Al Michaels on the 1980 US hockey gold: “People went from burning American flags to waving them”.
Shoot me.
Reader Interactions
110Comments
Comments are closed.
Trackbacks
-
[…] Update: LOL. […]
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.
How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.
Let me file that under fuck it.
One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.
We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.
Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.
If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”
GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.
Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!
When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?
If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.
Not all heroes wear capes.
The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!
The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.
Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.
This blog will pay for itself.
Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.
Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.
They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.
You are here: Home / Miracle on ice
Just Some Fuckhead
I remember that like it was yesterday. I hollered out the trailer winder “Hey, put them flags out, we wun!”
kid bitzer
well, sure; but it’s not causa the hockey team.
it’s because ronald reagan said ‘it’s morning in america!’, and the whole country rose up as one and punched the nearest hippy to hand.
and then the berlin wall fell down on accounta he told it to.
Cat Lady
Yes, I too clearly remember putting down my burning flag and getting my crisp new one out to wildly wave/
Nick
Oh I forget the Iranians suddenly became fans of us again when we won a hockey game.
FlipYrWhig
Al Michaels thinks that the people who were disgruntled by the conditions of Jimmy Carter’s America were burning American flags? Can’t say I remember that.
J.W. Hamner
I love Mike Eruzione. Possibly only because of the BU connection (our shared alma mater)… since I’m really itching to burn some flags.
FlipYrWhig
(Like Nick, the images of burning flags I remember from back then were filmed _in Iran_.)
FlipYrWhig
Also, people were wearing those paper bags over their heads because they were ashamed to be fans of America. I think they said U.S.U.C.K.
RedKitten
I can’t decide whether to watch the game tonight or not — part of me is too scared to look, but another part of me doesn’t want to miss it just in case we do actually win.
MikeJ
Hockey? Is that the game where the girls are all wearing plaid skirts? Dunno why they’d play in the winter, but I’ll watch.
dr. bloor
Al should cherish that moment. He parlayed an entire career out of it.
ricky
You gotta go back thirty years to find a hockey game Americans cared about!!!!
T.R. Donoghue aka Steve Balboni
Michaels is a long standing right-wing crank.
burnspbesq
Going to be the most watched teevee program in Canadian history, by a lot. And if the US wins … has an entire country ever cried at the same time?
mr. whipple
Michaels is a nutter.
tenkindsagrumpy
And when i had finished burning the flag, I spread the ashes (Do nylon flags leave ashes?) on my organic garden.
soonergrunt
Actually, Doug, that’s just about what happened, if a little embellished.
The end of the Vietnam war and fall of Saigon with the last, desperate withdrawal from the roof of the abandoned embassy
The fall of a presidency because of all the criminal revelations
The Ford presidency with Stumbles McFumblepants
The Carter presidency, with a president that couldn’t seem to lead but only react to bad shit all the time
The inflation
The gas lines
The “Malaise”
The Iran Hostage Crisis with the Desert One fiasco
The fall of Cambodia
I could go on and on and on. I grew up in the 1970s and I remember that stuff.
No. People weren’t burning flags in the town squares. People had been doing that relatively recently. But people also weren’t flying the Stars and Stripes either. There wasn’t much reason to do that (not coincidentally, this was something that Reagan campaigned on). Finally, there was something going right. Finally there was a reason for people to talk about something great that Americans had done as Americans.
So maybe those of us who remember that time first hand get a little treacly about ‘the miracle on ice.’ Forgive us a little bit, will you? And while you’re at it, just remember that we did cynical better since we had so many good reasons, and that it got old for us, too.
Phantomist
Tonight is the night the world stopped burning effigies of Tim Horton and started drinking Labatt Blue. Aye.
ricky
Thanks to the Miracle on Ice Reagan was able to melt the Berlin Wall and liberate the heirs of the losing team to
draw 6+ annual salaries in the “American” National Hockey League.
RedKitten
@burnspbesq:
With sadness? I’d say probably when Terry Fox died or when the Air India bombing took place.
With joy? That would be when men’s hockey won gold in Salt Lake City.
