Back on the bench: 1980 revisited

Originally published on IIHF.com in 2002

By Lucas Aykroyd

In the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” at Lake Placid, it was not hard to pick out two men on opposing benches, one there willingly, the other filled with frustration.

The happy man was Team USA coach Herb Brooks, who saw his squad of college players defeat the vaunted Soviet Union 4-3 and seize their opportunity to win the gold medal in front of the home crowd.

On the other side, Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretiak was frustrated that he had surrendered a late first period goal to the USA’s Mark Johnson, and that head coach Viktor Tikhonov had put him on the bench and substituted backup Vladimir Myshkin to start the second period.

On February 16, 2002, Brooks and Tretiak found themselves on opposing benches again. Brooks reprised his earlier role as the coach of Team USA, while Tretiak served as a mentor for Russia’s three goaltenders, Nikolai Khabibulin, Egor Podomatski and Ilya Bryzgalov.

This was the first Olympic hockey game on American soil between the United States and Russia since the Lake Placid classic.

The resulting 2-2 tie had much of the pure hockey flair of the clash 22 years earlier, but without the political overtones and hostility. Deafening cheers greeted the Americans, but the Russians were not booed as they had been in the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During this game, Russian voices chanting “Shaibu!” (literally, “puck”) were heard, which never happened in 1980 due to the travel restrictions on Soviet citizens.

Center Igor Larionov was the only participant in Saturday’s game who would have been old enough to participate in 1980. However, he wasn’t there, since Tikhonov had not yet picked the talented 19-year-old from Voskresensk to join CSKA Moscow or the national team. And after this game, he wasn’t in the mood to dredge up memories of a painful loss suffered by his old comrades.

“We never talk about that,” Larionov said. “I don’t think I should compare different generations. So many of our guys who are playing today were like four, five, six years old when it happened in 1980. Ilya Kovalchuk wasn’t even born! So we never bring up that game.”

Larionov still remembers the panache of the Soviet teams of the 1980’s with fondness: “We were always enjoying the game. When we played the game, we were always improvising. Our style was like the Dutch soccer team played in the 1970’s. Everybody played offensively, everybody played defensively. It was pure skill.”

But the 1980 American team managed to hold that skill at bay for the victory, as team captain Mike Eruzione is constantly reminded. He finds much to recommend both eras, describing Saturday’s game as “an opportunity to show how good we are and how far we’ve come.”

“There’s a lot of tempo out there,” said Eruzione. “These players are bigger, strong and faster. It’s just unfortunate that they don’t have more time to prepare together as a team.”

Time together was certainly a factor in the cohesion of both the U.S. Olympians and the Soviets, with whom a 22-year-old Fetisov was playing his first Winter Games in 1980. His personal success (5-4-9 in seven games) was overshadowed by the loss to the Americans.

Asked to compare the atmosphere of Saturday’s game with Lake Placid, Fetisov tensed for a second and then defused the query with wry humor: “1980 again? I don’t remember. Ask Herbie [Brooks]. He’ll remember.”

“It was great hockey,” the current Russian head coach added quietly. “Unbelievable.”

When Brooks described an autographed picture of Fetisov wearing the CCCP jersey with the “K” for captain as one of his “prized possessions,” Fetisov said that had to be wrong: “I was too young!” He quipped that he was still waiting to receive a commemorative photo of Brooks in his loud sports jacket and bad pair of pants. Brooks acknowledged that the last time that pair of pants was seen was on a “horse heading south.”

As laughter resounded through the media conference room, it was clear that only in terms of what happened on the ice could Saturday’s game be compared to the “Miracle on Ice.” The Cold War tensions that fuelled the 1980 confrontation no longer exist.

The “Miracle on Ice” was, you could say, a benchmark for what Olympic hockey can be.

And on Saturday night, the bottom line was that two teams of great players had once again come together with skill and passion to produce a game that will linger in the memory of everyone who witnessed it.