Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (32 page)

POLITICS OF HOCKEY

There were numerous reasons why the focus of the world press was not on the Olympics and these reasons made what happened in Lake Placid all the more meaningful for many Americans. On November 4, 1979, Muslim college students raided and overtook the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. In the process, the students took 51 hostages and held them captive for the next 444 days.

One month later, Soviet tanks and soldiers invaded Afghanistan. As a result, U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced that if the Soviets did not pull out of Afghanistan by February of 1980 the Americans would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympiad in Moscow. The Soviets, if anything, increased their military actions in Afghanistan and, as promised, the American athletes did not participate in the Summer Games. Some thought the Russians would boycott the 1980 Winter Olympics, but Soviet Premier Leonid Breshnev approved participation.

ENTER COACH BROOKS

U.S. Olympic Head Coach Herb Brooks had his own battles to fight. The charismatic Brooks was the most successful collegiate hockey coach in America, winning numerous NCAA hockey titles as leader of the University of Minnesota squad. Out of the 20 players who comprised the 1980 U.S. Olympic squad team, nine (almost half) were from Brooks' home base of the University of Minnesota. Mike Eruzione was named team captain. Other notable players were Mark Johnson of the University of Wisconsin and defencemen Ken Morrow of Bowling Green (Ohio).

Brooks had a personal, inner fire motivating him to do well in the Olympics. As a player, Brooks was the last man cut from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, which went on to win the gold medal by beating Czechoslovakia in Squaw Valley, California. As they watched the win on television, Brooks' father turned to Herb and said, “Well, it looks like the coach made the right decision.”

THE HERB BROOKS EXPERIENCE

A 60-game exhibition was arranged for the 1980 U.S. team to build up experience together. Their final record was 42 wins, 15 losses, and three ties. The game that really set the tone was a disappointing 3–3 tie against the Norway national team. Furious with the team's lackadaisical effort, Brooks made his players do line-to-line skating sprints for an hour after the game. The arena's maintenance man actually turned out the lights, but Brooks made his players keep skating. This act cemented his players together for two common causes: to work a lot harder as a team, and to demonize Herb Brooks. The coach's hard-line but colorful approach to discipline led to his “Brooksisms,” imaginative dressing-downs of players slacking off at practice; two of the most popular were “You look like a monkey screwing a football” and, “Your playing gets worse and worse every day and now you're playing like it's next week.” The team was clearly getting better, but in February 1980, three days before the start of the Olympics, the team was wiped out in an exhibition with the Soviets 10–3.

DURING THE OLYMPICS

On February 12, 1980, the Olympic cauldron torch was lit and the Winter Olympics officially began. The Americans' first opponent was Sweden and the U.S. was losing in the third period. With 29 seconds left, they scored to salvage a 2–2 tie. Two days later they played Czechoslovakia, and in what was probably the team's biggest win of the tournament, they upset them by a score of 7–3. Momentum was building…The U.S. then beat, in order, Norway, Romania and Germany. They struggled in the last game, but rallied to come out on top. All of this set up a mighty match-up versus the Soviet Union.

U.S. VS. USSR

The Soviets were in a separate bracket than the American team and defeated all their competition, including Canada and Finland. So on Friday, February 22, 1980, at 5 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, the hockey game pitting the Soviet Union against the U.S. began. Before the game, Brooks gave an inspired pep talk to his players, telling them “You were meant to be here…This moment is yours…It's our time.” His amateur collegiate players were about to play the professional Soviets in the most important hockey game of their lives.

The U.S. came out to an inspired start, yet the Soviets scored the first goal and had a 2–1 lead as the final seconds of the first period were ticking down. Many of the players on both teams began to slow down and skate towards their respective team benches, but not the U.S.'s Mark Johnson. Breaking into the Soviet zone with the puck with only five seconds left, Johnson slipped past a Soviet defencemen, deked Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretiak out of position, and tied the game just as the first period ended.

