U.S. hockey team makes miracle on ice 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 their 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.
(More Events on This Day in History)
-
American Revolution
- 1777 Archibald Bulloch dies under mysterious circumstances
-
Automotive
- 1959 Lee Petty wins first Daytona 500
-
Civil War
- 1864 Battle of West Point, Mississippi
-
Cold War
- 1946 George Kennan sends “long telegram” to State Department
-
Crime
- 2006 Gang commits largest robbery in British history
- 2014 World’s most-wanted drug kingpin is captured in Mexico
-
Disaster
- 1998 Deadly tornadoes rip through central Florida
-
General Interest
- 1819 The U.S. acquires Spanish Florida
- 1847 Battle of Buena Vista begins
- 1967 Suharto takes full power in Indonesia
- 1968 Tet Offensive ends
-
Hollywood
- 1975 Actress Drew Barrymore born
-
Literary
- 1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay is born
-
Music
- 1990 Milli Vanilli win the Best New Artist Grammy
-
Old West
- 1918 Montana passes law against sedition
-
Presidential
- 1732 George Washington is born
-
Sports
- 1980 U.S. hockey pulls off Miracle on Ice
-
Vietnam War
- 1965 Westmoreland asks for Marines
- 1967 Operation Junction City begins
-
World War I
- 1917 Mussolini wounded by mortar bomb
-
World War II
- 1942 President Roosevelt to MacArthur: Get out of the Philippines
No comments:
Post a Comment