|
SoMnFan -> RE: General NHL (2/28/2015 1:56:00 PM)
|
One of the best-written pieces ever, imo, about the guys from '80. I love that he got some deep insight from Neal Broten and Steve Janaszak, two notoriously tight-lipped guys. Broten lets out more info in this piece than he really ever has, about anything. Hearing he snuck back just to take a look, was so great to hear. He is human. It DID mean as much to him. That's so good to hear.
It amazes me to this day that I cannot get thru any piece of info about it, without crying like a baby.
Theres something about that event that just turns me into a blubbering mess. It makes me numb. It makes me quiet. It makes me think, mostly.
I cannot hear one word about it without having it all flow back over me ... and I'm instantly placed back in time, an 18 year-old hockey-loving farm boy.
Standing in my fathers machine shed late on a cold Friday February afternoon. Listening to the only radio we had that would pick up the game with the USSR.
A tiny crackling little transistor that usually just squawked about markets and weather.
I don't know why, but time stopped that day, I HAD to listen. I was fully aware of what they had done to us a week earlier. I was fully aware of the challenge and yet I also felt like I HAD to listen.
My parents and I had lived and died with them all week. The heart-stopping last-second tie that made the entire miracle possible. The stomping of a very very good Czech team that suddenly made us all realize these were not ordinary amateurs. We had grown attached to Broten and Christoff and Janaszak and Robbie Mac. But the rest were growing on us too.
We had hated those who were suddenly "our boys". The Eastern kids were jerks until they slid those USA jerseys on. So were those from Wisconsin and UND and UMD.
But for those weeks, they were OUR BOYS. To see them now, all broken down and tired, is sad in a way, but this recap from Burnside has helped ease that realization.
They're all still in the fold. They all still believe, they all still care. And that's what we need to hear. Until they all pass away, they need to keep doing what they do. Telling their stories. Laughing at themselves and others. never bragging, but always just simply being amazed like the rest of us. I love these guys for what they did for me. And for my favorite game. I've been in or around a hockey rink virtually every single week of my life since that February in 1980. It amazes me to say that, but I just realized it myself. I've raised two sons who love the game as much as I do and they will no doubt pass on that love to their kids as well. I've coached for 28 years, and have no idea when I will stop. I've used the lessons and memories from 1980 this entire time. Its behind my drive to stay involved. I forget it at times, that it is what drives me, and then I will watch the movie, or see a recap, or hear a story, and it will all come back. I should probably apologize or be ashamed that an event I had nothing to do with, has shaped my life so much. But I won't. I loved the event, and I love the people who made it happen. And it will stay with me until my last day.
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- They are fully grown men now. Some are grandparents, some are retirees, the hairlines graying and receding if not in full retreat.
But if you squinted your eyes just so while watching these old friends pull the familiar red, white and blue American jerseys over their shoulders on Saturday evening, a few yards away from the floor of Herb Brooks Arena, it was easy to imagine them as they looked that night 35 years ago.
Young -- college age, most of them -- facing a challenge few anywhere expected them to meet while playing the powerful Russians with a chance at a gold medal on the line.
During a break in the proceedings later Saturday evening, the 19 surviving members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team retired to the sparseness that is Locker Room 5, the same room these 35 years later except for the fact the medical table had been moved from the center of the room into the adjacent shower.
And who among the group couldn't hear in his mind the roar of the crowd from that night as they waited to go out for the third period against the Russians, feel the quickening of the pulse and crystal certainty of the memory of what was about to unfold?
Certainly the 5,000 who filled the one end of Herb Brooks Arena to mark the 35th anniversary of the "Miracle on Ice" and to honor former teammate Bob Suter, who died in September, were transported through time, rising as one as the final couple of minutes of that seminal game played out on the screen above.
The eyes of everyone in the building -- players, families, fans -- were transfixed on the video monitors and jumbo screens as though the moment was taking place in front of them in real time, not being replayed for perhaps the thousandth time.
And, as if on cue, with the clock ticking down from 10 seconds to nine to eight, Al Michaels was asking a nation if it believed in miracles.
And they did.
And they still do.
"The memories started coming as soon as I stepped on the plane in Detroit," center Mark Wells said.
"To me, it's like yesterday," said Wells, who is helping out with a youth hockey facility in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, after a long period of health problems.
"This is an inspiration," he said, gesturing toward his teammates and more his old friends. "This reassures me that I'm going to be OK. It is the most important thing, as we speak, in my life."
Over the years, all of the members of the team have been to Lake Placid.
Backup netminder Steve Janaszak recalled his first visit to the arena in Lake Placid after the 1980 Olympics more than a decade later.
"I had to sit down, my knees were wobbling. I could still see the rafters shaking. It was really overwhelming," he said.
