Just wanted to say that that is an interesting take on the Miracle on Ice. You are right about the quality of players, there were many NHL draft picks on that team. As I recall Jim Craig played for the Atlanta Flames a week or two after the Olympics. The one thing I might take issue with is that nobody knew the team was very good. That was the one Olympics I seriously considered attending and it was because of the US team. It was widely known however that hockey tickets were the most difficult to get. The anticipation for that event was pretty high.
In your later post you are off the mark about the NHL getting a boost by Olympic hockey viewing. Posts on hockey business boards pretty clearly show no effect on ratings. Since NBC’s Olympic property isn’t helping their NHL property, there maybe nothing pressuring the NHL to continue with the Olympics except the players association.
What really put the U.S. team on the map was the 7-3 victory over Czechoslovakia in the second game of the preliminary round. This was pretty startling because the Czechs were considered the #2 team in the world after the Soviets at the time. Also, this was the game where TV viewers all over the world got a close-up look at U.S. coach Herb Brooks ...
The scenario was this:
A Czech player -- who will forever be remembered simply as “Number 3” -- had decked U.S. center Mark Johnson with a cheap shot, and Brooks was all over him from behind the bench. It’s obvious that the Czech player was using a Koho brand hockey stick!
Brooks and the U.S. team got something of a cult following from casual viewers all over the U.S. as a result of this incident. LOL.