1980 USA Team

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Feb 11, 2016
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I will be honest. I really think the Lake Placid Miracle on Ice was the greatest sporting achievment in the history of sports.
I am enamored and know almost everything about the entire tournament from books, documentaries and other videos.
Here are a few things that bother me though.
That Soviet team was regarded to be the greatest hockey team to ever suit up by many people.
The U.S. had the youngest Olympic team ever then with an average age of 22.
All 4 goals against the Soviets were actually really lucky. I mean all 4. Buzz Shnieder on the first goal scored on a slap shot from six feet over the blue line against arguably the best goaltender to ever suit up in Tretiak. MArk Johnson's third goal came of an obvious incredible bounce of a Russian on to his stick and Harrington who made the wild errant pass came over the blue line with the puck but crossed the entire line before he brought the puck in. It should have been off sides. On the second goal Johnson scored in the first period within one second as the Russian defense gave up with so little time left and a huge slap shot by Dave Christian from the USA blue line bounced off Tretiak after giving up a HUGE rebound that let Johnson skate up and to the side of Tretiak wrist it by an out of position goaltender. Mike Eruzione's 4th goal came off a bad bounce in their end on the left side of the boards and came all the way to the other side to Eruzione who did make a nice wrist shot though.
The Russians missed 2 open nets in that game.
Reading a book on Herb Brooks I found out what I thought was the greatest spontaneous call in sports history by Al Michaels " Do you believe in Miracles....... YES !!!! " was said to have been said by sports commentator by Curt Gowdy at the 72 Olympics where the U.S. won silver. Who was the color commentator for that game? None other than Al Michaels. Insane. I like the guy but he might just be a fraud as I have seen interviws with him where he claimed to make it up at the spur of the moment.
In the Finland gold medal game the US up 4-2 with 90 seconds left hit the Finnish post or crossbar 4 times in that remaining span.
Thanks for reading.
 
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