It's Just Like 1980! Yeah, right.
by Quisp on Feb 22, 2010 10:54 AM PST
in Olympics
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I started this post after Brian Burke's comment last week that if the US wins gold it's a victory on a par with 1980. Little did I realize that beating Canada in a pre-lim game was going to be touted as "Miracle 2.0." (I just heard someone on ESPN radio characterize the U.S. team as not even expected to make it out of the preliminary round. Really? By whom?)
Anyway, Miracle 2: Miller Time. There are so many ways to pick that apart, but I'll just stick with this:
The 1980 US team was a bunch of college kids, playing not only against grown-ups (which is usually mentioned), but against the Red Army, elite professionals in everything but name, trained and funded by the Soviet military, hockey division. Everybody knows it was the height of the Cold War and the Soviets were the enemy, but just paying lip-service to that doesn't give us (or me, anyway) any sense of magnitude. To get that, you have to see it from the Soviets' point of view.
It would be as though the U.S. Marines had a football team, not a college team, but an elite all-star squad with the very best football players from across the country, NFL players, and they ruled the world and virtually never lost over several decades of competition (by the way: the all-time Olympic win/loss record of the Soviet national team? 62-6-2). Imagine such a team. Now imagine it's 2002. And we lose in the Olympics to the the team from Afghanistan, made up entirely of Taliban prep-school kids.
No matter what happens to Canada or Russia or the US in this Olympics, it's not going be as bad as that.
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The comparisons are hyperbolic
And to amplify your point, Quisp: Consider how many of the Miracle on Ice boys went on to have significant careers at the NHL level. I can think of… Ken Morrow? Not only was the USA team young and green (especially compared to the USSR/Red Army) juggernaut, but objectively, their talent level wasn’t that high. Even 30 years later, the Miracle on Ice defies explanation on a lot of levels, except that Herb Brooks conjured the whole thing out of thin air.
By contrast, Team USA in 2010 is a professional-grade team through and through, put together by pros and coached by pros. The players are all legitimate NHL-grade, and some are star-caliber players (Miller), while others may well be stars in the future (JJ, Ryan, Kesler). Even the journeyman-type guys are veterans who have been around a while (Langenbrunner, Rafalski), not flash-in-the-pans. On paper, they’re a very respectable match for anyone in the tournament.
So, yeah, there is no real comparison.
I think you're being a bit harsh on US hockey at the time...
by comparing them to a bunch of scrubs from the afgan taliban. While I understand your desire to use in your analogy someone with whom we were at war but I doubt they’ve even heard of american football in the taliban.
Perhaps a better analogy would be the Cuban national junior baseball team against the big red machine in the ’70s.
Oh and there were 5 players from that team who had SIGNIFICANT NHL careers… Neal Braton, Mike Ramsey, Ken Morrow, Dave Cristianson, and Mark Johnson. All of them except for Morrow were all stars at some point in their careers and Morrow won 4 stanley cups…
That said, Yesterday’s win in Vancouver wasn’t ANYTHING like “Miracle 2.0”…
I like your Cuban National Junior Team analogy; that works
The point is not that the U.S. team was a bunch of scrubs; the point is: THAT’s how upset the Soviets were. Canada last night is not humiliated by losing to the U.S. (angry, though). In every sense, those players know they are playing their peers, in many cases their own teammates. You’re right though, that I was being hyperbolic. I don’t think the Taliban plays football, or has prep-schools.
Wait till this year.
And we lose in the Olympics to the the team from Afghanistan, made up entirely of Taliban prep-school kids.
Have the Taliban kids learned to fire Stingers right at our helicopters’ windshields? ’Cause that would do it.
Yeah, this is getting way overblown. This is nowhere near the same level of upset. 1980 can’t be touched for many, many reasons. But I suspect this is the grand narrative Burke is trying to get his players to buy into more than the fans — great leaders always do that! — and it may end up working.
At least it’s nice to see some excitement out there about hockey. Today on NPR this morning there were breathless teasers for the recap all the time — “The story of how the US hockey team beat Canada, something they hadn’t done in fifty years, coming up in eight minutes!” “USA-Canada hockey feature coming up in two minutes!” It was strange yet pleasing to hear.
In Dinglebarn We Trust
I’m glad you addressed this Quisp. Sunday’s victory was no way on a par with the 1980 games (although I was a little too young to remember those). Using my own memory bank to make an honest comparison, I would say that Sunday’s Team USA victory was on the same magnitude of importance for the program’s legacy as the 1996 World Cup of Hockey Championship by USA.
2009-10 Kings Hockey: Delivering Milk Steaks from the Meat Train at an arena near you!
by DodgerBlueBalls on Feb 23, 2010 9:55 AM PST reply actions
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