Neal Broten recalled being injured while playing with the New Jersey Devils some 15 years after the '80 Olympics and driving up just to look around.
"I don't even think I went in the arena," he said, shaking his head at the memories. "It was kind of surreal."
Saturday marked the first time the entire group had gathered together in the very place where history was made.
It was a moment made even more poignant with the raising to the rafters of Herb Brooks Arena of Bob Suter's No. 20. Suter died in September, the first of the "Miracle on Ice" players to pass.
Perhaps what makes this group so engaging is the players' perpetual sense of wonderment at what they accomplished and that it still resonates so deeply with so many people.
"It's amazing the staying power this has had," defenseman Mike Ramsey said.
"Obviously, we knew we were on to something big. But we had no idea it was going to grab a country like it did. No idea," added Ramsey, who would go on to have a long NHL career as a player -- 1,070 games played -- and then later as an assistant coach.
As he rode into town Friday evening, Ramsey found himself trying to see out of the van's frosty windows, looking for landmarks, the tiny bar that used to sit at the end of the speed skating oval.
This was not a team of superstars.
Talented, yes.
No question about that.
Ken Morrow went on to win four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders.
Dave Christian played more than 1,000 NHL games.
Mark Pavelich averaged just under a point a game in 355 NHL games.
Jack O'Callahan played 389 NHL games.
But superstars?
"We could walk through any place and they wouldn't have any idea [who we were]," Broten said.
But once they found out?
Oh my, the smiles and memories and the stories.
"I think what happened is that it became a part of your fabric," forward Dave Silk explained.
The players have become used to the fact that for others, maybe an entire nation, they are defined by one game, one tournament, "as opposed to how I define myself," Silk said.
"And that's fine," he said. "It's one of those things that we did but it's not necessarily who we are."
Could even a devoted hockey fan identify more than a handful of players from that team?
Mike Eruzione, the captain. Probably.
Jim Craig, the goaltender. Sure.
After that?
Silk joked that whenever he makes an illegal left-hand turn, police officers aren't recognizing him and letting him off with a warning and asking for an autograph.
"That's not happening," he said with a laugh.
But that's not entirely true.
In the crowd of people among the VIP group at Saturday's event, people who paid a premium to get some quality time with the 1980 players, there is a man wearing a Silk jersey.
Mark Schultz crystallizes what these players, this team, mean to so many fans.
He was 13 in 1980 and his two favorite players were Silk and Pavelich. He bought the Silk jersey around the time of the Olympics from an ad in the back of The Hockey News for the robust sum of $225.
"I don't know how many lawns I mowed," said Schultz, who runs an auto service business specializing in Porsches in Utica, New York.
He played high school hockey and his team won back-to-back state championships a few years after the 1980 Olympics.
When he and his friends played street hockey or shinny, they weren't pretending to be Gordie Howe or Bobby Orr, they were Eruzione and Pavelich. He owns a Pavelich jersey, which is stored in a special glass case.
"He was my idol. My nickname was Pav," Schultz said.
What was it like to meet both Silk and Pavelich, who drove to this event from Oregon?
"I'm in heaven. I'm in heaven, really," Schultz said.
"This is better than meeting," and then he paused, thinking, before continuing. "Anybody."
It might seem complicated, this being remembered for one magical night of hockey, but for the players theirs is a relationship forged through months of working together for one goal.
"There's a rhythm to our team and they don't really skip a beat," said Silk, who has been in the investment management business for 20 years in the Boston area. "My relationship with Mike Eruzione is different than it is with Rob McClanahan. There's a common bond throughout of respect and friendship."
But that bond wasn't forged in one night against a team from Russia, but in the moments over seven months that led to that night of unexpected success.
This bond allows the group to slide back into a rhythm very quickly.
At breakfast on Saturday before the main event, Ramsey's longtime hunting and fishing pals Bill Baker and Phil Verchota are busting his chops a bit over his contribution to their outings. Baker owns the hunting property and Verchota owns fishing property.
And what does Ramsey, a longtime NHL player and assistant coach who retired five years ago, bring to the table?
"They were giving me grief about that," he admitted.
And so it goes.
When Eruzione arrived midday Saturday along with Silk, there are hearty hugs and back slaps around. Later, as the group heads out to meet with VIP guests at the event, one of Eruzione's mates gives him a hard time about having his shirt untucked.
As the players prep for Saturday evening's ceremony, Broten jumps into the players' bench and mimes Brooks sending players over the bench -- just not Broten.
Even on stage, the group delighted with good-natured banter, winger John Harrington giving it to Eruzione about how Harrington could have scored the game-winning goal instead of the U.S. captain but felt sorry for him because he had no future in the game.
"I said, why not pass it to him and let him make millions in the next 35 years," said Harrington, who is an amateur scout for the Colorado Avalanche.
