U.S. hockey team beats the Soviets in the “Miracle on Ice”


Year
1980
Month Day
February 22

In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.

The Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going back to 1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days before the Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked scrappy, but few blamed them for it–their average age, after all, was only 22, and their team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League.

Few had high hopes for the seventh-seeded U.S. team entering the Olympic tournament, but the team soon silenced its detractors, making it through the opening round of play undefeated, with four victories and one tie, thus advancing to the four-team medal round. The Soviets, however, were seeded No. 1 and as expected went undefeated, with five victories in the first round.

On Friday afternoon, February 22, the American amateurs and the Soviet dream team met before a sold-out crowd at Lake Placid. The Soviets broke through first, with their new young star, Valery Krotov, deflecting a slap shot beyond American goalie Jim Craig’s reach in the first period. Midway through the period, Buzz Schneider, the only American who had previously been an Olympian, answered the Soviet goal with a high shot over the shoulder of Vladislav Tretiak, the Soviet goalie.

The relentless Soviet attack continued as the period progressed, with Sergei Makarov giving his team a 2-1 lead. With just a few seconds left in the first period, American Ken Morrow shot the puck down the ice in desperation. Mark Johnson picked it up and sent it into the Soviet goal with one second remaining. After a brief Soviet protest, the goal was deemed good, and the game was tied.

In the second period, the irritated Soviets came out with a new goalie, Vladimir Myshkin, and turned up the attack. The Soviets dominated play in the second period, outshooting the United States 12-2, and taking a 3-2 lead with a goal by Alesandr Maltsev just over two minutes into the period. If not for several remarkable saves by Jim Craig, the Soviet lead would surely have been higher than 3-2 as the third and final 20-minute period began.

Nearly nine minutes into the period, Johnson took advantage of a Soviet penalty and knocked home a wild shot by David Silk to tie the contest again at 3-3. About a minute and a half later, Mike Eruzione, whose last name means “eruption” in Italian, picked up a loose puck in the Soviet zone and slammed it past Myshkin with a 25-foot wrist shot. For the first time in the game, the Americans had the lead, and the crowd erupted in celebration.

There were still 10 minutes of play to go, but the Americans held on, with Craig making a few more fabulous saves. With five seconds remaining, the Americans finally managed to get the puck out of their zone, and the crowd began counting down the final seconds. When the final horn sounded, the players, coaches, and team officials poured onto the ice in raucous celebration. The Soviet players, as awestruck as everyone else, waited patiently to shake their opponents’ hands.

The so-called Miracle on Ice was more than just an Olympic upset; to many Americans, it was an ideological victory in the Cold War as meaningful as the Berlin Airlift or the Apollo moon landing. The upset came at an auspicious time: President Jimmy Carter had just announced that the United States was going to boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Americans, faced with a major recession and the Iran hostage crisis, were in dire need of something to celebrate. After the game, President Carter called the players to congratulate them, and millions of Americans spent that Friday night in revelry over the triumph of “our boys” over the Russian pros.

As the U.S. team demonstrated in their victory over Finland two days later, they weren’t your run-of-the-mill amateur squad. Three-quarters of the squad were top college players who were on their way to the National Hockey League (NHL), and coach Herb Brooks had trained the team long and hard in a manner that would have made the most authoritative Soviet coach proud. The 1980 U.S. hockey team was probably the best-conditioned American Olympic hockey team of all time–the result of countless hours running skating exercises in preparation for Lake Placid. In their play, the U.S. players adopted passing techniques developed by the Soviets for the larger international hockey rinks, while preserving the rough checking style that was known to throw the Soviets off-guard. It was these factors, combined with an exceptional afternoon of play by Craig, Johnson, Eruzione, and others, that resulted in the miracle at Lake Placid.

This improbable victory was later memorialized in a 2004 film, Miracle, starring Kurt Russell.

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National Hockey League (NHL) opens its first season


Updated:
Original:
Year
1917
Month Day
December 19

On December 19, 1917, four teams of the National Hockey League (NHL) play in the fledgling league’s first two games. At the time of its inception, the NHL was made up of five franchises: the Canadiens and the Wanderers (both of Montreal), the Ottawa Senators, the Quebec Bulldogs and the Toronto Arenas. The Montreal teams won two victories that first day, as the Canadiens beat Ottawa 7-4 and the Wanderers triumphed over Toronto 10-9.

The first professional ice hockey league was the International Pro Hockey League, founded in 1904 in Michigan. After it folded, two bigger leagues emerged in Canada: the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast League (PCL). In 1914, the two leagues played a championship series, and the winner was awarded the famous silver bowl donated for Canada’s amateur hockey leagues by Lord Stanley, the English governor general of Canada, in 1892. The NHA stopped operating during World War I, and after the war the five elite teams from Canada formed the NHL in its place. Despite that early defeat, Toronto went on to win the inaugural season. In March 1918, they defeated the PCL champions, the Vancouver Millionaires, three games to two for the Stanley Cup.

