I was sitting in a bar in Atlantic Beach, NC losing a few games of 9-ball at the time...
Posted on 08/12/2003 5:50:36 AM PDT by LavaDog
As the time ticked off the clock, the tension in the building became unbearable. The flickering green lights on the scoreboard counted down the seconds ever-so slowly.
9:59 ... 9:58 ... 9:57.
Mike Eruzione had just scored a goal for the Americans on a 30-foot shot, putting them ahead of the Soviet Union 4-3 in the semifinals of the Olympic hockey tournament in Lake Placid, N.Y., on Feb. 22, 1980.
The young U.S. team skated with urgency in every stride, furiously protecting the unlikely lead against the world's best hockey team.
Every second seemed like a minute. Every minute seemed like an hour.
"It was the longest 10 minutes of my life," said Eruzione, the team captain. "Five minutes after I scored, I looked up at the clock and it said 9:59."
Teammate Neal Broten remembered how peewee and squirt hockey organizers often use every second of scarce ice time, cramming games in by playing running time, with no clock stoppages.
"You never wanted to play running time before," Broten said. "Now, you did."
The team was a collection of hockey nomads, culled mostly from Minnesota and Massachusetts and dispatched to represent their country.
This was before NHL players were welcomed by the Olympics, when America still embraced the quaint tradition of amateurism in the games, even though other countries had discarded it long before.
7:59 ... 7:58 ... 7:57.
The Soviets were not going away quietly. This was a proud team of stars, led by goaltender Vladislav Tretiak, who would wind up in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and a fistful of future NHL players like Viacheslav Fetisov, Vladimir Krutov, Alexei Kasatonov, Sergei Starikov, Helmut Balderis and Sergei Makarov.
The Americans had scored twice against Tretiak in the first period, tying the game on a goal by Mark Johnson one second before the period ended. When they came back on the ice, Vladimir Mishkin had replaced Tretiak in goal.
"I think their coach was trying to wake up his team," said Broten, who would go on to play 16 years in the NHL and score 289 goals. "I didn't see any intensity in the Russians. I think they underestimated us. We had a smart team with a lot of hockey sense with players who had experienced some success. And we were on a bit of a roll."
"In his book, Tretiak said it severed the head of the team when he went out of the game," Eruzione said. "We got four goals. If he stayed in, we might have scored six."
That would have been nice. Six would have given the Americans some breathing room. As it was, they had a one-goal lead, and what seemed a lifetime in which to protect it.
5:59 ... 5:58 ... 5:57.
This was not just another Olympics. The 1980 Games were held in tumultuous times. Americans were being held hostage in Iran and Soviet troops were marching through Afghanistan.
President Carter had already announced a U.S. boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow. The U.S. economy was in disarray with interest rates and inflation soaring.
There was also the perception that the Americans were in over their heads against the Soviets. A week before the Olympics, the Soviets beat the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York.
"It was like a high school team playing a peewee team," Broten said. "We were overwhelmed. They must have had the puck for 58 minutes."
Eruzione said his team was "in awe" during the exhibition game.
"We stood around and watched them," he said. "It had been a long season and the Olympics were just around the corner. Guys were worrying about tickets and accommodations, even making the team. There were a lot of distractions."
Still, if this was a preview, the Americans faced a daunting task. The Soviets had a proud hockey history, dominating world championships and winners of five of the previous six Olympics.
They would not let the gold get away without a fight.
3:59 ... 3:58 ... 3:57.
American flags were all over the rink, waved frantically by fans chanting "USA, USA, USA." The encouragement was working.
"We were playing better," Eruzione said. "We were in our own building, in an Olympic atmosphere. And we thought we were pretty good."
Game by game, their confidence grew. In the tournament opener against Sweden, defenseman Bill Baker rescued the Americans, scoring the tying goal with 27 seconds left. That was followed by blowout wins: 7-3 over Czechoslovakia, 5-1 over Norway, 7-2 over Romania, and a come-from-behind 4-2 victory over West Germany.
That put the Americans in the medal round, up against the Soviets.
All season long, coach Herb Brooks had come up with homilies, designed to encourage his team. As they prepared to take the ice against the Soviets, he offered one more.
"You were born to be a player," he said. "You were meant to be here."
1:59 ... 1:58 ... 1:57.
Goalie Jim Craig was accustomed to pressure. He had led Boston University to the NCAA championship in 1978. He brought a goaltender's tough mentality to his task, regardless of whether the other team's shirts said "Northeastern" or "CCCP."
"As a goalie, then or now, the biggest thing is to give your team a chance to win," he said. "I remember being afraid, representing your country through a sporting event against such a powerful team. I tried to play each period as if it was a game."
The Soviets took 39 shots but just nine in the final 20 minutes.
"Guys were making plays," Eruzione said. "Phil Verchota would block a shot. Dave Silk would block a shot."
The goalie noticed.
"No Russian ever shot a puck just to shoot it," Craig said. "They were very calculated. Everybody had to work hard not to give them space.
"The guys played so well as a unit. The biggest thing against a team like that is you don't want to stop the play. Keep it going. Make sure the clock kept moving. That way, they couldn't prepare themselves. You don't want to wake them up."
With a minimum of faceoffs in which to collect their thoughts, the Soviet skaters played desperate hockey.
"Time ran out on them," Craig said.
0:03 ... 0:02 ... 0:01.
High above the ice, ABC broadcaster Al Michaels wrestled with the call, trying to decide how to describe one of the most dramatic moments in Olympic history.
