[basalt]

i never understood why the Soviets never pulled their goalie in that game. They also never did it in the 1984 and 1987 Canada Cup series....odd.

[Alberta's Child]

The speculation at the time was that they were so rarely behind late in a game that they never prepared for it.

Some of those European coaches also did detailed statistical analyses of hockey games to see if the odds really changed in their favor under different scenarios. I remember reading an article in Hockey Digest magazine in the early 1990s where the author suggested that pulling the goalie late in the game was NOT an effective strategy -- based on his analysis that said a team in that scenario is more likely to give up an empty-net goal than score the tying goal.

There's one hockey coach in recent years -- it may have been the German or Austrian coach at the 2018 Winter Olympics -- who would pull the goalie and put a sixth skater on the ice whenever his team had a two-man advantage with two opposing players in the penalty box. I think it usually worked out for him, as it is damn near impossible for the defending team to clear the puck out of their zone when they have three skaters playing against six.

[BarbM]

I remember that day. I was a college freshman. We were at happy hour. They announced over the PA the the USA had just beaten the USSR in hockey. The place went nuts: USA USA USA. We all danced to Prince’s Party like it’s 1999.

Once we heard that the game would be replayed that evening, we all piled back to the dorms.

This is one of my favorite memories. USA USA