Magic Moment

Twenty years already? It hardly seems so long ago.

Not until you glimpse the vision-blurring plaid slacks Herb Brooks wore behind the bench that Friday evening in Lake Placid, N.Y., or the funny pointed collar on broadcaster Al Michaels’ shirt.

Watch the players take the ice, and you spot the greatest fashion relic of all, spelled out in white block lettering on the red jerseys of the Soviet players: CCCP, the emblem of a dead empire.

What could have seemed less likely in 1980 than a bunch of American college kids beating the greatest hockey team in the world in the Olympics?

Only that by the end of 1991, the USSR would not exist at all.

Glasnost and perestroika were not part of the vocabulary. Brezhnev was in power, and nuclear war seemed a very present threat: The landmark 1983 television movie “The Day After” was still several years away.

Those were not glory days for the United States.

The hostages had been in captivity in Iran for 110 days.

The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and President Carter was threatening the boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

At home, the inflation rate was 13.5%, mortgages were nearly 14%, and Lee Iacocca was trying to revive Chrysler.

It was a time when “USA! USA!” not only wasn’t a hackneyed chant, it was an unlikely one.

The U.S. was a stumbling superpower, and it took a skinny but talented bunch of players from such places as Winthrop, Mass.; Warroad, Minn., and North Easton, Mass., to recast the United States in its original role from the 18th century: underdog.

The nation’s collective memory recalls Mike Eruzione’s goal in the 4-3 victory over the Soviets on Feb. 22, 1980, as the gold-medal winner.

It wasn’t.

Had the U.S. lost to Finland two days later on Sunday morning, there was a possibility Brooks’ boys wouldn’t have won a medal at all.

Instead, they won, 4-2, and outside the Olympic Field House, flags waved and fans shouted as thick snowflakes swirled.

President Carter called the locker room, and Brooks, wearing a plaid sport coat this time, told the president, “I think it just proves that our way of life is the proper way to continue on.”

How long ago that was.

Jim Craig’s father--remember how the flag-draped goalie searched for his dad in the stands?--died in 1988 of a stomach aneurysm at 69.

Valery Kharlamov, the great Soviet star, and Pelle Lindbergh, the goalie when the Americans tied Sweden in the first round, were killed in car crashes in the 1980s.

The U.S. team remains a tightknit group, thriving in many endeavors. There are coaches and bankers, brokers and salesmen, an airline pilot and an oral surgeon.

Seven never played an NHL game, but 13 did before the last one, Neal Broten, retired in 1997--proving the mettle of U.S. players in a Canadian-dominated league that had only 55 players from the U.S. in 1980, 112 today.

The boys of 1980 are 39-45 years old now.

“We know we’re getting old when most of the hockey players we’re working with weren’t born at that time, or were just born,” said Dave Christian, a junior coach with the Fargo-Moorhead Ice Sharks on the North Dakota-Minnesota border.

The next generation already has announced itself.

Last year, Eruzione and former defenseman Jack O’Callahan, a partner with Beanpot Financial Services in Chicago, found themselves back in Lake Placid behind opposing benches, coaching their sons’ teams in the semifinals of a youth tournament. O’Callahan’s son, Aaron, scored a goal.

“He was about 10, and he came over to the bench and turned around and said, ‘Hey, Dad, it’s about time someone named O’Callahan finally scored a goal in this rink,’ ” said O’Callahan, who contributed an assist in 1980.

Eruzione’s son’s team won the semifinal, but lost the gold.

“I took them in the locker room and told the kids, ‘I can’t believe it, my first loss in this building,’ ” said Eruzione, who lives in Winthrop, Mass., with his wife and three children and still makes part of his living giving speeches about the Olympics.

“Some of the kids were crying, and I realized, I was like Herb Brooks for 10-year-olds.”

Breaking Bread With the Enemy

This is what the years have wrought: 66 players born in the former Soviet Union are playing in the NHL this season.

In 1980, of course, there were none.

“It was impossible to wish for,” said Viacheslav Fetisov, an assistant coach for the New Jersey Devils who jumped to the NHL in 1989 and played nine seasons for New Jersey and Detroit, helping win two Stanley Cups with the Red Wings.

Six players from the silver-medal winning Soviet team eventually played in the NHL: Alexei Kasatonov, Sergei Makarov, Sergei Starikov, Vladimir Krutov, Helmut Balderis and Fetisov--who along with Kasatonov called Brooks “Coach” with the Devils.

