Posted on 02/21/2020 7:09:25 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.
Another longer video about the game. Miracle on Ice porn; never gets old, just like watching Secretariat win the Belmont:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHtOUV8fPo8
And interesting trivia note is that all the players cast in that movie were real hockey players who had to go through a rigorous hockey tryout before they could audition. Cahill has played hockey as a kid but had never played in goal, so many of the action scenes in the movie were filmed using former NHL goalie Bill Ranford instead.
That’s a great video. The emotion you see from so many of the people in it is amazing — even years later.
“Do you believe in miracles?”
I always enjoy the shot of that Russian player, #25, watching the Americans celebrate. He’s either fascinated or enjoying their win along with them.
Yep — that’s the real Jim Craig.
That’s Vladimir Golikov. His brother Alexander was also on that team.
That was beautiful to read.
If you want to see a really interesting companion video for the Miracle on Ice, see if you can track down a documentary called “Of Miracles and Men.” It’s about the Soviet hockey program of that era, and goes into some great detail about the 1980 team and the turbulent times for that team later in the 1980s when their star players were trying to get out of the USSR and play in North America. It’s really a remarkable — and somewhat depressing — story.
Me as well.
And that is something I have always loved about the sport. It has history, a history of characters.
Sure, other sports have characters and history too, but...there IS something different about hockey for me.
After all...how many great stories are there surrounding the celebrations with the Lombardi Trophy as the winners took around the country?
I miss Hockey, haven’t watched for years, and the last game I played was back in 1994.
Thanks for the fond memories... The most magical Olympics of all time.
“I was in Austria, and watched the game live, it started at ~1am.
So glad I stayed up.
Greatest game ever played.”
I was attending college and was watching the game with a friend in Eugene, OR to what we thought was a live feed.
There was a break in the action and the TV station broke to a commercial with <15 minutes left in the game.
Directly before returning to the game the Sports Announcer, excited and animated, did a 10 second promo for the 6 O’clock news: “We’ll have footage and complete coverage of the US upset win over Russia in hockey at the Olympics!”
I was a bit dumbfounded but my friend, Terry stood up and started yelling: “I can’t believe he said that!”
Five minutes later the TV station cut away from the game to the same Sports Announcer: “I very sorry we made that announcement. Please stop calling the station.”
I was a great game and a very funny moment in time.
“Characters and history” is a great way to describe hockey.
“I very sorry we made that announcement. Please stop calling the station.”
Lol
The Miracle on Ice and Secretariat winning the Belmont never get old.
Absolutely...:)
I don’t know why, but I get a little choked up watching the Miracle on Ice or the 1973 Belmont. Every time.
I am not a hockey fan - never lived in a cold-weather climate. But there is no doubt in my mind that 2/22/1980 is the greatest moment in American sports history. Given the geopolitical stakes, the crappy decade we had just endured, and the supposed invincibility of the opponent, nothing will ever match it.
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