Nick
@soonergrunt:
If all the American people needed to kick start their patriotism in 1980 was a gold medal, then we’re more pathetic than I thought.
ricky
@soonergrunt:
I think the more salient fact of your 70’s recollection was the probability that it was spent in Oklahoma from whence the wind sweeping down the plain sent most intelligent people to Califonia forty years earlier.
alone in the dark
The “Miracle on Ice” is a prime example of mythological oversimplification. In retrospect, it was not nearly so much David v. Goliath as a case of a smart, tough coach building a team to take advantage of what he perceived as the weaknesses of the Soviet system. The perspective of history also makes it clear that the Soviet monolith was beginning to crumble and the team ripe for a beating. It was less about political vindication than it was the age-old athletic story of a team that had been so dominant for so long that, when it was challenged and found itself in a sticky situation, became an ossified victim of the success of its own system.
soonergrunt
@ricky: Actually, I lived in Denver from birth in 1970 to 1976, when I moved to Douglas, Wyoming.
We moved to Missouri (a little shit-hole town called Kirksville) in 1982. I went to high school in Colorado.
Moved around a lot as a kid because my dad was a City Administrator who specialized in cities and towns in financial trouble. He’d fix a town and then get bored, so we’d move.
I didn’t end up in Oklahoma until 1996 at age 26 when I needed a place to stay while I looked for work after I got out of the Army. Oklahoma is where my parents were at the time. I intended to find a job as quickly as possible and get the fuck out of this flat empty nothing of a state as quickly as possible. I’ve been here 14 years.
Josh Huaco
@ricky:
Hey now. My gf’s a native Okie. People who are *from* (i.e. no longer living in) Oklahoma are some of the best (and even sometimes liberal) people I’ve ever met. But within the state itself? The people are all right, but it really is the wingularity.
MNPundit
@alone in the dark: Maybe so, but my parents certainly remember it as David v. Goliath. They were in MN and described it in terms similar to soonergrunts.
Comrade Mary
#shrug# Whatever you say, boss.
soonergrunt
@Nick: We certainly were then, Nick.
soonergrunt
@Josh Huaco: Oklahoma Liberals tend to be very liberal about domestic policy issues. When we can get together, that is. We tend to operate like spies in deep cover in a foreign country. I leave an orange OG&E flag (one of those little ones they put in your yard to show where the gas line is) hanging upside down from the trash can handle when I want to meet with my contact.
alone in the dark
@MNPundit:
I lived in Oklahoma City at the time (attending college) and I got a full dose of the “we beat the godless Commies; praise our flag.” Probably even indulged in a little–I was 18 and thick. My point is that 30 years later the continued hagiography at the expense of any real analysis is symptomatic of the sort of woolly-headed nostalgia and sentimentality that has helped land us in the present situation.
burnspbesq
The interesting question, to which no one will ever know the answer, is “If the US has turned around and lost to Finland on Sunday, and not gotten a medal, would anyone remember the win over the Soviets?”
Americans, by and large, are notorious fair-weather fans and bandwagon-jumpers.
ricky
@soonergrunt:
My apolgies. I guess your name fooled me much like those who call themselves “Tex” but only moved there as growned ups.
So do your memories of the horrid 70’s included the traumatic moment when Mom pricked you with the Whip Inflation Now pin she used to fasten on your dippies?
I ask that with more than a touch of sacrasm. Michaels is enaged in a little bit more than “embellishment” but I wouldn’t expect someone who was 10 in 1980 to have much historical perspective on what happened in that decade.
FlipYrWhig
The thing I find funny about the Miracle On Ice story is that it relies on the exceptional, divinely-authorized world-bestriding power to fill the role of “underdog.” It’s like _Red Dawn_ or _Rocky IV_ on skates.
ricky
@Josh Huaco:
My paternal side of the family was relocated to Oklahoma
when the railroad my engineer Grandfather worked for decided to go into the oil business. They fit in fine because before being sent north they were all Texas Aggies.
burnspbesq
@FlipYrWhig:
In point of actual fact, the US team were prohibitive underdogs against the Sovs. Two weeks before, they lost to them 10-3 at Madison Square Garden.
That Soviet team was the best collection of hockey talent ever assembled. They picked the wrong game to come out flat, and Gomelsky was an idiot to pull Tretiak after giving up Johnson’s soft goal at the end of the first period.
ricky
@FlipYrWhig:
Yeah, but considering we were coming off a loss to a bunch of guys in black pajamas, we felt like perpetual world underdogs.