It was suggested that Eruzione had his eyes closed when the shot went past Russian netminder Vladimir Mishkin, who had shockingly been put in by legendary coach Viktor Tikhonov after the first period.
Used to such ribbing over the years, Eruzione calmly shot back, "Didn't matter. It went right where it was supposed to go."
The guys also had a few laughs recalling their relationship with Brooks, the taskmaster of a coach who helped forge this team's identity.
The 1980 U.S. Olympic team won an improbable hockey game against the mighty Russians 4-3 en route to a gold medal.
Phil Verchota recalled how Brooks had simple advice for him: "He told me for four years, whatever you do when you get the puck, pass it to someone else."
Some of the guys began making notes on Brooks-isms like "You're playing worse every day and right now you're playing like it's next week" (or "next month," depending on the player). Or "Weave, weave, weave but don't weave for the sake of weaving."
Broten played in 1,099 NHL games after the 1980 Olympics. He won a Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils in 1995, becoming the first-ever American-born player to score a Cup-clinching goal. In 1980, though, he was a 20-year-old kid slightly in awe of his teammates.
He is no less in awe now of the ongoing relationship this group enjoys.
What did being a member of that team in Lake Placid mean to Broten, to the rest? Can you draw a line from A to B?
Maybe.
One thing Broten is certain of, and that is the life-altering effect of that tournament.
"I might have been back in my hometown working in a snowmobile plant," he said. "Who knows?"
When he thinks of that tournament, he thinks of the innocence of it.
"We were like a peewee team. We weren't really making any money," Broten said. "This was just drop the puck and have fun."
"We just didn't want to embarrass ourselves," he said of the Russian game. "We could have got beat 10- or 12-1 very easily."
But they didn't.
"We did something we didn't even think you could do," he said.
Bill Baker is standing outside Dressing Room 5 with some of his teammates.
The Minnesota native was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in 1976 and ended up playing 143 NHL games. In fact, over a five-year period he was drafted, won a state high school title, two NCAA titles and an Olympic gold medal.
But for almost a quarter of a century Baker hasn't been the "Miracle on Ice" guy, he's the oral surgeon with four different branches in his home state.
Among his clients? Former teammate Verchota, whom he helped after Verchota suffered a shinny hockey injury.
"You're very proud to be a part of it," he said of the 1980 group. "But for me it doesn't define you. I still get up early and work all day. It's not part of your daily life.
"We were just the kids next door, the kids next door in America. None of us had any idea of the impact. We were just trying to get through Herb's practices, for god's sake."
You want some symmetry?
As the players strolled in and out of Dressing Room 5, some sitting down for interviews, Morrow joking that he and his teammates will need to try to figure out just where they were sitting in that room 35 years prior, some kids with their own hockey gear slung over their shoulders headed down the corridor looking for their own dressing room for a tournament taking place on one of the adjacent sheets of ice.
"Hey, these are the guys," an excited dad said.
"Wow. And the jerseys are in there, too."
Keeping the hallways from getting cluttered is Denice Fredericks, who works for the arena complex.
Thirty-five years ago, the Fredericks family had rented its home to tourists, as did many Lake Placid residents.
While the rest of her family went out of town, Fredericks stayed with her grandmother, helping reporters file their reports and sending out press releases from the school next door.
The staff was given passes to some of the events, so Denice Fredericks found herself in the standing room section of the mezzanine watching the Americans perform their miracle.
She still thinks that people outside the building could hear the screams of joy as the final seconds counted down.
"It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience just to be in the right place at the right time," she said.
Today, to see those very players return after so much time has passed, "it's very exciting."
"It just gives me cold chills to be a part of it," she said.
Leave it to the backup goaltender to put all of this in some sort of perspective.
Janaszak didn't play a minute in the Olympic tournament. But he did meet his future wife, who was working as an interpreter, in Lake Placid.
"I had a lot of time on my hands," said Janaszak, who played some minor pro hockey before starting a long career in finance.
Was he ever bitter at not playing?
He recalled Brooks telling him that he would be on the team and that he likely wouldn't play and that he should just keep his mouth shut. So he did, sort of.
Janaszak would help out with the team, sharpening skates and, of course, practicing with the team.
"But my wife she will tell you I bitched a little," he admitted.
On Saturday night, though, his teammates publicly praised his presence on that team, explaining that he was as much a part of that team's identity and success as any of them. And as if to reinforce that point, Jim Craig and Janaszak met at center stage for a big hug.
Thirty-five years later, would the private investor change any of it?
Janaszak is incredulous at the thought.
"I had the best seat in the house at one of the greatest sporting events of the 20th century," he said. "What's better than that?
"Who would change one moment of that whole timeline? Not me, man."
Amen.
|
|
|
|