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Posted on 01/11/2004 4:22:05 PM PST by wallcrawlr
A slightly larger than life-size bronze statue of Herb Brooks will be unveiled Feb. 5 at Rice Park across from the Ordway Center to honor the late hockey coach from St. Paul.
Immediately following the ceremony, which will include Brooks' family and dignitaries, there will be a screening of Disney's "Miracle" movie starring Kurt Russell as Brooks. The movie about the celebrated 1980 Olympic gold-medal team coached by Brooks will be shown at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at a theater to be determined. Proceeds will go to the Herb Brooks Foundation.
Last week, a block from where Brooks' statue will stand, legendary Soviet Union goaltender Vladislav Tretiak watched the Minnesota Wild-Chicago Blackhawks game at Xcel Energy Center.
Tretiak, 51 and a goalie consultant for the Blackhawks, was goaltender for the 1980 Soviet Union team that was deemed virtually unbeatable before the Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.
"If I would have played the second and third periods of that game," Tretiak said the other day, "maybe the USA wouldn't have had that miracle."
Tretiak was considered the top goaltender in the world. Against Brooks' Americans, with the score 2-2 at the end of the first period, Soviet Union coach Viktor Tikhonov inexplicably pulled Tretiak from the game. The U.S. team went on to stun the Soviets 4-3, then rallied to defeat Finland for the gold medal.
In "Miracle," when Tikhonov removes Tretiak, Russell (playing Brooks) turns to his players and says, "Gentlemen, they just benched the best goaltender in the world."
Twenty-four years later, Tretiak says he still doesn't know why Tikhonov replaced him after that first period.
"You would have to ask the coach, but it wasn't my mistake," Tretiak said, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know why he did it."
Tretiak is aware "Miracle" is less than a month from its public opening, just before the National Hockey League's All-Star Game in Brooks' hometown.
"I don't think they asked Tikhonov to be in the movie," Tretiak said. "I don't know where he is now. I know they didn't ask me to be in it.
"They made the movie because the USA made a miracle. It was a big surprise because the USA beat a strong Russian team.
"Just before the Olympics, in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden, I remember we beat the USA 12-3. My team maybe didn't respect the USA team enough."
Earlier, the same Soviet Union team defeated a team of NHL all-stars.
But in the 1980 Olympics, when it counted, the U.S. team won.
"I remember in that game, they had good coaching, good leadership and good discipline," Tretiak said. "I remember the players worked very hard, every second, for 60 minutes. And in every game they played, they played better and better."
Brooks' son, Danny, was 12 years old and with his father during the 1980 Olympics. Friday, Danny was in Century City, Calif., with Russell, Patricia Clarkson (who plays his mother Patti), and Olympians Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig, Rob McClanahan, Buzzy Schneider and Jack O'Callahan, among others, for a private screening of "Miracle."
"I sat next to Eruzione and Al Michaels; Pat O'Brien (TV personality) was sitting about four chairs down from me, and at the end of the movie, O'Brien came over and hugged me," Brooks said.
"The movie is awesome. People were cheering in the theater. Kurt Russell is the movie; he is absolutely phenomenal. His portrayal of my dad is uncanny; he portrays my dad as a little softer and gentler than he really was. But he looks like him, has his mannerisms and all his sayings. He must have really researched him and watched a lot of tape. I know he spent a lot of time talking to my dad. It was very emotional watching."
Herb Brooks died at age 66 last August in a one-car accident just north of the Twin Cities. Danny Brooks said he got chills watching the film.
"People who knew my dad are going to eat this up," he said. "There will be absolute puddles from watching this movie."
DON'T PRINT THAT
Kurt Russell portrays Herb Brooks in "Miracle,'' a new Disney movie about the 1980 Olympic gold medal-winning United States men's hockey team. Russell attended a private screening Friday along with Brooks' son, Danny.
"It was the first time the actors saw the movie, too," Danny Brooks said. "When Kurt Russell first saw me there, he looked like he had just seen a ghost. For me, watching my dad in the movie was like an out-of-body experience, a feeling you can't explain. And Patricia Clarkson looked like my mom (Patti).
"After the movie ended, I called my mom. We were in the lobby and I was passing my cell phone around. Kurt Russell got on the phone and said, 'This is Kurt Russell. Who am I talking to?' My mom almost died."
OVERHEARD
• Danny Brooks, recalling a line not in the movie "Miracle" that his father told his 1980 Olympic hockey players when they trailed Finland 2-1 entering the final period of their gold-medal game: "If you don't win this game, you'll take it to your bleeping graves."
Good fella. :< RIP
Me too
If if's and but's were wishes and nuts we'd all have a merry friggin' Christmas.
The greatest sporting win in the history of the US was all it was. It was the opening salvo in Reagan's triumph over the Soviet Union, the first victory of the Reagan era cold war. It was the catalyst that freed us from the malaise of the Carter years, and I'm convinced that without it the rest of the fall of the Soviet empire would not have happened. It showed the world that the Soviet Red Army team was not infallible, nor was communism.
We all owe Herb Brooks and his boys an immense debt of gratitude.......
You went to see something with the name "Attack of the Clones"? What were you thinking?
smiling broadly, only teasing
Indeed we do. In a sense, the Reagan Revolution began that night in Lake Placid.
I wonder if the movie will give me the still-unequalled knot in my stomach while waiting out the last couple minutes of the Russia game?
Two words: Will Clark.
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