By 1926, the PCL had folded, and the 10 teams of the NHL divided into two divisions. The champions of each those two divisions–the Eastern and the Western Conference–now face each other at the end of each season in the Stanley Cup Championship.

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Wayne Gretzky breaks NHL points record

Year
1989
Month Day
October 15

On October 15, 1989, Los Angeles King Wayne Gretzky breaks Gordie Howe’s points record (1,850) in the final period of a game against the Edmonton Oilers. Gretzky’s record-setting goal tied the game; in overtime he scored another, and the Kings won 5-4.

Gretzky had entered the game with 1,849 points. About five minutes into the first period, he tied Howe’s record by earning an assist on the game’s first goal. After that, he didn’t do much, and “almost didn’t play the third period,” Gretzky told reporters after the game, because “I got my bell rung a few times.” But when he came off the bench with three minutes to go in the game, his team down 3-4, he meant business. With 61 seconds left on the clock, defender Steve Duchesne shot the puck toward the corner of the goal. It bounced off winger Dave Taylor’s knee and slid across the front of the goal. Gretzky, who had set up behind the net (a part of the ice that many fans called “Gretzky’s office”), skated around and backhanded the puck past Oilers goaltender Bill Ranford and under the crossbar. The game was tied; the record was broken.

Gretzky had played in Edmonton for nine seasons and helped the team win four Stanley Cups, so the city’s Northland Coliseum was packed with fans. When he scored his goal, the sellout crowd erupted into a thunderous ovation that lasted for more than two minutes. The league stopped the game for a ceremony at center ice. Gordie Howe made a speech, and there were gifts: a 1.851-carat diamond bracelet (with diamonds spelling out “1,851” across its face) from his old teammates, a crystal hologram engraved with his picture from the Kings and a carved silver tea tray from the league. Then Gretzky himself took the microphone. He thanked the Edmonton fans, his parents and his wife, and he added: “Gordie is still the greatest, in my mind, and the greatest in everyone’s mind.”

Howe, who was 61, returned the younger player’s affection. “If it was, pardon the expression, some clown” who’d broken his record, he said, “it would have bothered me. But not Wayne.” By the time Gretzky retired at the end of the 1998-99 season, he held or shared 61 NHL records. In all, he scored 894 goals and tallied 1,963 assists for 2,857 points in 1,487 games. 

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U.S. Olympic hockey team beats Soviet Union


Year
1960
Month Day
February 27

The underdog U.S. Olympic hockey team defeats the Soviet Union in the semifinals at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California on February 27, 1960. The next day, the U.S. beats Czechoslovakia to win its first-ever Olympic gold medal in hockey.

The 1960 U.S. team was led by Jack Riley, the head hockey coach at West Point and himself a member of the 1948 U.S. Olympic hockey squad. His players were college students and amateurs and included two pairs of brothers, Bill and Bob Cleary and Bill and Roger Christian. Interestingly, Bill Christian’s son David was a member of the “Miracle on Ice” Olympic squad in 1980 that defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union in the semifinals and two days later beat Finland to capture the gold medal. The last player cut from the 1960 U.S. squad was Herb Brooks, who went on to coach the “Miracle on Ice” team two decades later.

The Americans had taken home silver medals in hockey at the Winter Games in 1952 and 1956, but going into the 1960 Olympics they were considered a long shot. The team managed to win its first four games against Czechoslovakia, Australia, Sweden and Germany, however, and then scored an upset victory over Canada and went on to meet the Soviets in the semi-final round on February 27. A packed crowd was on hand at Blythe Arena in Squaw Valley to witness the U.S. defeat the Soviets, 3-2, in a tightly fought game. It was the first time an American hockey squad had ever defeated the long-dominant Soviets in Olympic competition. The next day, the U.S. met the Czechs in the finals. After two periods, the U.S. was behind, 4-3; however, they scored six goals in the third period and went on to win the game, 9-4. It was America’s first-ever Olympic gold medal in hockey. Canada won the silver medal while the Soviets received the bronze.

Twenty years later, on February 22, 1980, history repeated itself when the U.S. hockey team beat the Soviet Union in the semifinals of the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. It was a major upset for the Soviets, who were considered the world’s best team at the time, even better than any professional team in North America. The victory was particularly charged because the U.S. and Soviet Union were still Cold War enemies. On February 24, the Americans defeated Finland, 4-2, for the gold. The Soviets won the silver and Sweden took the bronze.