"This is a business of spontaneity," he said. "You have to trust yourself and your instincts. As it developed with the U.S. protecting the lead, the arena was so loud, the emotion so great. Everybody was going crazy. I remember thinking, `Stay with it. Don't get swept up.' I was concerned with the fundamentals of play-by-play. The hotter it gets, the cooler you have to get.
"When it got to the very end, the puck skittered out to center ice. I remember thinking of one word in my mind - miraculous."
That became a simple and eloquent call.
"Do you believe in miracles?"
"Yes!"
As the final buzzer sounded, the Americans bounded over the boards and tackled one another gleefully, like a bunch of kids playing shinny on some country pond.
Brooks thrust an arm in the air in a brief, uncharacteristic expression of emotion, and then withdrew, leaving the celebration to the players.
Two days later, the Americans came from behind with three goals in the third period against Finland to win the gold medal. The celebration spilled into the streets of the small town, with perfect strangers pounding each other on the back, broad smiles on their faces.
At the medal ceremonies, Eruzione waved the entire team up to the podium, 20 young players sharing a red, white and blue miracle.
"The thing that strikes me is that it touched a lot of people in the United States, more than we ever thought," he said. "So many people felt a part of it. Fifty years from now, it'll still be special for a lot of people."
Certainly for the 20 players who accomplished it.
"It was something to always look back on," Broten said. "That experience, the closeness of that team. I wish I could go back and play it all over again."
Mine also. I remember when they beat the Russians. It was a Friday night and who could ever forget Al Michaels shouting "Do you believe in miracles".
Then that Sunday afternoon game when they beat Finland for the gold medal. It made you proud to be an American.
America was going through the Iran hostage crisis and the Carter malaise, and a rag tag team of American college kids beat the best hockey team in the world.
I was living & working in Hamburg, West Germany at the time.
I was single & had no girlfriend at that moment, so I was watching the game alone in my apartment.
I was standing up the entire third, going nuts.
When the final buzzer sounded, I heard a tremendous shout & cheer from somewhere in my apartment building. I thought - another American?
I never did find out who made that very loud cheer!
When you are an expat, you look for very little thread of something American.
Mine too and I'll never forget it. That Olympics, and especially the Hockey victories, rekindles a sense of pride and patriotism in this country that I thought was a thing of the past. It was a great way of awakening a great country after the horrible Watergate/Ford/Carter years.
Do you believe in miracles! Yes!
I was sitting in a bar in Atlantic Beach, NC losing a few games of 9-ball at the time...
1. The arena in Lake Placid is actually quite small -- if I remember correctly, the seating capacity is only about 10,000 or so. For anyone who has ever been to the Meadowlands in New Jersey, try to imagine the lower bowl of the Meadowlands with no upper tier -- that would be nearly identical to the layout in Lake Placid.
2. Some of the top Soviet players in 1980 later became the first wave of Soviet "pioneers" in the National Hockey League. Many of them later said that they always blamed coach Viktor Tikhonov for losing that game -- by replacing Tretiak (one of the best goalies of all time) in goal, he really affected the team's confidence in the last two periods. Especially since Tretiak had always had a reputation for giving up one "soft" goal every now and then, but was rarely beaten more than a couple of times in any game.
3. There was some confusion about whether the second goal Tretiak allowed in the first period would even count. It was scored with one second on the clock, and after it entered the net some of the Soviet players started to skate off the ice as if the period had already ended. Mark Johnson fired a long shot on goal just as the period was ending. Tretiak stopped it, but left the rebound right in front of the net and Johnson followed up on it and scored.
4. The Soviet system of play was different from what one would expect to find in North American hockey. Instead of rotating forward lines and defense pairs independent of each other, the Soviets operated with forward lines and defense pairs that would play together for the most part as five-man units. Coupled with goaltender Vladislav Tretiak, the famed Soviet "Green Unit" of that era may very well have been the best group of hockey players ever to set foot on the ice -- Igor Larionov playing center between Vladimir Krutov and Sergei Makarov, and defensemen Viacheslav Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov.
5. People always saw this as a huge "David vs. Goliath" affair because all these American college kids were playing against Soviet players who were the equivalent of professionals. Olympic hockey at that time was seen as a patently unfair event, because professional players in the National Hockey League were not permitted to play but Soviet "amateurs" were. However, from a hockey perspective the "upset" was not quite as big as most people think -- Herb Brooks had assembled a team of players whose skills were far better suited to Olympic hockey rules (particularly the larger ice surface and different off-side rules) than to NHL rules. In fact, because of the different style of play there is even some question in my mind about whether most NHL teams in 1980 could have beaten the U.S. Olympic team.
It was magnificent!
And I won't forget the look of utter disgust on the face of my leftwing radical American History professor the next day, either. He fairly spat at the mention of it.
Especially since the Soviets(and other eastern bloc countries athletes) were essentially professionals.
The Olympics back then (when they were run by Avery Brundidge), would clamp down on any athlete who received money in an athletic event. IIRC, an Austrian skier, in 72 had his medal stripped for getting $500 for particpating in a ski competition.
But the International Olympic Committee never said a word about how the eatern bloc countries athletes were basically professionals. They received everything, good coaches, training facilities, the best homes or apartments in the eastern bloc, the best food, even the best cars(although those cars were buckets of bolts), and the best sport enhancing drugs(who could ever forget the East German womens swim teams, which made Arnold look puny). The IOC, I guess, looked the other way probably because that was a gift from the ever "benevolent" state, while athletes in western countries who tried to make money through private means, were considered worse than the plague.
That was the beauty of the 80 US Hockey team. Everything and every odd was against them, but with their and Coach Herb Brooks pluck, they made history.
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