepare for the Olympics and play together in a lot of exhibitions before the Games.
One of those games was a 10-3 defeat to the Soviet Union a month before the Olympic Games.
Today, teams are thrown together with little time to practice together as a team.
You too...I’m turning in too...:)
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