Miracle on Ice: US Hockey Stuns Soviet Union

A group of college kids and amateur hockey players did what no professional team in the world was supposed to be able to do: they beat the Soviet Union, the most dominant dynasty in Olympic hockey history, 4-3 on a Friday night in Lake Placid. The final twenty minutes of that game became the most celebrated moment in American sports, a Cold War drama played out on ice in front of a screaming crowd of eight thousand. The Soviet team had won gold at four consecutive Olympics and had demolished an NHL All-Star team 6-0 in the 1979 Challenge Cup. Three days before the Olympic tournament began, they crushed the Americans 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden. The U.S. roster, assembled by coach Herb Brooks from college programs across Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin, averaged twenty-one years of age. Vegas oddsbooks did not even bother setting odds. The Soviets took a 2-1 lead in the first period and led 3-2 entering the third. Mark Johnson tied it at 3-3 with a power-play goal, and then, at 10:00 of the final period, team captain Mike Eruzione fired a wrist shot from the left circle past goalkeeper Vladislav Tretiak's replacement, Vladimir Myshkin. The crowd erupted. For the final ten minutes, the Americans held off wave after wave of Soviet attacks. ABC broadcaster Al Michaels's call — "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" — was delivered over footage of players flinging sticks and gloves into the air. The victory was not technically for the gold medal. The Americans still had to beat Finland two days later, which they did 4-2, rallying from a 2-1 deficit. But the Soviet game was the one that mattered in the national imagination. It arrived during the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a moment when American confidence was badly shaken, and it provided something that transcended sports. Sports Illustrated named it the greatest sporting event of the twentieth century.