OT: 33 years ago today

Submitted by goblueram on

Do you believe in Miracles?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=8gfD134ED54

February 22, 1980 - The U.S. defeats the Soviet Union in one of the greatest upsets and sports stories ever in the "Miracle On Ice".  I was not alive in 1980, but the countdown and Al Michaels' call to end the game still brings tears to my eyes.  

USA! USA! USA!

Can't wait for Sochi 2014.  

bacon1431

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:00 PM ^

Personally, I hate the self mod system. And I often think there are too many posters here. The  flaming from both trolls and regulars is unbearable sometimes to post in threads about the two big sports. If it weren't for the OT and semi-frequent discussion on the non-revenue sports, I don' think I would ever post. Anyone who posts something even somewhat against the grain gets flamed. 

GoBlueInNYC

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:36 PM ^

But complaining about the current moderating system gets you pos'd, no?

But seriously, the points/mod-system isn't the issue. Just a symptom of an intellectual laziness around here that's been developing for a while. When someone posts a different viewpoint, the common response has been more of a "this guy thinks something different! Down mod to hide his comment and maybe call him some names! Best we not engage with any of his backward thinking..." than reasonable discussion.

NelzQ

February 22nd, 2013 at 7:34 PM ^

to a crisp. Don't you realize this is a communist board? Go along. Get your cult hat on, fer godsakes. 

As for that game, it was a huge, huge upset at the time. I graduated High School in 1980.

To touch on the older guys getting no respect in these parts, all I can say is some of you whippersnappers are lucky we are old enough to have learned restraint. Otherwise, we'd unplug you from the matrix and expose some truths to you that you really don't want to know, just yet.

And for the record, I still have a six pack at 50. Can still manage to run a 4.6 (4.3 back then). And could pass for 35. 

XM - Mt 1822

February 23rd, 2013 at 7:33 AM ^

and i take pretty good care of the body i've been given, but i try my best to never talk smack about it.  i can appreciate others' efforts though.  and the 'worth your while' would be the credibility of your internet soul - that ought to be good enough. 

NelzQ

February 23rd, 2013 at 11:14 AM ^

A few points and I'm done with this exchange because I don't come here for confrontation. Or proving anything to anyone. 

1. I know what I said is the truth and that is enough for me. That being said, I live in the metro Detroit area and will meet you for beers and satisfy your challenge if we can work out the logistics. Then, YOU can come on here and vouch for me. Because I could care less. I have no internet soul. I am far beyond others defining what I am or must live up to.

2. Last night I got irritated that some of my posts were negged for no other reason than censorship. I also got my ire up after seeing a couple of young guys giving older guys 'guff'. I don't normally 'talk smack' about my physical status either. But I got a bit tired of some of these youngsters assuming 'fathers' are over the hill. 

3. I put all three of my kids through Michigan. I could tell some tales about our great institution that are best left unsaid.

4. Clearly, this is not a place for free exchange of ideas. Democracy.

5. I come here because I fell in love with Michigan one saturday morning around 1970. So much so, that I steered my youngest daughter there despite the fact she was accepted at Harvard.

6. Go Blue.

XM - Mt 1822

February 23rd, 2013 at 1:28 PM ^

you.   a little tongue-in-cheek commentary (though I am an old guy), nothing more. 

will meet for beers though when i get downstate.  would do that regardless of whether you want to have a mini try-out/track meet. 

NelzQ

February 23rd, 2013 at 6:15 PM ^

and I never get another point in this space, I'm cool with that. LOL. But don't get it twisted, you challenged my claims and I offered to oblige you.

I am intense because my formative young adult years were spent in the Defense Language Institute preparing to become a Cryptologic Russian Linguist. I got the top secret clearance with SCI/SBI. I speak (or used to) flawless, fluent Russian. I have done things you would neither believe nor can I talk about. While some of you were drinking it up and deciding who could join your clique, I was in survival school preparing to give my life so you could continue to have the right to create boards with groupthink attributes. At heart and in body and spirit, I am still that specially trained patriot. So sue me.

