Do You Believe in Miracles - 44 yrs Ago
Mates,
Hard to believe it was 44 years ago. Time marches on like an unstoppable conveyer belt. A group of college kids defeated the Red Army team 4-3 in the medal round of the Olympics, perhaps the single biggest upset in the history of sports.
If you lived near Canada you could watch the game live. I think it was Channel 42, a French-Canadian station. The U.S. broadcast would be delayed and in the decades before the internet, many would not know the outcome of the game until then.
Regardless, the classic call by Al Michaels as time wound down in that game remains, "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"
XM
February 22nd, 2024 at 10:32 AM ^
That Olympics is what got me interested in hockey. I remember watching games prior to that asking my dad questions like what are the 3 different lines for, what is icing, etc. That Soviet game was incredible for an 11-year old me. I don't know if this is a false memory, but I thought I was allowed to skid Sunday school to watch the gold medal game. Was it truly broadcast on a Sunday morning or am I remembering something else?
Boy, Jim Craig wearing the American flag after the gold medal game - what an iconic moment! That's right up there with the Desmond pose.
February 22nd, 2024 at 10:48 AM ^
Wearing the flag, and looking up into the stands for his dad. What a moment in sports history.
February 22nd, 2024 at 10:53 AM ^
Yeah, Finland v USA (not technically the Gold Medal game - if Finland had won neither FInland nor the USA would have won Gold) started at 11 AM ET on Sunday.
That game was broadcast live by ABC coast-to-coast.
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:10 AM ^
WOW, I never knew that. I had always thought that US-Finland was the final game in a single elimination medal round. Learn something new 44 years later!
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:32 AM ^
Though if Finland had beaten us and the Sweden-USSR game (played after) had ended in a tie (instead of a USSR blowout), then the Fins would've won the gold. In fact, if they'd beaten us by 3 or more goals, we wouldn't have won a medal at all.
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:35 AM ^
That's true --- that was assuming a USSR victory over Sweden in the latter game. Given the USSR/USA game, perhaps a bad assumption!
As it was, the Soviets did win, leading Sweden 9-0 (!!!) after 2 periods.
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:09 AM ^
AGAIN
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:19 AM ^
Those of us in the Detroit area who had avoided hearing the score didn't know it until Bill Bonds announced it in a short local news break between the 2nd & 3rd periods of the delayed broadcast.
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:27 AM ^
I was about to leave the house to go to a Ski Club party at UM-Flint. (Five bucks got you in the door and all the beer you could drink. It was definitely a different time.) I'd been following the hockey team very closely, and really wanted to see the game. But then I thought, Hell, it's the Soviets - there's no way we'll win.
A few hours later I heard the news. I'd never been so happy to be wrong. It almost made up for striking out at the party.
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:40 AM ^
The game was played late afternoon. USA wanted to move it to prime time but Soviets refused because that would have made it well after midnight back home. It was a Friday anyway, so not sure why the Russkies didn't just say yes and then vodka-up after hours.
I remember my sister calling me from Wisconsin while on a business trip to tell me the news and to watch the game. Was a JR at Livonia Stevenson HS at the time so gladly made popcorn to watch the amazing event.
Just a few weeks earlier, the Soviets beat us at MSG in an exhibition game 10-3. Their coach later said that was a bad thing to happen since it caused his players to underestimate our team.
After our win over Finland, USSR beat a Sweden team that we had tied (2-2) by a score of 9-2. It was too little too late.
February 22nd, 2024 at 11:41 AM ^
(That is, if Finland had beaten us by three or more and Sweden-USSR had ended in a tie.)
February 22nd, 2024 at 12:09 PM ^
I went to Placid and saw plenty of events. Hockey tickets were impossible to get, but my buddies and I watched the games in the Lake Placid bars, which was an absolute blast. Good times...
February 22nd, 2024 at 12:11 PM ^
I seem to remember watching the game live in Detroit because we could grab the CBC feed with the rabbit ears from Windsor. Anyone else recall that? Did the CBC carry the game live?
February 22nd, 2024 at 12:31 PM ^
No, CBC did not carry the Olympics then; it was (I think) CTV.
Some UHF station in Sarnia had the game on, but it was hard to pull in their signal in Ann Arbor. If you were in Detroit, it would have been easier though.
My memory is some random guy from Macomb County called in to the Warren Pearce show on WJR and "announced" the last couple of minutes of the game from his television. Pearce said a couple of times that we probably shouldn't be letting him do this, but he never actually made the move to stop him.
February 22nd, 2024 at 6:05 PM ^
Growing up in Rochester Hills, MI, my brother and I definitely remember watching it live on a Canadian TV station (God Bless Canada's love of hockey). I do think it was CTV. We still watched the replay on ABC later that night and it was so much fun to watch it knowing the score. Bill Bonds didn't ruin it for us.
February 22nd, 2024 at 12:22 PM ^
Iconic.
To me, a good sign of truly transcendant sports moments is when major rivalries take a backseat to respect for them.
