I went to that game by sheer fluke luck.
My GF got tickets for the 5 PM game a full month before, the evening game was sold out and I thought there was no chance we would see the US play because I had doubts they would be in the medal round to begin with and if they were I was certain ABC would slot them in prime time - wrong on both counts.
The Soviets wanted the game early in the afternoon so it could be seen at a reasonable hour on Russian TV - well they saw it
This is the Soviet broadcast
I had actually been to Lake Placid early in the Olympics as TV38 was hired by ABC to cover some of the early rounds at what they called the 1932 Arena and the USA/Norway game was played there.
The games in the 1980 arena were produced by CFCF-TV (CTV) out of Montreal as ABC had no experience doing hockey.
If you look at the 1980 announcer assignments ABC had given a low profile to hockey and a young baseball announcer named Al Michaels got the gig
How did that work out for him?
So that Friday morning we drove to Lake Placid and all the way up Anne was saying ' We are going to win ' and I am praying it won't be 12-1 Russia.
Lake Placid was a logistical nightmare for traffic. Somehow the organizers overlooked that Montreal was only 100 miles away and many Americans ( including us ) had to book hotel rooms in Montreal because there was nothing in Lake Placid but you still had to try and drive into the area.
The game itself is a blur in my memory - it seemed like the teams would play end to end for minutes and then you look at the clock and only 40 seconds elapsed. I could not believe what I was seeing. I had seen a Russian team in person 3 times before - in Montreal 1972 and twice at Boston Garden including Bobby Orr retirement night. I had never seen them lose. Throw in that the year before the Russians played the NHL in a 3 game series in New York - The NHL won the first game and the Russians won Game 2. The deciding game was a disaster for North American hockey as the Russians won 6-0.
Annie was willing to barter the tickets she had for the Women's Figuring Skating Final on Saturday for the final US hockey game but NOBODY was selling those.
Brooks' greatest dressing room speech was not the
'You were born for this' speech you see in the movie Miracle - it came 2 days later when the US was struggling against Finland. He said
' If you lose this game, you will take it to your grave - YOUR f*ckING GRAVE '
USA-FINLAND 2/24/1980
99% of Americans watching the game had no clue the magnitude of the upset - only puckheads fully grasped it.
