Miracle on Ice
1980

Herb Brooks — the coach — had been the last man cut from the 1960 US Olympic team that won gold in Squaw Valley. He carried that for twenty years. When he was given the 1980 team, he did not pick the best twenty Americans available. He picked the right twenty. Conditioned them past exhaustion. Made them hate him so they would not hate each other. Ran them through what came to be called "Herbies" — end-to-end sprints that did not stop until somebody threw up.

USA vs. Soviet Union  ·  Lake Placid, February 22, 1980  ·  Photo: Henry Zbyszynski (CC BY 2.0)

The Soviet team had played together for a decade. Soldiers on paper. Professionals in practice. Vladislav Tretiak in goal — widely considered the best goaltender in the world. Boris Mikhailov, Valeri Kharlamov, Sergei Makarov on the wings. They had not lost a meaningful international match in years. They were not afraid of twenty college kids. They had no reason to be.

Two weeks before the Olympics, in a closed-door exhibition at Madison Square Garden, the Soviets beat the US team 10–3. The US coach shook hands at center ice and returned to his hotel room to write new lines.

Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov had pulled Tretiak after the first period — a decision Tretiak would later call the biggest mistake of Tikhonov's career. The backup goaltender, Vladimir Myshkin, was good. He was not Tretiak. At the end of the second, the score was 3–2 USSR. Then Mark Johnson scored on a power play eight minutes into the third. Mike Eruzione — the captain, a kid from Winthrop, Massachusetts who would never play a single NHL game in his life — buried a wrist shot from the slot at 10:00. USA 4. USSR 3. Ten minutes to defend it.

Ice hockey at the XIII Winter Olympic Games  ·  Lake Placid, February 1980  ·  NOAA / Public domain

The Soviets came in waves. Twenty-four shots at Jim Craig in goal. He stopped twenty-three of them. The clock ran down. The crowd at Lake Placid chanted U-S-A so loud you could hear it three blocks from the arena. Eleven seconds.

The bench cleared. Sticks went into the air. Twenty kids in red, white and blue stacked themselves into a single pile of bodies at center ice. Jim Craig skated in a circle with the American flag around his shoulders looking for his father in the stands. It was 5:30 in the afternoon on a Friday in February.

Jim Craig  ·  Looking for his father in the stands  ·  Lake Placid, February 24, 1980  ·  Public domain

First — they didn't win the gold by beating the Soviets. That was the medal round, not the final. Two days later they still had to play Finland for the gold, and they were down 2–1 going into the third period. They almost gave it back. They scored three unanswered. USA 4, Finland 2. Then they got the gold.

Second — Mike Eruzione never played a professional hockey game. Not one. The captain who scored the winning goal in the most famous game in American sports history played 11 minutes and 21 seconds of NHL hockey in his entire life. Zero, technically. He retired from competitive hockey to do speaking engagements and was inducted into Hall of Fames instead of skating in any of them. He became one of the most successful motivational speakers in American sport.

Third — Jimmy Carter never publicly received the team. There was a perfunctory South Lawn ceremony for all the medalists, no real focus on hockey, while the country was still consumed with Iran. The president was running for re-election in November and would lose in a landslide to Reagan. The team that had saved the country's mood for a long weekend was, within months, mostly back at college, back in the minor leagues, back to ordinary life.

The story remembers a country in red, white and blue ecstasy. The story forgets the country went right back to being the country. Inflation, the hostages, the line at the gas station. The miracle did not fix America. It gave America two hours where it was united around something it could be proud of. That's all the miracle was supposed to do.

That's enough.