THE NHL : To Michaels, Special Magic of Miracle on Ice Is Frozen in Time

A dozen years have passed. Two more Winter Olympics have come and gone, and another is almost upon us. The entire Soviet empire has crumbled.

Yet the glow remains for those who were closest to one of the shining moments in U.S. sports history.

The victory of the U.S. Olympic hockey team over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Games at Lake Placid, N.Y., and the subsequent American victory over Finland for the gold medal was one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

A bunch of amateur kids beat the powerful Big Red Machine, a Soviet squad of, in effect, professionals capable of battling on at least equal terms with the NHL All-Stars.

The victory created a wave of patriotism and a interest in the NHL at a time when the league was ripe for new fans. The NHL had absorbed the best of the World Hockey Assn., and Wayne Gretzky was skating into prominence as sports’ newest superstar.

It was announcer Al Michaels who uttered the line, “Do you believe in miracles?” thatwould forever stamp that Olympic moment. He will reminisce about it this Sunday on Prime Ticket’s Face Off show with Bob Miller.

“It wasn’t until the Olympics were over,” Michaels said, “that any of us really understood the magnitude of this. We knew it was big, but it wasn’t until we got home, and a week or two had passed and people around the country were still going wild, that we knew what had truly transpired.”

Add Michaels: He still vividly remembers the end of the U.S.-Soviet game, which the Americans won, 4-3.

“It became very difficult in the last 10 minutes,” Michaels said. “The building is rocking and shaking. The noise is deafening. The people around me are going wild--our support people, the cameramen, the guys in the truck. I can feel it. It was all you could do to just sit there. I had to talk to myself during those final 10 minutes (and say), ‘Stay with it. Stay with it. Don’t lose it. Don’t get swept up in it.’ It was very difficult. . . . If you let yourself get caught up with what’s going on with the crowd, you’ll be embarrassed to hear yourself on tape.”

Last add Michaels: He never planned his memorable “miracle” line for a very simple reason.

“I had given no thought to the possibility of the United States winning that game,” he said. “I’m a realist, I’m a pragmatist. . . . I hoped that the game would be close. I hoped that the final score would be something like only 4-2 or 5-3 and that the U.S. would be in it for a while. The thought of the American team winning that game was ludicrous.”

With about five seconds to play, Michaels yelled his famous question--and answer: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

But he admits if someone had asked him “two or three minutes later what did I say at the end of the game, I could not have told you. . . . (When) I got back to the hotel later that night and people started saying that was great, what I had said at the end, they had to tell me what it was that was said.

“Sometimes, it just works. It just happens. It’s more a case of being lucky than anything else. . . . It was a great line because it plays so many years later. . . . You just have to get lucky.”

Michaels, who has announced Super Bowls, the World Series and “Monday Night Football,” was asked where he would rank the triumph at Lake Placid on his personal thrill list.

“No. 1,” he said without pause, “by 10,000 miles. Never to be displaced.”

Less than All-Star ratings: Those who maintain that the NHL does not have the mass appeal to return to one of the three major networks could use the ratings from the recent All-Star game to bolster their case.

This was the third consecutive year that NBC has televised the game, and the third consecutive time the ratings have dropped.

Two years ago, the game in Pittsburgh drew a 3.1 rating. Last year in Chicago, with coverage of the Gulf War drawing many viewers, the game drew a 2.7.

This year, with no distractions, the ratings for the Philadelphia game dropped to 2.3.

In comparison that weekend, pro bowling had a 3.8, the Bob Hope golf tournament a 3.7 and a basketball game between Georgetown and DePaul a 2.9.

Even in Los Angeles, where the Kings have not had an empty seat all season, the game drew only a 3.3 Nielsen rating and a 10 share, placing it third among the network stations on the average for that time period, and a 1.9 Arbitron rating and 6 share, placing it above only KCOP (Channel 13) among all L.A. stations.

An NBC spokesman termed the latest ratings “disappointing.”

The network has one more year left on its contract to show the All-Star game, but has no larger plans for the league.

An even Colder War: A cartoon in the Globe and Mail shows Russian President Boris Yeltsin listening to an adviser.

“Granted,” the aide is telling him, “you’ve got growing dissent, economic chaos and political anarchy. Still, things could be worse.”

In the next panel, Yelstin is shown behind the bench of the Toronto Maple Leafs.