Josh Huaco
@ricky:
Heh. There are few people so deranged as Aggies. But then I’m currently enrolled at Ken Starr U. here in Waco, so…
soonergrunt
@ricky:
Then you would be wrong. And while I don’t remember the WIN button first hand, I did have parents who were pretty hard core about watching the news and commenting on it and expecting their children to do the same. And those parents would never have had something from that Damn Republican ™ in their house, anyway.
And while I wasn’t around for the protests of the 1960s, my parents were, and if they ever said anything about that time, they talked about how divided the country was then, and if they ever talked about the 1970s it was about the constant parade of bad news.
bayville
It might be getting near Last Call for Al.
The only folks I remember burning American flags in 1980 were the Ayatallah’s gang at the embassy in Iran. I don’t think they were hanging on Al’s call of that Hockey game, though.
But I’ll keep surfin’ Youtube however – looking for video of some of those Flag Burnin’ Block Parties from 1980 I keep reading & hearing about from the Revisionists out there.
Anya
Am I totally unpatriotic for rooting for the Canadain team? You see, I grew up in Canada and when it comes to Hockey, I still cannot root against the maple leaf. I was indoctrinated. Blame my parents who moved us to Canada.
FlipYrWhig
@burnspbesq: You’re totally right, hockey-wise, but part of the reason why it’s a cherished piece of American lore is that the U-S-A gets to be the scrappy, plucky bunch taking on the implacable Soviet machine. We’ve got moxie, they’re unfeelingly efficient. It flatters the American sense that we aren’t the empire that needs to be taken down a notch, THEY are. (I think that’s also why the basketball Dream Team got so old so fast. It doesn’t flatter the same underdog narrative.)
demo woman
Al Michaels is nuts…
Josh Huaco
@bayville:
I think it’s more like some weird quantum thing where merely thinking of the flag burning causes it to exist.
soonergrunt
@FlipYrWhig: In this particular case, USA Hockey actually was the underdogs.
The Soviets had recently toured the US and defeated several NHL teams. They were pretty universally regarded as the best in the world, with many of their team members having been on the for over ten years.
They whipped the USA men pretty convincingly 10-3 only a couple of weeks before.
Nobody gave USA good odds of getting to the game in the first place, expecting them to be eliminated early on.
Linkmeister
@burnspbesq: That’s what I remember, too: that the US was a prohibitive underdog (I was 29 at the time, so no youthful faulty memories here). That’s what was so absolutely stunning about the win.
I have to agree that Brooks constructed that team for that particular tournament, too; very few of the players went on to any great success in the NHL.
frankdawg
I grew up in MN, in a hockey nuts community – Herbies, East Side. We didn’t really see it as the Ruskies vs. the US as much as the best hockey team to ever play the game against a bunch of kids, some of whom we had watched play since they were little kids.
If you were not part of that scene you really do not understand how good that Soviet team was. They easily beat the best of the NHL to the point the NHL refused to play against the Russians except as an all-star team. There is a tremendous documentary made shortly after the collapse with interviews of the Soviet players. They were stunned and repeated over and over, “they were just school boys”
The bigger drama was the resistance Herb got from USA hockey. They hated the way he built the team, they hated the way he coached the team and they hated him even more for winning.
To me what made it more miraculous was he won while playing the second best goalie on his team.
burnspbesq
@Anya:
Yes, but you’ve provided a sufficient explanation, so Tunch will not eat you as punishment for your sins.
bayville
@burnspbesq:
That Russian team was loaded. Festisov, Kharlamov, Tretiak, Makarov etc. Best team in the world …Period.
Remember the U.S. beat some incredible teams just to get to the Russian game. They demolished the Czechs who featured the Statsny brothers – all three of them.
