MIRACLE ON ICE, REVISITED : Janaszak Could Only Watch as the Miracle Unfolded

Steve Janaszak watched it all.

Jim Craig, standing on the ice draped in the American flag, searching for his father in the stands after the gold medal-winning triumph over Finland.

Mike Eruzione’s game-winning goal against the Soviets two nights earlier that prompted broadcaster Al Michaels’ memorable call in that game’s final seconds: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

Steve Janaszak was there for every second as the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team made a nation briefly forget the hostages in Iran, Afghanistan, the impending U.S. boycott of the Summer Olympics, the ailing U.S. economy.

Steve Janaszak watched every second from the bench. He was the only player on that team who did not play. Not one second.

A year earlier he was the goalie who led the University of Minnesota to the national championship and was named tournament MVP.

Yet his college coach, who was now the coach of the Olympic hockey team, didn’t even put him in the lineup at Lake Placid.

But understand Steve Janaszak is to understand why there ever was a miracle on ice.

Brooks made Craig his No. 1 goalie almost from the start. He had led Boston University to the NCAA Division I hockey title in 1978 and started nearly half of Team USA’s 61 exhibition games leading up to the Olympics; Janaszak and Bruce Horsch split the rest. Horsch was cut just before the team left for Lake Placid.

“I remember going into Herb’s office and him saying, ‘You’re going to go to Lake Placid, but I can’t guarantee you that you’re going to play,’ ” said Janaszak, who now sells bonds on Wall Street for Bear Stearns and Co. “I had the choice of whether or not I wanted to go and not play, or not go. There was no decision there to be made.”

Team USA played its first game Feb. 12. against Sweden, seeded third behind the Soviets and Czechs. Sweden led 2-1 going into the final minute of play, but defenseman Bill Baker’s hard slap shot beat goalie Pelle Lindbergh with 27 seconds left to salvage an important tie.

Czechoslovakia was next. Paced by the Stastny brothers--Peter, Anton and Marian--the Czechs went ahead 1-0 in the first period. But the Americans dominated every phase of the game and won, 7-3, on Valentine’s Day.

Humbled, 10-3, by the Soviets at Madison Square Garden in their final exhibition game, the Americans had erased that game from their collective memory. They were on a roll, and Craig was leading them.

And yet, with games against lesser threats like Romania and West Germany, there was time for Janaszak to make an appearance.

“We thought there was plenty of opportunity for him to have been inserted in the lineup,” said Baker, now a dentist in St. Louis studying to become an oral surgeon. “But once we got two, three games into the tournament, it became pretty obvious he wasn’t going to play. He knew that. I think we all did. But Janny’s personality was a big part of the team. It’s kind of funny. You look back and you don’t really think of him as not playing.”

“Right around the time we played West Germany, Jimmy had a bad period and Herb came in and threatened to put me in,” said Janaszak, whose National Hockey League career after the Olympics consisted of three games--one with the Minnesota North Stars and two with the Colorado Rockies. “I looked at Herb, I heard what he was saying and looked at his face. And I said to myself, there’s no way.”

“It was a difficult thing,” said Brooks, a television hockey analyst now. “I recruited him at the University of Minnesota, he played for me for four years and brought us an NCAA championship. That made it difficult. I knew he was a capable goalie. When you know that he can do the job and you don’t use him, that adds to it. I had confidence in him, but Jimmy Craig had a hot hand and I wanted to play it.”

Not surprising, because in the realm of Olympic ice hockey, where even allowing an extra goal can jeopardize a team’s chances of making it to the medal round, coaches are reluctant to tamper with success.

So while Craig played the best hockey of his life, Janaszak was forced to sit and watch, and mask his disappointment.

“It was a difficult position. It wasn’t easy not to play,” Janaszak said without a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “But that is a grain of salt in the entire experience.

“I knew I was part of the team, that the team was 20 people, and that 20 people had to contribute. Otherwise, the thing wouldn’t have worked. A team only works when everybody works.”

For Janaszak, who met his wife, Jackie, during the Games, his job was to stay ready if needed. He went even further. When he wasn’t practicing--he and assistant coach Craig Patrick worked together every day at 6 a.m. while the rest of the team slept--he did everything from sharpening skates to timing shifts on the ice.

“He had a terrific work ethic,” said Craig, who sells advertising for Valassis Inserts in Brockton, Mass. “He worked real hard, which helped make me work harder because I never wanted anybody to work harder than I did.”

“Steve was as important as Jim Craig or Mike Eruzione,” said Eruzione, who spends much of his time today promoting the Winter Games. “Everybody on the team was important, whether they played or didn’t play, because if one player is disgruntled or is not happy, he could rock the boat pretty easy. He was very much a part of the team.”

The members of the team recently got together for a group photo for Life magazine, and 13 of them are returning to Lake Placid this week for a reunion. Apparently, not much has changed.

“This is a nice, very unique group of individuals,” Janaszak said. “We were together not more than five minutes and the shots started flying around, the jabs. It was as if we’d never been apart.”