Slowly, in restaurants in Philadelphia or Toronto or Chicago or Calgary, friendships were forged.

The political barriers were gone, and the language barrier slipped away. Today, many of the Americans consider Fetisov a friend.

“He would joke and say I owe him dinner because of all the things he did for us,” said Mike Ramsey, an assistant coach for the Buffalo Sabres who played with Fetisov in Detroit. “He’d say, ‘I let you guys win the gold medal, and you still haven’t bought me dinner.’ ”

In 1980, it was no joking matter.

“It was Cold War time. I think propaganda machine was working pretty good on both sides,” Fetisov said.

“They told us, ‘You have to be careful in the street.’

“The village at the time was like a prison. You had guards with machine guns. It was not Olympic atmosphere.”

Between the players, there was respect.

Mark Johnson, son of Bob Johnson, the late Wisconsin coach, grew up around the international game, and on Sunday afternoons in Madison, Bob Johnson would hold what he called the Russia game.

“He’d put on his Valery Kharlamov jersey one week, or Boris Mikhailov the next,” said Johnson, now an assistant coach at Wisconsin.

“My dad was intrigued by their training methods, their conditioning. You wanted to find out: What are they doing to be so good?”

When Johnson found himself playing for the Devils, he asked Fetisov about the system that created the greatest team in the world.

That was proven time and again. In 1979, the Soviets played a team of NHL all-stars in a three-game series at Madison Square Garden, splitting the first two games before annihilating the NHL’s best, 6-0.

That was essentially the team the 1980 U.S. Olympic team faced.

Shortly before Lake Placid, the college boys met the Soviets in an exhibition at the Garden.

“It was sort of our final tuneup,” Brooks said. “They were introducing the great Soviet Union team, and I looked at our players, and our players were applauding them. And I went, ‘Uh-oh.’ That’s the amount of respect we had for them.

“Then they just blew us away, 10-3.”

It turned out different in Lake Placid.

“We lost because we were too proud,” said Vladislav Tretiak, the great Soviet goaltender who was pulled in a controversial move after the first period and now works as a goaltending consultant for the Chicago Blackhawks.

“We thought they would be easy. We had beaten them in an exhibition before the Olympics at Madison Square Garden. We thought, ‘We beat professionals, we can beat the U.S. easily.’ For one day, we couldn’t.”

Fetisov had been confident too.

“As time ran out, it was like a shock,” he said. “Like they call it, a miracle.”

Later, the Americans imagined the Soviets had been almost happy for them.

“They’re looking at us, sticks flying, helmets flying, hugs,” Johnson said. “They were standing at the blue line. Like, ‘Hey, that looks like fun to do.’ ”

Fetisov disputes that.

“It was a shocked smile. We knew there were going to be big problems for some of the players,” he said. “Before Lake Placid, there was a meeting at the Kremlin. One of the big men said, ‘Lose to anybody except the Americans.’ ”

Back in the USSR, Igor Larionov, who would later become a Soviet star and an NHL standout, was playing in Kiev.

“I heard at breakfast,” he said. “Somebody said, the Soviet team already lost, 4-3. I said, ‘You know, I don’t believe that.’ I never imagined our team could lose to college players.

“A lot of guys suffered after that. Six or seven guys were cut from the national team in the next year or two. Starikov, the young defenseman who made a couple of mistakes, I think he wasn’t playing for next two seasons, and he was only about 21 years old.”

The years have been kinder to the Americans than some of the former Soviet stars, said Fetisov, still a patriot in many ways.

“Drinking problems. Health problems. Most are struggling financially,” he said. “They’re legends. That’s the sad part. The country cannot support legends who gave the best time of their life? I’ve tried to push to do that.”

As for his reception in the U.S., Fetisov understood.

“We were enemies. It’s normal,” he said. “Then people realize we all look alike and play same game. Now NHL is great example to rest of world how guys from different countries can get together.”

Ramsey remembers how it was. “Back then, you looked at it as USA versus Russia. Everybody tried to build it up as more than a hockey game,” he said. “Now it’s funny, after everything’s said and done, they’re no different than we are. They’re not the Evil Empire. They were just trying to win a hockey game.”

The Khomeini of Hockey

Most of all, it was Herb Brooks’ eyes. They had that steely intensity, a “Knock it off, I dare you,” quality reminiscent of the Robert Conrad battery commercials.

Now, at 62, Brooks is coaching in the NHL again with the Pittsburgh Penguins. His brown hair has grayed. His eyes are softer, his manner gentle.