They tied the Swedes as well who had the late Pelle Lingbergh between the pipes.
burnspbesq
Gotta go get snacks for tonight’s double-header (Duke – Virginia Tech live, then US – Canada on the DVR). See y’all later.
bayville
@Josh Huaco:
Ok, thanks. Then I was sober during that year. Thought maybe I had a yearlong blackout, like during 1985.
burnspbesq
@bayville:
Hell yes. If CSKA Moscow had been in the NHL during that time, we would have been spared the horrors of watching the fucking Islanders win four straight Stanely Cups.
bayville
@burnspbesq:
I probably would have rooted for CSKA vs. the Islanders too. Still can’t stand Billy Smith.
alone in the dark
@bayville:
It wasn’t just the level of talent the USSR possessed; they played using a team concept that confused the NHL mightily. Watch those games again and note the NHL method of relying on individual breakaways and the talent of their superstars to dominate the game. The Soviets’ team system knocked the props out from under a Canadian/US system that believed individual brilliance would triumph. That’s one of the reasons that USA Hockey hated Brooks. He didn’t pick stars. He picked players to fit the system he believed would beat the USSR.
Everyone keeps referring to the 10-3 spanking at MSG. I think that probably made Lake Placid possible. After all, what greater proof did the USSR need of their superiority than the fact that they had walloped the US team so recently?
mr. whipple
They could never have beaten the Hanson brothers, though.
techno
As someone who got to watch all the home games Brooks coached at the University of Minnesota, I am one of the tiny handful of hockey fans who wasn’t especially surprised when the USA won gold in 1980.
Brooks was nothing less than an American Tarasov–a hockey genius who spent six seasons at UM plotting the defeat of USSR. And because the NHL wasn’t drafting American talent much those days, some of his amateurs had world-class talent–Broton, Christian, Johnson, Ramsey, Morrow all had significant pro careers after they had won their gold medals.
Yes indeed, USSR was better than USA, but because of Brooks, the USA was good enough to be in the game
alone in the dark
@mr. whipple:
Plus Mmmmm-bop was much catchier than The Internationale.
Andy K
@soonergrunt:
It’s funny, because I have for almost my entire life lived in a city (Grand Rapids, MI)that might be the hotbed of American conservatism since the days of hometown isolationist Senator Arthur Vandenberg served in DC, and while I don’t recall any flags being burned around here, I still don’t see a hell of a lot of them being waved, either.
OTOH, we’ve got our traditional, Calvinist cross-wavers all over the place, and we always have.
soonergrunt
@mr. whipple:
they’re trying to remake that movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1370413/
alone in the dark
@techno:
Exactly. The win wasn’t so much a miracle as the result of hard work, dedication, and insight. You know, expertise and knowledge. All the things that we’ve recently been told are signs of moral rot. Herb should’ve just gone with his gut.
alone in the dark
@Andy K:
Yeah, but you have a great radio station in WYCE.
techno
@alone in the dark:
Yes indeed, the way USA treated Brooks was utterly shameful. He had to go coach in Davos Switzerland, for goodness sakes.
Anya
@burnspbesq: Thank you! I was afraid someone might visit me in the middle of the game and drag me to a teabaggers’ revival meeting as a punishment for my sins.
alone in the dark
@techno:
OTOH, if I remember correctly, he was a very handsome fellow and married to Patricia Clarkson to boot.
soonergrunt
@Andy K: That was the part about the embellishment.
I don’t remember a sudden rush on american flags either, but I do remember that it was a pretty big thing at that time.
Andy K
@alone in the dark:
Meh. I’m not all that big on it. Liked it a lot more 15-20 years ago, when the DJs had a lot more control over their own playlists. In the early days you’d hear punk/alt-rock and hip-hop shows, but now it’s programmed as muzak for hippy food co-ops.
techno
@alone in the dark:
Agree. Every time I hear the 1980 win called a “Miracle” I want to cringe. Although, in fairness, Kurt Russell actually captured Brooks-the-hockey-genius in Disney’s “Miracle.”
Andy K
@soonergrunt:
Well, I make quite a few trips to the other side of the lake in the falls to watch Packers games- and I have for decades- and the people in northern Wisconsin are big flag wavers now. In the fall of 1979, though? Not so much.
alone in the dark
@techno:
I actually thought the movie was a bit subversive, since it portrayed the victory as less a product of divine intervention and more the result of smart, intense study and understanding of one’s opponent.
