Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Do You Believe In Miracles?!?!?!

Today's post title is thanks to Al Michaels who, 31 years ago today, called arguably the greatest game in US hockey history...



The game was a semifinal game in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. USA vs. the Soviet Union. The underdog USA team was made up of amateurs and college kids, while the heavily-favored USSR team was a bunch of professionals. But the USA team stepped up and were able to defeat the Soviets 4-3. And 2 days later, they beat Finland 4-2 to win the Gold Medal. Now because I was a bit older than 2 years old, I don't remember many details of the game...duh!! So for more info, you can check out the page on the USA Hockey website or its wikipedia link.

One additional piece of info: The head coach of that USA team was the late Herb Brooks. He went on to coach the Rangers for 3 1/2 seasons, making the playoffs the 3 full seasons he was at the helm. But while with the USA team, he was praised for being able to bring together a bunch of youngsters and have them work cohesively as a team. Which is a similar position that John Tortorella is finding himself in with the current Rangers, especially with their defensemen: their oldest d-man is Steve Eminger at 27, and he's been a healthy scratch the last few games. Hopefully, Torts can keep the youth movement successful and coach them into the playoffs, where miracles are definitely believable!

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