Then you see the old temper flare the way it did at Colorado Avalanche broadcaster John Kelly when Kelly suggested the Penguins’ Matthew Barnaby faked an injury, a tantrum that led to an NHL suspension.

“I don’t know if he’s changed that much. I’m still deathly afraid of him,” Eruzione said. “Herb was always difficult to play for, but there was no one who didn’t respect him.”

Brooks had been the coach of the University of Minnesota’s powerhouse team before the Olympics and chose nine of his own players for the team.

“He was one of those guys, back then, where you’re staying in a hotel and you get on the elevator with him, he might not say a word to you,” Ramsey said. “It’s kind of nice, now, because he’s on the same level with us. He’s open to the verbal abuse from us now.”

Back then, Brooks used assistant coach Craig Patrick as a go-between with a team he was often in danger of alienating.

“Someone in the media said that I was the Ayatollah, and they were the prisoners and all that,” Brooks said. “But it was not a prison on the ice, and that’s the key thing. They had a lot of freedom to do what they felt was appropriate. But it was a hard push for six, seven months. No nonsense, work, work, work.”

Brooks was the last player cut from the Olympic team in 1960, the other time the Americans beat the Soviets to win the gold. Though he played in ’64 and ‘68, he missed the medal.

“When they won the gold medal, my father says, ‘Well, looks like Coach got the right guy,’ ” Brooks said. “No sympathy. Coach was always right and the teacher was right and the cop was right.”

In 1980, Brooks was always right.

Nobody hesitates to give him credit for thinking outside the box in the way he selected, trained and handled his players during a 60-odd game pre-Olympic tour that took them from Europe to NHL exhibitions to the minor leagues.

Brooks devised a style of hockey that seemed to have more in common with the Russian game than the Broad Street Bullies, and he emphasized puck control, an unorthodox approach in an era of dump-and-chase.

The team also was in extraordinary condition, even considering that the youngest player, Ramsey, was 19, and the oldest, Eruzione and Buzz Schneider, were 25.

The most infuriating tactics were the psychological ones.

When forward Rob McClanahan suffered a thigh injury against Sweden, Brooks attacked him between periods, calling him “gutless.”

“I thought, ‘Whoa, the guy’s lost it,’ ” Eruzione said. “But one thing he knew was that we weren’t going to rally behind him, we were going to rally behind Robbie. It made us understand we had to battle.”

The coaches among the former players--Johnson, Ramsey, Christian, John Harrington--all say they learned from Brooks. No one emulates him entirely.

“He treated everybody the same--bad,” said Harrington, the coach at St. John’s University, a Division III team in Collegeville, Minn. “I think, looking back, he was very good at taking people just to the point of, ‘That’s it.’ ”

None of them think they could have done it without Brooks, but when the Americans upset the Soviets and again when they beat Finland for the gold, TV cameras caught Brooks turning abruptly to head into the locker room alone.

“He was very proud of us, very proud of our accomplishments,” Eruzione said. “After the game was over, he never came on the ice. If he did, it would have been, ‘Now he wants to be our friend?’ I respected that.”

Brooks understood.

“It was kind of a lonely year in a lot of ways,” he said. “Afterward, when they were jumping and running on the ice, people say, ‘How come you didn’t go on the ice?’ I said, ‘I think one of the players would have speared me.’ ”

“Yeah,” Eruzione said. “Two or three might have.”

‘You Were Meant to Be Here’

Eruzione’s goal came out of nowhere and set loose bedlam, putting the U.S. ahead of the Soviets, 4-3, with 10 minutes to play.

The players talk about another goal, the one scored by Bill Baker--now an oral surgeon in Brainerd, Minn., who often finds himself repairing damage done by pucks--with 27 seconds left against Sweden to salvage a 2-2 tie in the first game of the tournament.

“The biggest goal of the tournament to me, sorry to Mike Eruzione,” said defenseman Ken Morrow, who now lives in Kansas City, Mo., working as the New York Islanders’ director of pro scouting.

“It didn’t get the notoriety, being the day before the opening ceremony. But it got us off on the right foot.”

Powerful Czechoslovakia, Norway, Romania and West Germany also fell, as the U.S.--seeded seventh before the tournament--advanced through the round-robin to the final four.

Facing the veteran Soviet team again was daunting. With the nation waiting for capitalism versus communism on skates, the intensity was high.

Tickets with a $67.20 face value went for three times that.

In the locker room before the game, Brooks’ message was simple:

“You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.”

The Americans fell behind, 2-1. They would have to fight their way back as usual.

