Some things you might not know about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey ‘Miracle on Ice’ game
Saturday is the 40th anniversary of the day ABC play-by-play announcer Al Michaels asked a nation, “Do you believe in miracles?”
Yes, it’s been 40 years since a nation watched live as the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team won the gold medal by upsetting the invincible juggernaut Soviet Union in Lake Placid, New York, pulling off the “Miracle on Ice” in front an insane crowd that howled throughout.
Well, not exactly.
Here’s a few things you might not know or might have forgotten about what’s considered (perhaps) the greatest coast-to-coast shared sporting moment of joy in U.S. history.
▪ The only people in the United States who watched the game live were the 8,500 in the Olympic Center Ice Rink. The game was played at 5 p.m. Eastern time on a Friday and shown on tape delay at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
ABC had requested the game be moved to 8 p.m., so it could be shown live in prime time. The USSR argued that would put opening face-off at 4 a.m. for its puck-loving nation. The International Ice Hockey Federation agreed. Without the TV timeouts and with few whistles, the game easily finished before ABC’s prime time Olympic broadcast began.
▪ This would hardly be the first big sporting event on tape delay. In those days before the Internet and running scores along the bottom of the screen, it was custom for TV sports broadcasters to warn you to look away from the television if you didn’t want to know an event’s result before watching. But at least one ABC affiliate didn’t give its viewers that chance. As soon as the game finished, the station showed the result as a crawl across the bottom of the screen.
ABC, however, held back completely when that night’s Olympic coverage started. Studio host Jim McKay didn’t even hint at the game’s result.
▪ This wasn’t the gold medal game. There was no such thing. This was the first of the United States’ two games in the Medal Round, to which the U.S. had advanced with Sweden, the Soviet Union and Finland. With one game left, against Finland, the U.S. still wasn’t guaranteed any medal at all.
Going into the Sunday games, if the United States lost to Finland badly enough and Sweden tied the Soviets, the Americans could still wind up fourth. But the United States beat Finland 4-2 to clinch the gold.
▪ Sports Illustrated’s E.M. Swift wrote scalper tickets for the game were going for $340 and U.S. player Mark Johnson heard someone offer $600.
▪ The public address announcer in the Olympic Center Ice Rink was female. Even these days, that’s rarer than female play-by-play or color commentators.
▪ Adding to the electric, but unusual atmosphere: people in the crowd seemed to be holding their breath en masse, exhaling only for U.S. goals, until Mike Eruzione’s goal gave the Americans a 4-3 lead in the third period.
“Now, you’ve got bedlam!” Michaels said during the celebration of Eruzione’s goal. Earlier in the ABC broadcast, color commentator Ken Dryden noted the contrast between this tense audience and the raucous roaring throughout the U.S.’s 7-3 blasting of Czechoslovakia during group play.
(That was the game that hinted this U.S. team might be something special. Nobody put a whipping like that on Czechoslovakia, not even the Soviets.)
▪ In each team’s last pre-Olympic exhibition, the Soviets smoked the United States 10-3 at Madison Square Garden. Awed collegians skated on shaky knees against international superstars they knew well despite seeing them play only in Olympics, Canada Cups and exhibition tours against NHL and WHA teams. But that set the stage for the Feb. 22, 1980, game that meant something.
The 10-3 game, several on the Soviet side have admitted over the years, left them with little respect for the Americans as serious opponents.
▪ U.S. coach Herb Brooks encouraged his team to give the Soviets less respect. Brooks continually told the team USSR coach Viktor Tikhonov looked like a chicken; captain Boris Mikhailov looked like bumbling comedian Stan Laurel of Laurel & Hardy; and the Soviets were taking the Olympics as more American holiday instead of serious competition.
▪ Part of Brooks’ pregame speech remains on a plaque in the arena, now renamed Herb Brooks Ice Arena. “If we played them 10 times, they might win nine. But not this game. Not tonight. Tonight, we skate with ‘em. Tonight, we stay with them and we shut them down because we can! Tonight, WE are the greatest hockey team in the world.”