SOVIET MIND GAMES

Then came a move by Soviet head coach Viktor Tikhonov that surprised everybody, even Brooks. Between periods, Tikhonov decided to bench Tretiak and replace him with backup netminder Vladimir Myshkin. The maneuver seemed to spark the Soviet team, as the second period was their best of the game. When it ended they were winning, 3–2, and had outshot the U.S. 30–10 after two periods of play.

COUNTDOWN TO GOLD

The U.S. Olympic team was not to be denied. Johnson scored to tie the game in the third period. ABC-TV commentator Ken Dryden had just finished telling play-by-play announcer Al Michaels that “The Americans are relying too much on [goaltender] Jim Craig” when captain Eruzione scored, giving a 4–3 lead to the U.S. with exactly ten minutes left in regulation. The crowd chanted “USA! USA!” as the minutes and seconds wound down. With three seconds left, Michaels asked the eternal question “Do you believe in miracles?” and answered it by yelling “Yes!”

Two days later, the U.S. played Finland for the gold medal. Before the game, Brooks told his players “If you lose this game, you'll take it to your f—-in' grave.” After two periods, Finland was winning by a score of 2–1. The Americans exploded for three goals in the final period, winning the game 4–2 and also the gold medal.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Out of the 20 U.S. Olympic players, only Ken Morrow won the Stanley Cup in the NHL, four times with the New York Islanders. Jim Craig became a salesman and Eruzione works as an inspirational speaker. Craig Patrick went on to work for the Pittsburgh Penguins, helping create the template for a team that would win back-to-back Stanley Cups in the early 1990s. Mark Johnson had a strong NHL career with the New Jersey Devils and later became an assistant coach for the University of Wisconsin women's hockey team. Mike Ramsey, Neal Broten, Mark Pavelich, Dave Christian, Jack O'Callahan, Steve Christoff, Rob McClanahan, Dave Silk, and Bill Baker also all went on to play in the NHL.

After the Lake Placid Games, Brooks coached the New York Rangers (1981–1985), where he reached the 100-victory mark faster than any other coach in franchise history. He coached the Minnesota North Stars (1987–1988), the New Jersey Devils (1992–1993) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (1999–2000). He also led the French Olympic team at the 1998 Nagano Games. Brooks returned to the U.S. Olympic hockey team in 2002 to lead them to a silver medal. Tragically, Herb Brooks passed away the next year in a car accident.

* * * * *

“He's a gutless puke, that's what Travis Green is. That's why he doesn't wear an Islander uniform any more.”

—Islander Mike Milbury, on former Islander
Travis Green's hit on Kenny Jonsson

“Luc Robitaille is a great kid and a good player but ask anybody on the street and they'd probably think Luc Robitaille is a type of salad dressing.”

—former L.A. Kings owner Bruce McNall

From tiddlywinks to three-down football, Edmonton and Calgary enjoy quite a rivalry. It is most heated when served on ice.

T
hose who hail from outside the borders of the Wild Rose province may never fully understand it. If you're from Edmonton, you are genetically predisposed to hate Calgary. Or at least all of its sports teams. If you come from Calgary, you automatically dislike…well you get the picture.

THIS WILD ROSE HAS THORNS

Any professional athlete who has plied his trade in either of the two cities certainly doesn't need it explained to him. The Battle of Alberta is old hat to the Canadian Football League as well, where the Stampeders and Eskimos wage a three-down holy war each and every Labor Day. But it is on the ice where the intense rivalry of these two cities is borne out. It is through hockey that a generation of young Calgarians learned to loathe Edmontonians and their precocious 1980s Oiler lineups dotted by Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, and Grant Fuhr. It is through hockey that Edmonton fans looked enviously at their southern cousins while Lanny McDonald, Doug Gilmour, Al MacInnis, and Mike Vernon sipped from the Cup in 1989 and while Edmonton-native Jarome Iginla (
horrors
) led a gutsy band of Flames into the 2004 finals.