Just before the end of the first period, things got weird.

A long shot by Christian drew Tretiak out to meet the puck, which he did nicely, stopping it with his pads. But he neglected to clear it, and Johnson jumped on the rebound and beat Tretiak, considered the best goalie in the world.

The score was 2-2, and the Soviets had gone to the locker room, but there was still a second to play. Coach Viktor Tikhonov sent a skeleton crew back out for the faceoff: Krutov, Mikhailov, and, stunningly, in net, backup goalie Vladimir Myshkin.

He had pulled Tretiak.

“It was a coach’s decision,” said Tretiak, who has said he believes the Soviets would have won if he had stayed in the game. “[Tikhonov] said the goal was my fault and pulled me out.

“I was so angry that I was ready to retire after that game, especially when we got beaten and I didn’t play. That lasted a long time with me. I was embarrassed.

“I think the coach thought we were going to beat the Americans easily. Later, [Tikhonov] wrote in his [memoirs] that it was the biggest mistake he had ever made in his life.”

The USSR still dominated much of the game, outshooting the U.S. over three periods, 39-16.

After two, the score was 3-2, Soviets. The building was quiet, with little sense an upset was brewing.

But as a U.S. power play ended, Dave Silk pushed the puck toward Johnson just as Silk was being spilled by a Soviet defender.

Starikov should have had it, but the puck slipped past his skates and stick to Johnson, who wristed a close-range shot past Myshkin: The score was 3-3 with 11:21 to play.

Less than 1 1/2 minutes later, Harrington went in on the forecheck and crashed into the boards, knocking the puck free. Mark Pavelich got it, and passed it out to a wide-open Eruzione in the slot.

Eruzione shot off the wrong foot, and beat Myshkin under his right arm for a 4-3 lead.

That might have been the last day anyone mispronounced Eruzione’s name--Eh-roo-zee-o-nee.

“People used to say, ‘Arizona’ or ‘Arizone,’ ” he said. “It means eruption or explosion.”

It certainly did.

There were 10 minutes to play, and then began the long grind, trying to hold the lead against a Soviet team notorious for its offensive bursts.

Listening to Michaels and Ken Dryden do the telecast, there is a sense they don’t yet believe in miracles.

“When we were walking to the arena that afternoon, we were saying, ‘You know, if the score is 3-1, Soviets, midway through the second period, that will be close enough to keep an audience,’ ” Michaels said. “The possibility of the U.S. winning was nonexistent, in my mind, and in Ken’s mind.”

Don’t panic, Brooks told his team. Stay with what got you here. Stick to the game plan.

In the final minute, Tikhonov made another unusual decision: He did not pull Myshkin for an extra attacker. The Soviets seemed to have given up.

“When you have a team like that, maybe he’d never had to pull the goalie,” Brooks said.

“The thing I remember, as it was winding down, it was almost an eerie-type thing. I didn’t hear a lot of the crowd or the background noise. The noise was muffled. Things were in slow motion. I don’t know what the psychologists would call that, but that’s how it felt.”

Ten seconds to play.

“Five seconds left in the game,” Michaels said.

“It’s over!” Dryden said.

And then, Michaels’ spontaneous phrase, a line that lives as a reminder of a less self-conscious age in sportscasting:

“Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

It seems incomprehensible now, but the game--an event Sports Illustrated chose as the greatest sports moment of the 20th century--was not televised live in the U.S.

ABC’s Roone Arledge tried to get the 5 p.m. Eastern start moved, but Olympic officials wouldn’t budge, and ABC decided to tape the game and show it in prime-time.

In Lake Placid that evening, the delayed telecast created a surreal scene at the Holiday Inn, where after the game a few players joined revelers who were still watching the upset unfold.

“Cheered with the rest of ‘em,” said Schneider, a salesman for Great Dane Trailers in Minneapolis-St. Paul. “I don’t think we were recognized by too many people until toward the end.”

Nobody slept much.

“It was one of those nights where you go to bed and wake up and think someone’s going to tell you it didn’t happen,” Harrington said. “You’d say, ‘What just happened?’ And somebody would say, ‘I think we won.’ And you’d say, ‘No, we didn’t.’ ”

Incredibly, there was another game to be played in less than 48 hours, and because of a format in which goal differential came into play, it was possible the Americans would leave Lake Placid without a medal if they didn’t at least tie Finland on Sunday.

Brooks’ message got through in the locker room with the team trailing Finland, 2-1, after two periods: “Gentlemen, if you lose this game, you will take it to your grave.”