▪ In the year of putting together the team and developing strategy, Brooks aimed at this game. He wanted to play a style that melded the more physical North American game with the puck possession game played best by the Soviets on the 15-foot wider international rink. Also, precious few opponents owned the conditioning to fly with the Russian swifts for a full game at high speed. Throughout the previous months, Brooks made sure the Americans could do so. The United States outscored the Soviets 2-0 in the third period, the Finns 3-0 in the third period and all foes 16-3 in the third.
▪ Still, the Soviets outshot the U.S., 39-16, requiring goalie Jim Craig to play the game of his life. Rather, Craig’s teammates required that of him. The United States rarely got caught obscenely out of position defensively, as most USSR opponents did, but also rarely made use of that positioning to prevent quality scoring chances.
▪ After the first U.S. goal, a long, wide-angle shot off the left wing by Buzz Schneider, Michaels quickly and accurately said, “That’s not the kind of goal you expect someone like (Soviet Union goalie Vladislav) Tretiak give up.”
▪ The biggest goal of the game was Mark Johnson’s goal with one second left in the first period that tied the game 2-2 came. Johnson raced between two Soviet defensemen, already relaxed as if the period had ended, to snag the long rebound of a center ice slapshot. He sliced left and fired the puck around a shocked Tretiak.
That goal involved a couple of familiar, familial U.S. hockey names. The center ice slapshot came off the stick of Dave Christian, whose family made Christian hockey sticks. Dave’s father, Billy Christian, was on the 1960 gold medal U.S. Olympic team. Johnson’s father, “Badger” Bob Johnson, was a legendary University of Wisconsin coach who was Herb Brooks’ opposite (Johnson: relentlessly upbeat, Minneapolis native, Wisconsin coach. Brooks: relentlessly critical, St. Paul native, University of Minnesota coach.)
▪ Johnson’s goal prompted the most second-guessed coaching move in Olympic hockey history, if not all of hockey history: Tikhonov pulling Tretiak after the first period. Tretiak was the best goalie in the world at the time. Some still believe he’s the best ever. Imagine pulling a multiple Cy Young Award-winning pitcher at his peak in a tied World Series game after three tough innings.
▪ Nobody thought of the goalie who replaced Tretiak, Vladimir Myshkin, as just another Vlad to be had. Myshkin handled the net when the Soviets shut out the NHL All-Stars, 6-0, in the deciding game of the 1979 Challenge Cup series. He would go on to a great career in the Russian League. But Myshkin wasn’t Tretiak.
▪ The movie “Miracle” showed the Soviet Union taking a 3-2 lead after a USSR player quite illegally plows over U.S. goalie Jim Craig like a runaway semi-truck so a teammate could score into the unguarded goal.
In reality, the goal was so clean, you could eat off of it. While killing a penalty, the Americans had full control of the puck before a forced turnover at the red line. Vladimir Krutov launched forward Alexander Maltsev on a breakaway and Maltsev whipped home the second period’s only goal with a beautiful move.
▪ Each team went one for three on the power play. Each power play goal was that team’s third goal.
▪ After Johnson and Eruzione scored just 1:21 apart in the third period to give the United States a 4-3 lead, exactly 10 minutes remained. Instead of holding the puck to force a stoppage every time he had the chance, as goalies often did to interrupt the flow of play while protecting a lead or killing a penalty, Jim Craig held the puck only when absolutely necessary. E.M. Swift’s landmark Sportsmen of the Year story on the team said Craig didn’t want to give his teammates any time to think about how close they were to beating the Soviets, fearing nerves might get them.
▪ The United States slowly broke the Soviets down late in the game by staying close in every way. Matching fitness level and playing smart defense kept the Americans from suffering the usual Soviet flurry of goals that knocked out so many opponents over the years. And unlike earlier in the game, they made defensive plays when in position. This rattled the USSR. Not used to being behind to a still-motoring foe, the ultimate puck possession team began playing dump-and-chase — shooting the puck into the offensive zone then trying to force a turnover. The Soviets usually sneered at this common North American strategy as the attack for the unskilled.
▪ The Soviets never pulled their goalie for a sixth attacker, as teams usually do when down one or two goals in the last two minutes. Why? So rarely did they trail late in games, they never practiced any part of it, from getting the goalie off the ice to playing six skaters-on-five.