CITY OF CHAMPIONS

The ultimate scoreboard—the one that registers Stanley Cup championships—reads Edmonton 5, Calgary 1. This qualification alone likely justifies the pretentious “City of Champions” nickname the Alberta capital awarded itself during the Oilers' salad days. That nickname rubbed Calgarians the wrong way. It was bad enough they had to watch the Oilers win six Stanley Cups and the Eskimos dominate the Grey Cup during the 1980s. They didn't want to be reminded of it whenever they landed at Edmonton International, too.

“I always say to Edmonton people, it's grand to boast about all the championship teams you've had,” Calgary sportscaster Russ Peake once told the
Calgary Herald.
“But the fact is you still have to live in Edmonton.” Every time these two hockey teams play, no matter if they are battling for first place in their division or simply to stay afloat in today's billion-dollar hockey industry, there is something a little extra on the line. They're called provincial bragging rights and, make no mistake, they do matter. To the players, to the fans, to the politicians, even.

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON, ANYWAY?

“Part of the learning curve in the city of Edmonton is learning to hate the city of Calgary,” former Oilers defenceman Steve Smith once said. He should know. He was a central figure in one of the most memorable single battles in the War of Alberta. During game seven of the 1986 Smythe Division finals with the dynasty Oilers seemingly poised for another Stanley Cup run, Smith put an attempted pass from behind the net off the leg of his own goaltender, Grant Fuhr. The wayward puck ricocheted into the goal and gave Calgary a 3–2 third-period lead and ultimately the series victory. In subsequent visits to the Saddledome, Calgary fans would taunt Smith with chants of “Shoot! Shoot!” whenever he got the puck behind the net. And who could blame them? They were simply doing their part in the battle.

Later Smith would join the Flames as a player and assistant coach, giving him a unique perspective of one of hockey's greatest rivalries from both sides. He once told the
Calgary Herald
that what he remembered most about playing the Flames was “that I was going to come into Calgary and shed some blood. Every time you touched the puck you were going to get hit or whacked across the back of the legs.”

LONG LIVE THE ETERNAL GRUDGE

More recent versions of the battle may not have been quite as heated. Still, in 2003 Oilers coach Craig MacTavish took the rivalry to unprecedented heights when he ripped the tongue out of the mouth of Flames' mascot Harvey the Hound. The now-classic showdowns of the 1980s are still the ones that resonate the most, however. “As vicious, fast, competitive, hard-hitting and volatile
as those games were, I'm shocked no one was seriously hurt,” former Flame Jim Peplinski told the
Calgary Sun.

Former Flames general manager Cliff Fletcher, who guided Calgary to its only Stanley Cup win in 1989, has fond memories about those rough-and-tumble affairs. “To me, the rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton is what sport is all about. It wasn't phony. There was competition between the two cities in everything, whether it be a tiddlywinks tournament or whatever. They can't stand each other. And I think that's a good thing.”

* * * * *

A Kindergarten teacher in Calgary tells her class she's a BIG Flames fan.

She's really excited about it and asks the kids if they're Flames fans too.

Everyone wants to impress the teacher and says they're Flames fans too, except ONE kid named Wayne.

The teacher looks at Wayne and says, “Wayne, you're not a Flames fan?”

He says, “Nope, I'm a Oilers fan!” She says, “Well, why are you a Oilers fan and not a Flames fan?”

Wayne says, “Well, my mom is an Oilers fan, and my dad is an Oilers fan, so I'm an Oilers fan.”

The teacher's not happy. She's a little hot under the collar. She says, “Well, if your mom's an idiot, and your dad's a moron, then what would you be?!”

“Well,” Wayne says, “then I'd be a Flames fan!”

* * * * *

“I am not afraid to stop the puck with my head. I try to do it sometimes even in practice; not everyday but once in a while, I say to my teammates, shoot me in my head and I'll try to stop the puck. I am not afraid at all of the puck, so sometimes, if the shot comes at my head, it's an easier save to make with your head. Maybe the people think a different way, but for me, I do it with my head.”

—Dominik Hasek