I know a little bit about a few things. Including attitude.

stephenrjking

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:55 PM ^

Everyone has already destroyed you for this comment, so I will make it everyone plus one:

You say "if you know hockey," but you apparently don't. This is not a somewhat better team losing to a somewhat lower quality team. This is is not the 2002 Red Wings losing a flukey game to, say, the Coyotes. This was a permanent, nearly flawless all-star team that NEVER LOST and was able to compete with and defeat the very best professionals, playing a bunch of under-skilled American college players. This is the 2002 Detroit Red Wings losing to the 2002 Saint Cloud State Huskies. 

The USSR hockey program was a machine. You must not know about the 1972 Summit Series against the Canadian all-stars, a team that included every great Canadian player except Bobby Orr (including a certain Red-headed college graduate). That USSR team included several players that would still be on the team in 1980; the Canadian team is still a who's-who of hockey greats.

The Canadians barely escaped with a win, after posting a miserable 1-2-1 record in the first four games, all on Canadian ice. They barely escaped with their lives (in one or two situations, that statement is literally true). 

That a bunch of amateurs, playing before the days when college players were regularly capable of playing in the NHL, could stay on the ice with the Soviets was inconceivable.

stephenrjking

February 22nd, 2013 at 4:07 PM ^

Not my intent. My Dad was from Canada and called the Summit series win (he watched game 8 in Ann Arbor on tape delay after carefully avoiding anyone telling him the result) his proudest moment as a Canadian. I own a full DVD collection of the series, and we watched the Game 8 DVD together in our family room a week before he died. With my Canadian heritage I consider it an awesome series. It was also very, very close, with the Canadians trailing game 8 in the third and only getting the winning goal from Paul Henderson in the dying moments.

The point is, it was also a bit of a shock to the North American hockey establishment that the Soviets could push the Canadians so close to losing. The same system, the same team, and many of those same players that were every bit the equal of the Canadian all-NHL team came to Lake Placid. My point was that the Soviets were very good, and that the Americans shouldn't have even been on the same ice sheet.

cheesheadwolverine

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:19 PM ^

In addition to what has been said (Cold War/professional vs. amatuer) this is the one time that I can think of that the entire country has united around a sporting event.  I think that is really special, and, while it happens quite often in some places (Europe and Latin America in the World Cup for example), it really never happens in the States.

APBlue

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:16 PM ^

I remember how the Red Wings' "Russian Five", especially Fetisov and Larionov, used to hate being asked about that game every year around its anniversary.  

User -not THAT user

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:27 PM ^

...was so poor that not a single one of those magnificent young men were Michigan students.

Hard to imagine...even this year's team sent Trouba to the WJC.

But yeah, the Miracle On Ice is still my favorite moment in all of sports.  Thanks for the reminder.

stephenrjking

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:58 PM ^

College hockey had a different landscape then. Michigan was down, but even when they ramped back up under Red their initial quality teams consisted mostly of Canadians. The great Denver and North Dakota teams of the old WCHA were mostly Canadian, for example.

Minn and Mass were the places where most good American players developed back then, and they typically stayed home. Michigan didn't start producing a lot of great players until later. 

MGoShoe

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:28 PM ^

...who saw this game live. ABC played it on tape delay during prime time and put an embargo on its news organization from announcing the result. WXYZ's anchor Bill Bonds ignored that and spilled the beans.

I was living at Selfridge ANGB on Lake St. Clair and watched the game live that afternoon on a CTV station out of Kitchener or London (channel 42, I think).

The Soviet team had a well deserved aura of invincibility. The journey Team USA made to turn themselves into a world beater squad is rightly legendary.