Although I do always give a little “yip!” when Russell/Brooks looks down the bench at Tikhonov and says, “He doesn’t know what to do! He doesn’t know what to do!”
alone in the dark
@Andy K:
Still a lot better than commercial radio here in the Great Midwest.
arguingwithsignposts
@alone in the dark:
The USSR also played on international ice, which is larger than NHL/US/Canada ice, and therefore emphasizes the team play more. And the international rules are different as well, IIRC.
techno
@alone in the dark:
Damn! It’s nice to know someone else “gets” the story of Brooks and the 1980 games. I have written my version at
http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2010/02/superbowl-and-winter-olympics.html
starting at paragraph #5
But I would like to know how you discovered the story.
soonergrunt
@techno: Well, it kind of was, just for the reason that nobody knew differently. The sovs were the best of the best and everybody said “it would take a miracle to beat them” and so on.
People who really watched hockey may have known better, but hockey wasn’t something that people outside of NHL cities or cities in the north (same cities in most cases) watched because network TV didn’t cover it much. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure the first hockey game I ever watched was an olympic game.
lenn
@alone in the dark: I think it was the movie where the Brooks character was married to Patricia Clarkson.
Andy K
@alone in the dark:
I prefer Sirius’ programming. It’s worth the subscription fee, and I can listen to soccer, football, etc. too.
alone in the dark
@arguingwithsignposts:
True, and I should have mentioned that. Thank you.
Jim C
@techno: How does Karl Malden’s performance in “Miracle On Ice” compare?
I remember a lot of flag-waving in the 70s. Sure, most of it was during the Bicentennial, but many, many flags were waved then.
techno
@alone in the dark:
I have heard that story is actually true. And since Russell interviewed Brooks fairly extensively, my guess is that Brooks is the source of that line. I DO remember team USA was very surprised that USSR didn’t pull Myshkin.
techno
@soonergrunt:
Yes, I know. The “Miracle” claim is mostly harmless. Hey, I was living in St. Paul during the Brooks era. I was sharing a life with a SERIOUS surgical nurse at the UM hospital and former hockey cheerleader, so we got hockey tickets for employee discount.
Hands down, Herb Brooks’ attempt to invent a North American version of USSR/Tarasov hockey was the MOST interesting story in Twin City sports. Yet, not ONE writer for the local media ever covered the story. My best friend was a cameraman for the CBS affiliate WCCO and was at Lake Placid, and HE had to have the story explained AFTER he got home–basketball fans–sheesh. So it wasn’t ONLY the non-hockey market media that missed the story.
If you don’t know the real story, a “Miracle” is the only explanation left. But trust me on this, the real story was much, MUCH more interesting. And I appreciate that Russell actually tried to tell it.
alone in the dark
@techno:
I’m not sure where or when I formed my opinion of Brooks, but I think it unfolded slowly for several reasons.
First, I played football and basketball in high school and basketball and soccer in college. I began to realize that, in my experience, most upsets resulted not from a fluke play or some superhuman individual effort, but rather from superior teamwork/understanding and exploitation of an opponent’s weakness.
Second, I actually saw a live hockey game and was struck by how fast and graceful it was. I was struck by how a team that utilized speed and could transition fluidly from offense to defense could outflank a more physically talented opponent. Add the anaerobic effects of skating a shift and I realized that the conditioning required of hockey players was phenomenal.
About that time I either read something by Brooks or something about him that stressed how he emphasized conditioning. That was probably the first alarm bell. Everyone in 1980 had talked about how the “Russians” just ground other teams down; was Brooks’ method designed to offset that edge?
Finally, I actually researched the history of the Red Army/Soviet Olympic hockey juggernaut. It appeared to me that by the 1980 Olympics, they were primed to fall. They weren’t decrepit, but the total success of their system seemed to have rendered them rigid, and in my experience that’s when a dynasty is ripe for a whipping.
The more I learned about it, the less the victory seemed like a miraculous fluke and more like a vindication of a disciplined, hard-working maverick.
Ash Can
@bayville: Seconded. If I ever found myself face-to-face with Billy Smith, my initial reaction would be to slap him so hard he’d be talking out of the side of his head for the rest of his life, and I’d say to him, “That’s for Curt Fraser.”