When I go see Michigan play in Mariucci, I go visit their shrine for the Miracle on Ice. Herb Brooks is a Minnesota guy, and there were key Minnie players on the team. But on that day they played for all of us, and I feel nothing but respect and gratitude for Minnesota's contribution to the team.
I feel the same way about the Jesse Owens plaque at Michigan. A fitting tribute to a transcendant athlete who set four world records in the space of an hour at that spot. It is, to me, a privilege Michigan has to be able to pay tribute to an Ohio State athlete whose accomplishment there, but more importantly in Berlin, transcends sports.
February 22nd, 2024 at 12:29 PM ^
I was a junior in high school and remember watching the tape delayed version. Ch.9 in Windsor may have shown it live? But before the internet nobody really knew the score before the tape delayed telecast. The 79 Michigan season had the exciting last second win against IU but overall a disappointing season. ND won at the big house with a game wining FG. Then Michigan had losses on the road to Purdue, at home against OSU, and to NC in the Gator Bowl.
February 22nd, 2024 at 12:33 PM ^
Home sick from high school in suburban Milwaukee and the local news broadcaster during a break at 3PM tipped it. Now you had to watch the tape delay that night! Greatest sports day ever.
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:08 PM ^
Here's USA 1980 Olympic Hockey Team Captain Mike Eruzione with Ann Arbor resident and auto-industry reporter for The New York Times Neal Boudette at a book signing for Eruzione's book "The Making of a Miracle".
Eruzione said: "My friends always like to joke with me [about his game-winning goal in the "Miracle on Ice" game], 'Three more inches to the left, you'd've been painting bridges.'"
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:12 PM ^
it's one of my earliest memories -- I was 7 years old.
And it is without a doubt the greatest upset of all time. College players versus what was arguably the greatest professional hockey juggernaut of all time.
February 22nd, 2024 at 1:33 PM ^
Working late in my law office in the evening on Friday, February 22, 1980 and got in my car with my radio tuned to a news station that announced the results of the game just after it had ended. Got home in time to watch it broadcast by tape delay on ABC-TV.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:10 PM ^
I was a big time hockey kid, meaning I loved playing the game, but I was only 7 in 1980, so my mom "taped" the game on our VCR. Still have that game with many of the commercials from that era.
One fun thing about the broadcast is between 2nd / 3rd periods they cut to ABC's booth live in Lake Placid and there is a joyous, big American crowd chanting USA! USA!
"Most Americans watching don't know the different between a blue line and a close line..." Michaels had so many great lines in this game.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:20 PM ^
There was a lot of pre-Olympic buzz foreshadowing the 1980 team being similar to the 1960 team. I remember the growing sense, as the Olympic hockey tournament progressed, that they might actually pull it off (similar to watching Michigan’s 2023 football season).
I was a freshman at Parkside High School in Jackson and it was a school day. Almost everyone was excited about the match later that evening. Dinner was a challenge because we knew the game was being played but knew we’d have to wait until later to see it. Jim Craig put on a goaltending display for the ages. Those last ten minute were excruciating.
Less than a decade later, I got to watch the Berlin Wall come down.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:45 PM ^
The 1980 team did indeed have some buzz and they played well throughout the Olympics.
Well enough that I thought they actually had a chance against the Soviets. So I avoided all contact with any kind of news that day, so that when I watched the tape-delayed broadcast, I would not know who won and would be watching it "live" as it happened.
It was an incredible moment when they won. Even more so given the background at the time . . . America was in its "malaise" era of perceived decline, while the Soviets were on the march globally, having just invaded Afghanistan. That victory was a real lift of self confidence for the country.
February 22nd, 2024 at 3:40 PM ^
I simply cannot imagine what it would be like to watch the game, knowing the stakes, not knowing the outcome, and having some sliver of hope for victory.
Surely, a hard moment to top.
February 22nd, 2024 at 4:11 PM ^
Well, much different than my experience. I was playing on the state championship hockey team, getting recruited to Michigan, and of course, lived eat and breathe hockey 24/seven. That said, other than my short conversation with Coach Cleary, I heard nothing about Olympic hockey leading up to it. You might see a headline that says we got dumped by the Soviets in a warm-up game, that’s about it. I think that’s what made the victory all that much more incredible and special.
February 22nd, 2024 at 2:43 PM ^
I listened to it on CKLW driving from Ann Arbor to Traverse City. That was a Friday, I believe. Coming home from UM for the weekend. I stopped in Claire at the rest area as the signal was fading, listed to us win, drove home, told everyone we won, my Dad went out and bought a bottle of Stoli to rub it in the faces of the Russkies after we won. I got several mean stares and "you little shit, you lied" type comments until the last 2 minutes of the game replay. Then we got bombed and jumped into the Boardman River after taking a sauna. Don't know how I lived through all these great moments! It was a paradigm shift in how the US thought about itself and how the world viewed us as opposed to the Russkies. We could use one of those now. Any ideas?