Brimley

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:09 PM ^

I watched the channel 7/ABC coverage and, yes, while Bill Bonds announced "continued coverage of the U.S. hockey team's big win," you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out the results ahead of time just from the ABC coverage.  Their cut-aways from the game to Jim McKay (I think) featured a background of drunk people thronging the streets of Lake Placid waving American flags.  Small-ish giveaway, that.

Wave83

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:45 PM ^

I sort of saw it live, but only relatively.

I was a freshman at Michigan and the Olympic hockey was probably the sports highlight of that year with my new friends.  I knew nothing about hockey (and still don't, really), but one of the guys on the hall was a hockey player from Buffalo.  He made us all fans -- Sweden tie, win over the Czechs, etc.  We even talked about just taking a crazy road trip and just driving to Lake Placid.  My common sense intervened and ruined what could have been a great lifetime story.

But here's the thing:  for some reason the day of the game against the Soviets I went AWOL.  I had an Enlish lit class in Theatre and decided to bail on reading Waiting for Godot by just going to watch it instead.  The performance was at the Canturbury Loft on State Street and I saw it with two dozen people.  (It's a real snoozer.)

Afterward, I remembered that the game would be on TV.  I went to Dooleys on Maynard, got in, and saw the game winding down on the big screen.  I couldn't believe we were leading and that we were going to . . . WIN.  I went nuts.  Alone.  Because everyone else in the bar already knew we had won.

The FannMan

February 22nd, 2013 at 4:52 PM ^

I was going to ask if anyone remembered him giving away the score.  

IIRC - It was during a news update, DURING THE GAME!   I was watching with my dad who went ballistic.  I was a nine year kid, and told him that there was no way anyone would be that dumb and it couldn't have been the final score.  I didn't yet appreciate Mr. Bonds and the likelihood that he was under the influence of one substance or another.  My ignorance of Bill's history allowed me to enjoy the rest of the game.  My dad, however, really wanted to kick Bond's ass.

yossarians tree

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:29 PM ^

In those days there were three television channels, four if you had a UHF station. In Detroit we could also get the CBC, though it was usually "snowing." The game was not even on live television and was replayed in primetime on ABC 8 hours after the game was played. I remember catching interest in the US team as the tournament wore on, but I knew virtually nothing about any of them when the Olympics began. I believe they had a huge and unexpected win over (Finland?) which kind of got people's attention, only to set up the game against the Soviets, which of course was a certain crushing loss. A lot of people don't realize that this was not the finals, and the US had to again beat a very good team (Czechoslovakia?) to win the gold.

MichiganManOf1961

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:32 PM ^

Just proves that God was smiling down on our strong American team and not those Godless commies.

~Herm

mackbru

February 22nd, 2013 at 1:33 PM ^

Not sure random anniversaries -- oh, the big 33! -- merit individual threads. Otherwise the board would be filled with them. "48 years ago today, in bowling!"

justingoblue

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:03 PM ^

on topic news and analysis threads, the threshold for what constitutes a good thread would be raised. As it is, this is a really slow on-topic day and, although 33 is random, it's still the anniversary of the most celebrated American international victory ever in a team sport, and is likely the most celebrated international contest period since the Munich games (from an American perspective, obviously).

HereforBeer

February 22nd, 2013 at 3:19 PM ^

OK I'll help out a fellow bowler but this probably does truly need its own topic. Anyway, 48 years ago today was the first day of the Pikes Peak PBA Open. A tournament in which Detriot bowler Dave Soutar slammed the competition and took home the $5,000 prize claiming his second PBA win.

stephenrjking

February 22nd, 2013 at 2:02 PM ^

The Miracle was and is the greatest moment in American sports. I don't need to be biased to say this--it regularly receives that rating from multiple media outlets and publications whenever such a question is posed. 

It's impossible to give such a sporting event the justice that is due on a board like this. I wish I had been old enough to enjoy it when it happened. Unless the US Men's Soccer team wins the World Cup (preferably at home) we will never see something like this again. It was exraordinary.