THIS DAY IN HISTORY
THE MIRACLE ON ICE:
February 22, 1980
In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog
U.S. hockey
team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending
gold-medal
winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid,
New York.
The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell
to the
youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000
spectators. Two
days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey
gold.The
Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going
back to
1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days
before the
Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an
exhibition
game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked
scrappy,
but few blamed them for it--their average age, after all, was only 22,
and their
team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the
Toledo
Blades of the International League.Few had high hopes for the
seventh-seeded
U.S. team entering the Olympic tournament, but the team soon silenced
its
detractors, making it through the opening round of play undefeated,
with four
victories and one tie, thus advancing to the four-team medal round. The
Soviets,
however, were seeded No. 1 and as expected went undefeated, with five
victories
in the first round.On Friday afternoon, February 22, the American
amateurs and
the Soviet dream team met before a sold-out crowd at Lake Placid. The
Soviets
broke through first, with its new young star, Valery Krotov, deflecting
a slap
shot beyond American goalie Jim Craig's reach in the first period.
Midway
through the period, Buzz Schneider, the only American who had
previously been an
Olympian, answered the Soviet goal with a high shot over the shoulder
of
Vladislav Tretiak, the Soviet goalie.The relentless Soviet attack
continued as
the period progressed, with Sergei Makarov giving his team a 2-1 lead.
With just
a few seconds left in the first period, American Ken Morrow shot the
puck down
the ice in desperation. Mark Johnson picked it up and sent it into the
Soviet
goal with one second remaining. After a brief Soviet protest, the goal
was
deemed good, and the game was tied.In the second period, the irritated
Soviets
came out with a new goalie, Vladimir Myshkin, and turned up the attack.
The
Soviets dominated play in the second period, outshooting the United
States 12-2,
and taking a 3-2 lead with a goal by Alesandr Maltsev just over two
minutes into
the period. If not for several remarkable saves by Jim Craig, the
Soviet lead
would surely have been higher than 3-2 as the third and final 20-minute
period
began.Nearly nine minutes into the period, Johnson took advantage of a
Soviet
penalty and knocked home a wild shot by David Silk to tie the contest
again at
3-3. About a minute and a half later, Mike Eruzione, whose last name
means
"eruption" in Italian, picked up a loose puck in the Soviet zone and
slammed it
past Myshkin with a 25-foot wrist shot. For the first time in the game,
the
Americans had the lead, and the crowd erupted in celebration.There were
still 10
minutes of play to go, but the Americans held on, with Craig making a
few more
fabulous saves. With five seconds remaining, the Americans finally
managed to
get the puck out of their zone, and the crowd began counting down the
final
seconds. When the final horn sounded, the players, coaches, and team
officials
poured onto the ice in raucous celebration. The Soviet players, as
awestruck as
everyone else, waited patiently to shake their opponents' hands.The
so-called
Miracle on Ice was more than just an Olympic upset; to many Americans,
it was an
ideological victory in the Cold War as meaningful as the Berlin Airlift
or the
Apollo moon landing. The upset came at an auspicious time: President
Jimmy
Carter had just announced that the United States was going to boycott
the 1980
Summer Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
and
Americans, faced with a major recession and the Iran hostage crisis,
were in
dire need of something to celebrate. After the game, President Carter
called the
players to congratulate them, and millions of Americans spent that
Friday night
in revelry over the triumph of "our boys" over the Russian pros.As the
U.S. team
demonstrated in their victory over Finland two days later, it was
disparaging to
call the U.S. team amateurs. Three-quarters of the squad were top
college
players who were on their way to the National Hockey League (NHL), and
coach
Herb Brooks had trained the team long and hard in a manner that would
have made
the most authoritative Soviet coach proud. The 1980 U.S. hockey team
was
probably the best-conditioned American Olympic hockey team of all
time--the
result of countless hours running skating exercises in preparation for
Lake
Placid. In their play, the U.S. players adopted passing techniques
developed by
the Soviets for the larger international hockey rinks, while preserving
the
rough checking style that was known to throw the Soviets off-guard. It
was these
factors, combined with an exceptional afternoon of play by Craig,
Johnson,
Eruzione, and others, that resulted in the miracle at Lake Placid.This
improbable victory was later memorialized in a 2004 film, Miracle,
starring Kurt
Russell.
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