As for the 1980 Olympic team, speaking as someone else old enough and fan enough to remember the game vs. the Soviets vividly, it really can’t be emphasized enough that this was first and foremost a David v. Goliath situation. The Soviet ice hockey team was such a juggernaut for so long that no one in their right mind would have thought a group of American college players would have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating them. Going back many years, the Soviets, in tournament after tournament and Olympics after Olympics, had just steamrollered the competition. Canadians and Americans were sore about it, too, back in those days of amateur-only Olympics, since the Soviet players were all but pros — they had nominal jobs back in the USSR, but it was pretty obvious their first priority, time-wise and responsibility-wise, was playing hockey, and they were rewarded handsomely (by Soviet standards) for it by their government. Going into the 1980 Olympics, all us American hockey fans simply assumed that the Soviets would pound everyone again, including the Americans. For once, we were wrong, and were we ever happy about it.
No Joy in Mudville
I predict that if the US wins the hockey gold in 2010, Osama bin Laden will appear in the streets of Peshawar waving an American flag. Then, he’ll surrender and apologize.
techno
@Jim C:
Malden? Oh. My. Gawd! Worst casting EVAH!
Because Brooks was a conditioning freak, and because he had ZERO tolerance for fools, he is often portrayed as a monster. (The Malden version) What is lost in this version of Brooks is that his practices were incredibly creative affairs that players actually liked. He didn’t waste their time. Every day they learned something new. The difference between a Brooks team in the Fall and one after Christmas was amazing.
On the other hand, the general opinion among Minnesotans that knew Brooks is that Russell just nails him.
techno
@alone in the dark:
Yeah, the quote of Brooks when he said, “someone is going to beat these guys” is apparently true.
One of the lessons Brooks learned from Tarasov was borrowing. Tarasov believed you built on other sports your athletes played. He borrowed from bandy and soccer. Brooks borrowed from football (hitting) and basketball (the fast break.)
But he also tapped into the UM medical school. Every damn drill he invented got a seal of approval from the physiology folks. So not only did he believe in conditioning, he believed you brought in the heavy science folks so long as you shared a campus with them.
Jim C
@techno:
I thought Malden was just playing the same character as he played on “Streets of San Francisco,” but never knew if it bore any resemblance.
It’s been a few since I saw that film. I remember him coming off more as “tough” than “monster.”
soonergrunt
@techno: The Disney movie Miracle is one of my favorites, and when you and others who know the sport and the man explain what really happened, it makes perfect sense.
If you look at footage of those games, the thing that strikes me is the constant shuffling of players on and off the ice that USA did. He kept his players fresh as much as he could.
techno
@soonergrunt:
Brooks line changes were always perfect. His teams didn’t have prima donnas that stayed out too long. Also notice the 1980 team was never caught with too many men on the ice.
Line changes–just one of MANY things Brooks got absolutely perfect during that Olympics. Its a game with a LOT of details–especially the way Brooks coached it.
tom p
Doug, I guess you were there… because you don’t remember the games. I read the comments 1 thru 14 and relaized nobody here was born before 1980. I remember the games, one thru “finale”, (in an unheated apartment… it was 1980, ya know?)(and if you don’t remeber 1980, I hardly expect you to remember ’74)
I also remember wanting to wear an American flag when we beat the Russians… Remember, these were their best playing against our amatuers.
Fact is, nobody thought it was possible, and yet “we” did it. And yeah, we flew the flag.
Kinda like John wearing a Steelers jersey a year ago.
soonergrunt
@tom p:
You should’ve read comment 17.
DougJ
@tom p:
I know people were flying flags after the win, I was around for it. But who the fuck — other than Iranians — was burning flags in 1980?
TuiMel
@soonergrunt:
Sorry; Desert One had not yet happened at the time of the “Miracle on Ice.”
Leelee fo Obama
@soonergrunt: If you lived near Edmond, I’d tell you to meet up with my big Sister. She’s one of a few dedicated liberals in OK. We chuckle often about your two Senators, because crying gives us a headache.
soonergrunt
@TuiMel:
I never claimed perfect recall. :)
Desert Rat
How many people remember the Finland game though?
The one where the US REALLY won the gold medal?