Early in the third, Phil Verchota tied the score, 2-2. At 6:05, McClanahan got the go-ahead goal.

“After that goal, I looked at Mark Johnson, and we knew it was over,” said McClanahan, a stockbroker for U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. “That was a big-time rush.”

The Captain and the Goalie

Maybe if the flag had been draped around some other player, it would have been different.

Maybe if the cameras hadn’t rested on Jim Craig, squinting into the stands, the strands of hair matted to his wet forehead as he counted the rows with his finger.

“Where’s my father?”

You only saw his lips move, but you could almost hear the New England accent as Craig searched for his father, Donald, in the stands after the U.S. had beaten Finland, 4-2, to clinch the gold.

Eruzione, the irrepressible captain, still makes part of his living off those two weeks in Lake Placid, estimating he gives about 25 motivational speeches a year at $5,000 to $10,000 a pop.

But the images of Craig made the goaltender the sentimental hero, a role he never would have chosen.

Shortly after the Olympics, he signed with the NHL’s Atlanta Flames and found himself the center of attention in every city. He lasted three seasons with Atlanta, Boston and Minnesota, appearing in only 30 games.

Once, in a Chicago hotel, Craig awoke from a nap to find curious hotel employees in his room, wanting a peek at the Olympic hero.

“With very little apprenticeship, it was like going from singing in a local nightclub and the next thing you know, you’re headlining in Vegas,” said Craig, who lives in North Easton, Mass., with his wife, Charlie, their son, J.D., 11, and daughter, Taylor, 8, and is a marketing consultant for Valassis Communications.

“There are people who become professional athletes because they love the adulation, and others who played to get where they wanted to go. I never played the game for adulation.”

With the adulation came notoriety, particularly in 1982, when Craig was involved in a car accident on Cape Cod in which a woman died. Craig was cleared of vehicular homicide.

“I thought Jim would have a difficult time, a little,” Eruzione said. “Jim was a real private kid. He didn’t like to do a lot of interviews. He’d just as soon play hockey and go on with his life.

“People expected one thing and got another. They were looking for the kid with the flag, and they got something different.”

Craig is most thankful for what the Olympics did for his father, who at the time was struggling with the death of Jim’s mother, Peg, several years earlier.

“That was the greatest part, I feel,” said Craig, who did a Coke commercial with his father after the Olympics.

“My father was an old man before the Olympics. His wife of however many years had died. He was by himself. Lonely. The Olympics were a renewal, a rebirth. . . .

“I remember one line he told me, I laugh to myself to this day. We were going out to do ‘The Mike Douglas Show.’ We were picked up in a limo, first class, and met out there, and I gave him a hug and a kiss and he said, ‘I thought I’d be dead before I’d ride in one of these things.’ ”

Eruzione’s limo days have never really ended.

He retired from hockey shortly after the Olympics.

“I felt as an athlete, that was my greatest moment. It was time to move on and do something else,” he said.

The question is, what hasn’t he done?

Eruzione has been on “Hollywood Squares,” “Family Feud” and “Wheel of Fortune.”

He has worked as a broadcaster for the New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils, and at every subsequent Winter Olympics except Nagano.

He drops ceremonial pucks, and he lines up putts on the Celebrity Players Tour.

“He scored one goal and he made a career out of it. We call him America’s Guest,” Ramsey said. “He was the perfect ambassador for the team.”

Eruzione has spoken to groups from IBM, Visa, Merrill Lynch and Conseco. He works at his alma mater, Boston University, raising money for the athletic department, and also helps with the hockey program.

He will gather with his teammates for a quiet reunion this spring, no commitments, no speaking engagements, just the guys, ribbing each other.

“The real miracle is, he’s still making a buck talking about it,” Harrington said.

Still talking. Isn’t that just like an American?

Larionov thinks about it, and his eyes flash with a moment of impatience, then a smile.

“It’s in the past,” he said. “When you win two more Olympics, ’84 and ‘88, you forget.

“You guys never shut up about Olympics, 20 years later, still talking about the gold medal.”

Staff writer Jim Hodges contributed to this story.

*

FIRST PERSON

Staff writer Helene Elliott, then at Newsday, recalls her first Olympic assignment, right down to the high school classrooms that served as the media center.

Page 4

KEEPING TABS

A look at who they were and what became of members of U.S. team that shocked the world in 1980.

Page 5

TONIGHT ON TV

“Miracle on Ice” game will be shown on ESPN Classic at 6.