I only know what it is because it was a storyline on American Dad a couple years ago. But then again, I have nearly zero interest in winter sports (or any sports really) and I was only 13 when it happened.
I can’t remember where I was or what I was doing when I heard about the U.S. hockey team upsetting the Soviets. I would’ve been a lousy spy.
“Of course I remember the broadcast; I was eating breakfast.”
“A-HA! It was breakfast time in the Soviet Union; dinner time in the United States! Lousy traitor!”
I remember lots about the event, though not the game.
I know that it was February 22, which is my brother’s birthday. I know it was a Friday, because we were Catholic and it was Lent and after the game my father was completely wound up and we all packed into a car and went to Pizza Hut where we asked for the pizza to be brought to the table after midnight so that we could have pepperoni on it. (My father and mother discussed for at least five minutes whether it was okay to order meat before midnight and eat it after midnight).
This was all extremely exciting because we never did stuff like that. And pizza! Woo!
I thought being pedantic was lauded around here 
[QUOTE=Clount Blucher]
It was playing on NBC(?) or one of the other antenna TV stations that broadcast out of Manhattan. It was Sunday morning… sometime between 7 and 10AM, but well before noon.
I don’t know what the records show… I just remember turning on the TV and there it was. I’m guessing live? Who rebroadcasts early on a Sunday morning?
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The game was played on Friday, February 22nd, at 5 pm, and aired later that night. If you saw it Sunday morning, it was a rebroadcast.
Now, the gold medal game against Finland was played at 11 am Eastern time on Sunday morning, on ABC. So maybe the rebroadcast you saw was right before the live showing of the US-Finland game. That would certainly make sense.
Incidentally, the US had to overcome a 2-1 third period deficit to beat Finland (which they ended up doing 4-2). That game was hardly anticlimactic, or a sure thing. It was at the end of this game that the entire team gathered on the medal podium, despite the fact that it wasn’t intended for so many people.
I was in school in 1980, Long Island NY, so my friends, schoolmates, and I were somewhat more interested in the Winter Olympics since they were being held in Upstate NY. Somewhat.
That said, on the whole we were probably more interested in what the Rangers and Islanders were doing in the regular NHL season (in the event - the Islanders went on to kick butt, and the Rangers went on to get butt-kicked :smack:) then the US Hockey team…
I was only about 12 at the time. I was just starting to become a sports fan. It was very memorable to me. I remember watching it “live.” I didn’t know it was taped from earlier in the day and I didn’t know the outcome. It’s still one of the most exciting sporting events I have ever watched.
Try arguing with an old Jack Nicklaus fan sometime. He never missed a shot, and won every week by battling Hogan, Palmer, Trevino, and Watson down the stretch. They evidently made a special rule for him to allow all five players in the same group.
To answer the OP, ISIS could get me to turn over my grandmother to them by forcing me to watch a hockey game. I never heard of “the miracle on ice” until the movie came out.
Also, I think there was no provision for overtime in international ice hockey at the time, so there would be no way to determine the winner if a game was tied after 60 minutes.
No, it was a 3-3 tie. The standings going into the final games were (W-L-T):
USA 1-0-1
USSR 1-1-0
Sweden 0-0-2
Finland 0-1-1
Not the version I remember. If USA and Finland tie, USA ends 1-0-2 (4 points) and USSR ends 2-1-0 (also 4 points); IIRC, the first tiebreaker is goal difference, and, thanks to USSR’s 9-2 win over Sweden on the final day, USSR would have won the gold medal, with USA getting the silver and Finland the bronze. (At the time, the NHL’s first tiebreaker was “most wins”; USSR would have won on that basis as well. The fact that the USA beat the USSR head-to-head was irrelevant.)
The conspiracy theorist in me still thinks it was highly coincidental that, with USA ahead by one goal about halfway through the third period against Finland, USA got called for three pretty much back-to-back penalties (remember, a tie gives the gold to the USSR).
As for whether a USSR victory would have been hollow, I suspect that the response from Moscow would have been, “We won the gold fair and square in your country; now it is your turn to put up or shut up by coming to ours for the Summer Olympics,” and who knows how much “revenge” backlash there would have been to pressure Carter to call off the boycott. (Actually, after USSR vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran for holding Americans hostage in 1979, that pretty much sealed the boycott deal.)
USA-USSR Olympic side note: USA never beat USSR in Olympic men’s basketball after the disputed 1972 final. (The only other time they met was in 1988; USSR won, mainly because they realized how much of a weapon the 3-point line, used in the Olympics for the first time, was. The “Unified Team” of the 1992 Olympics did not have Lithuania (or Latvia, or Estonia), so it hardly counts as a “USSR” team.)
…it was the Finland game… the one that meant something because that’s the one where they won the gold. It was your recounting of the scores that reminded me & it was a good game (the Finns were Very good).
I’m not a hockey player. Still, I’ve always suspected that winning a good game where both sides fight very hard to win (especially when you recover from a deficit) is the most satisfying victory of all.
I’ll probably still think that until I hear a pro hockey player say, “Nah, I like a blow out better.”
I’m still dumbfounded that anyone thought this was a good idea. Why on earth did they not just use this system to determine the top two, and then play a gold medal game?
The format was designed to ensure that the top four teams all played each other, without duplication of matches.
I’m from Minnesota, rabid hockey state, home to Herb Brooks and about half that team.
No idea where I was.
You’re right. I just quickly checked the U.S. hockey team results for the Olympics, and saw the golds in 1960 and 1980, and a bunch of silvers, but didn’t take note that many of those were outside the Soviet dominant timeframe.
Why would “without duplication of matches” be such a priority? I get the appeal of round robin play, to see various matchups. I’m a huge tennis fan, and the ATP Championship uses this format to let us see different permutations of the top 8 players, without someone being eliminated just because they lose one match. But then they still have a championship match (they also have semifinals, but they are starting with two pools of 4 each rather than one).
So I still don’t get why you wouldn’t do round robin, then pit the top two teams against each other for the gold. The system they did use avoids duplication of matches, yes; but it also opens up the possibility that the silver medal team may have beaten the gold medal team the only time they played, which is ridiculous.