I actually think Miracle was the perfect hockey film, in a lot of ways…for the simple reason that they got the hockey right.
bayville
@Ash Can:
I remember during the game, Ken Dryden was doing color with Michaels and was almost apocalyptic that Russian coach Tikanov pulled Tretiak at the beginning of the second period. It was like Dryden sensed panic among the Soviet team. Since Dryden & Bernie Parent had both retired, Tretiak was considered to be the best goalie in the world. It would be like Phil Jackson pulling Michael Jordan for the game after a missed defensive assignment in the second quarter.
On a side note, that was a bizarre day for hockey fans in general because later that night, the Flyers and Canucks would set a still standing record for penalties and penalty minutes in a game thanks to a crazy bench clearing brawl in Vancouver – about five minutes from where tonite’s game is being played.
Big Sammy
I would not like to hang out with Al Michaels for even one minute. I
FlipYrWhig
@tom p: I was born in 1971. Maybe I was too young to notice the upsurge in patriotic fervor caused by the hockey team. But I hear a lot of people claiming that this or that event buoyed the spirits of the nation and I’m always hugely skeptical.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@ricky:
When people cared? Wasn’t that when the movie Slap Shot was released? The Hanson brothers kicked ass!
@mr. whipple:
See above comment. ;)
I think the older Repubs think of the 70’s as their ‘Dark Ages’. Everything had blown up with their faces with Vietnam ending like it did, Roe v Wade ruling, science on the march, the reality of pollution and dwindling resources being ‘shoved down their throats’, Iran telling us to fuck off, taking our people hostage and so on and so on and so on…
I think that is one of the reasons they embrace Reagan like they did and still do, although in reality if Reagan were alive today he would be considered a heathen by the same people who now idolize him. The 70’s were rough on those poor downtrodden souls. Then Saint Ronnie of Ray Gun came to the rescue and saved their bacon (well not really but that’s a story for another day). I am sure that there are all kinds of imagined slights and horrors that they remember in vivid detail from those days long ago. Whatever they recall is something that actually happened, even if it didn’t. They know that they are right and you are wrong.
They lived through it and you challenging them is enough to validate their memories. Remember, they are always right. Always.
Jager
If you knew anything about hockey, winning that Gold was a damned miracle. The Russians were the best in the world, they were pros in every sense of the word…Herb Brooks was a great coach and prepared that team perfectly. This old DFH hockey player was stunned, amazed and in tears when they won that game! (Most of that Russian team had kicked team Canada around just a few years earlier, much to the amazement of the NHL. Tretiak played so well against Team Canada, the Red Army promoted him from Corporal to Lt and got him a much bigger apartment!)
drillfork
Worst thing about Miracle on Ice? It rocket-launched the career of a smarmy, douchey sportscaster named Al Michaels…
Cheryl from Maryland
Why should the truth stand in the way of romantic Cold War nostalgia?
apocalipstick
@FlipYrWhig:
And always, always remember that New Orleans is rebuilt now that the Saints have won the Super Bowl.
artem1s
A. The gold was won by a bunch of hard working college kids. Pretty much the same kind of kids that Reagan would spend most of his presidency trying to keep out of college and in factories. Not all Americans. “We” didn’t do anything except watch a fucking TV that night.
B. I was on an actual college campus around that time and the only thing I remember was the anti-Iranian rallies and how the administration had to explain to the jar-headed RTOC kids that burning Iranian students and beating the crap out of every woman in a head dress was NOT the way real Americans behave.
apocalipstick
@artem1s:
And it was won by a coach who appealed to expertise to create a new system at odds with the conventional wisdom. Never forget how much Brooks clashed with the establishment, and remind yourself of that when the Powers-That-Be begin to talk about what can and what should be done.
Nick
Thast was the only clinker note in that piece. Michaels is a card-carrying asshole, and found a way to get in some of his bullshit.
frankdawg
Actually I was born in 1952 & went to Johnson HS, Herb’s high school (I wear a throwback number 5 Govenor’s sweater so, yeah I’m steeped in hockey crap) & we still go to both the Gopher men’s & woman’s games often.
