The Miracle on Ice, 1980

Ten to three. That's the scoreboard at Madison Square Garden on February ninth, nineteen eighty, and it is NOT the Americans with the ten. Eleven thousand people just watched the Soviet Union take a team of college kids apart, piece by piece, for sixty minutes. Average age on that American bench... twenty-two. Their defenseman Jack O'Callahan tore a ligament in his knee. Thirteen days later, those same two teams meet again. And the single most famous moment in American sport is about to happen at a time of day when almost nobody in this country can watch it. Understand what these kids were skating into. According to Britannica, across a dozen games between the nineteen sixty and nineteen eighty Olympics, the Soviets had gone twelve and oh against the United States. Combined score... one hundred seventeen to twenty-six. Five golds in the last six Winter Games. Four of them in a row. Going into Lake Placid, the Americans were seeded seventh out of twelve nations. Guess who was seeded first. The man holding this thing together is Herb Brooks, fresh off coaching the University of Minnesota to the nineteen seventy-nine national title. He picks twenty players. Twelve of them from Minnesota. Nine he'd coached himself. His captain he pulls out of the Toledo Blades of the International League, a guy named Mike Eruzione. Eruzione. In Italian, the name means eruption. And hanging over every shift of it: the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and President Carter was threatening to boycott the Moscow Summer Games. This was never only hockey. Friday afternoon. Five oh five p.m. Eastern. Sold out. The Soviets strike first. Buzz Schneider answers with a fifty-foot slapshot to tie it. Sergei Makarov puts them back ahead. Then, with seconds left in the first, Dave Christian just fires the puck the length of the ice out of pure desperation, and Vladislav Tretiak, the best goaltender on earth, makes the save... and misplays the rebound. Mark Johnson scoops it in. ONE second left on the clock. The Soviets protest. The goal stands. Two, two. And now the thing nobody in that building can believe. Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov pulls Tretiak. Benches him. Sends out the backup, Vladimir Myshkin, for the second period, and players on BOTH teams just stare. Imagine your coach benching the best in the world out of pure anger. It doesn't help the Americans one bit. Aleksandr Maltsev scores on the power play. Three, two, Soviets. For the rest of that period the United States manages almost nothing. Final shots for the game: thirty-nine to sixteen. Jim Craig is the only reason this is still a game. Third period. Eight minutes, thirty-nine seconds in, a wild shot from David Silk comes loose in front, Mark Johnson finds it, power play, past Myshkin. Three, three. The Fieldhouse is shaking. A couple of shifts later, Mark Pavelich sends the puck to the high slot, where the captain is standing completely unguarded. Eruzione. Twenty-five-foot wrist shot, Myshkin screened by his own defenseman... it's IN. Four to three, United States. Exactly ten minutes to play. Ten minutes. The longest ten minutes those twenty men will ever live. Wave after Soviet wave, and Craig turning away every one. The Soviets never even pull their goalie for an extra attacker. They just keep coming. Five seconds left, the Americans finally clear the zone, and the whole arena is counting down out loud. And a broadcaster named Al Michaels, who before these Olympics had called exactly ONE hockey game in his life, says it. Do you believe in miracles? Yes. Except... almost nobody hears it. Not then. The Olympic schedule, locked in long before the tournament, put that game at five p.m. Eastern with no live coverage. ABC airs it on tape, in prime time. Jim McKay does a live introduction with delirious fans roaring behind him, and viewers at home have no idea why everyone looks so happy. Michaels and Ken Dryden are still in a booth calling Sweden and Finland, in case the tape fails. And Mike Eruzione, the man who scored the goal? He didn't hear that call for weeks. Two days later, against Finland, they trail two to one going into the third. They win four to two. Gold. And Eruzione's line afterward is perfect. I don't think we kicked their butts, he said. We just won. In nineteen ninety-nine, Sports Illustrated called it the top sports moment of the twentieth century. In two thousand eight, ESPN viewers voted that goal the greatest highlight of all time. But here's the part I'd keep. Thirteen days earlier, the same twenty kids, the same opponent, ten to three. The gap between humiliation and history is smaller than anyone ever tells you.