ABC thought they could cash in quick with the Maldin version & it sucked because it totally ignored the actual work put in by Brooks and by the players. The “Miracle’ version got that part dead-on. Plus Brook’s use of an old basic training trick “If I make you all hate me you will all have something in common to bring you together” While I doubt the drama of the post Norway fiasco skate was actual, it portrayed the changes he forced on his teams thinking.
It also does not really emphasis how badly the Russians fell apart. He does have the line about them not knowing what to do but if you watch that game, particularly late you will see the Russians not making line changes often enough.
I think it had never occurred to them that they could be beaten and with the crowd going nuts they choked. Choked is a term used too often but if you know hockey there is not much other excuse. From the coach on down they got behind & panicked.
techno
@bayville:
Michaels and Dryden. Perhaps the worst / luckiest pair of announcers in sportscasting history. Michaels knew absolutely nothing about amateur hockey in USA. He didn’t even get some of the players names right at first. Dryden played at Cornell so at least he knew that amateur hockey existed, but of course, it was trash compared to the glorious game played in the mighty NHL. Dryden spent his time criticizing the USA for playing the way they had been coached to play. In fact, if you listen to the tape, he is bitching about something at the very moment the USA scores the game-winning goal. (Remember here, Dryden is considered a hockey intellectual having written some reasonably thoughtful books on the game.)
Of course, back in the real world, the NHL was busily destroying itself because it thought that because of the success of the Broad Street Bullies, hockey should become a wing of professional rasslin’ Meanwhile, out in the midwest, a couple of very bright coaches by the name of Herb Brooks and Bob Johnson at Wisconsin were trying to keep the flame of real hockey alive–think of Braden in Slapshot telling Reg Dunlop he wouldn’t “goon it up.”
Johnson was this strength-though-joy guy whose most famous quote was “It’s a great day for a hockey game.” He would go on to win Stanley Cups with the Pens. Brooks was this guy who was willing to tell people at the height of the Cold War that learning hockey lessons from the Russians was the way to become the best. The hockey establishment NEVER forgave him for this “treason.” And they really hated it when he went on to win multiple championships.
Johnson would coach USA to Bronze in the 1976 games and his son Mark who had absorbed all the lessons a dutiful coach’s son, was the top scorer on the 1980 team and the woman’s coach at Wisconsin and the 2010 games.
People in Minnesota remember Brooks but not much about his coaching. There is a bronze statue of him outside the arena where the Minnesota Wild play their home games, but inside, the team plays the crash and bang version of hockey that Brooks utterly detested. In fact, the most visible legacy of Brooks in Minnesota is all the colleges, including the University of Minnesota, that have the 200 x 100 international-sized rink for their home ice.
When Brooks really got his game installed at UM, he actually challenged the two pro teams in town (North Stars, St. Paul Saints) to a game. Neither had the guts to take him up. He called his product “the fastest game on ice” and it was. So even by 1978, Brooks had figured out how to play the game better than the NHL. He could have probably beaten a team of NHL All-Stars with the team he had at Lake Placid about as bad as the Red Army carved them up. As we saw again last night, Canadian hockey just isn’t very good and in those days, the NHL was almost ALL Canadian.
bullpin
Will someone inform Al Micheals the greatest US Olympic Hockey team was the 1960 gold metal winners. The team was made up of rink rats that played in a semi-pro league in Massachusetts.I personally saw most of the team play at Salt’s arena in Weymouth Ma.in the 50’s. Al was just lucky enough to call the 1980 game which he has capitalized on for 20 years.
frankdawg
Techno, don’t know if you remember but the Olympic team played a game against the North Stars, who at the time were considered ‘pussies’ because they didn’t goon it up enough (this was 84 or 88). The No Stars beat the hell out of the kids – lots of punches thrown. Seems they could goon it up when the opponent wasn’t skilled at fighting back.
I would have loved to see Brook’s Gophers take on the Stars – except the kids would have been beaten up badly. Hard to score goals with your eyes swollen shut. Or with only one eye like Dave Forbes provided Henry Boucha via his stick.
Watching hockey today I have to believe Herb is vomiting loudly.
KrisK
@Jim C
Yeah, it does take some forgetting to forget the Bicentennial. I still think Al Michaels is a good sports guy, though.
Flag burning my rear end — the only thing that was burning in the late 70’s was Columbian Gold.