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The Great One gets traded

Year
1988
Month Day
August 09

On August 9, 1988, Edmonton Oilers center Wayne Gretzky is traded to the Los Angeles Kings along with Mike Krushelnyski and Marty McSorley in return for Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas and first-round draft picks in the 1989, 1991 and 1993 drafts. At age 27, Gretzky was already widely considered the greatest player in hockey history and was the owner of 43 National Hockey League scoring records.

Gretzky had won eight Hart trophies, the NHL’s MVP award, in his nine seasons with the Oilers, in addition to seven straight Art Ross trophies (1981-1987) as the league’s leading scorer. The previous season, the Oilers had brought home their fourth Stanley Cup championship during Gretzky’s tenure. Nothing short of a sports phenomenon, he was considered a national treasure in his native Canada and was beloved by the citizens of Edmonton.

Fan reaction to the trade ran the gamut from shocked and saddened to angry. After the announcement, Oilers owner Peter Pocklington defended the move by explaining that Gretzky had asked to be traded to Los Angeles, where hockey was still struggling for a foothold in the marketplace alongside the more popular basketball, baseball and football. Gretzky himself explained the decision this way: “I felt I was still young enough and capable enough to help a new franchise win a Stanley Cup.” After saying the trade was made “for the benefit of Wayne Gretzky, my new wife and our expected child in the new year,” the hockey star then walked away from the microphone, overcome with emotion at leaving the city where he had established himself as a Canadian hero.

About three weeks before the trade was announced, Gretzky had married American actress Janet Jones, and many fans believed she was the reason behind the decision. Los Angeles certainly seemed an appropriate destination for the young couple: In addition to being the capital of the film industry, it was also the second-largest city in the United States, a perfect place for “The Great One” to increase his visibility and value as a pitchman and help boost the popularity of hockey in the lucrative U.S. market. Of course, this logic did not stop Edmonton residents from protesting the trade by hanging Gretzky in effigy.

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NHL is integrated


Year
1958
Month Day
January 18

On January 18, 1958, hockey player Willie O’Ree of the Boston Bruins takes to the ice for a game against the Montreal Canadiens, becoming the first black to play in the National Hockey League (NHL).

Born in 1935 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, O’Ree was the son of a civil engineer, in one of Fredericton’s only two black families. He began skating at the age of three, and joined a nearby hockey league when he was only five. During five years playing with his older brother on teams in Fredericton, O’Ree became known as one of the best players in New Brunswick. After one season with the Quebec Frontenacs of the Quebec Junior Hockey League, he joined the Kitchener Canucks of the Ontario Hockey Association Junior “A” Hockey League, setting a career-high mark of 30 goals during the 1955-56 season. That year, a puck struck O’Ree in the right eye during a game, robbing him of 95 percent of the vision in that eye.

O’Ree managed to conceal the injury and continue his hockey career, joining the Quebec Aces of the prestigious Quebec Hockey League in 1956. During his second season with Quebec, the Boston Bruins of the NHL called up the 22-year-old O’Ree to replace an injured player. On January 18, 1958, the Bruins were playing the two-time Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens at Quebec’s Montreal Forum. O’Ree took to the ice as a forward with the Bruins’ third line, as the Bruins pulled off an upset 3-0 victory. He didn’t score, or record a penalty, and the historic event took place amid little fanfare.

After only two games, O’Ree was sent back to the Aces, though he played several games that season with the Springfield Indians of the American Hockey League (AHL). For the 1959-60 season, O’Ree joined the Kingston Frontenacs of the Eastern Professional Hockey League, notching 21 goals and 25 assists in 50 games. Moving to the Hull-Ottawa Canadiens, he scored 19 points in 16 games. O’Ree rejoined the Bruins at the end of 1960, and on January 1, 1961, in another game against the Canadiens, he scored his first NHL goal. O’Ree played 43 games with the Bruins that season, scoring a total of four goals and adding 10 assists.

The Bruins sold O’Ree’s contract to the Los Angeles Blades of the Western Hockey League (WHL) the next season, and O’Ree spent most of the rest of his career out west, playing 11 years with the Blades and the San Diego Gulls and twice winning the WHL’s scoring title. After one season with the New Haven Nighthawks of the AHL, he went back to California. He took a two-year break from playing in the late 1970s, then returned for a final season with the Pacific Hockey League’s San Diego Hawks in 1978-79. He retired at the end of that season, at the age of 43, after a professional hockey career of 19 seasons and 10 teams.

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Montreal Canadiens win fifth consecutive Stanley Cup

Year
1960
Month Day
April 14

On April 14, 1960, the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup for a record fifth year in a row.

The Canadiens reached the Stanley Cup Finals after sweeping the Chicago Blackhawks in four games, while the Maple Leafs defeated the Detroit Red Wings, four games to two. The championship series began on April 7, 1960, with a 4-2 victory for the Canadiens, also known as the Habs. (Habs is short for Les Habitants, a term dating back to the 17th century that refers to the French settlers in what is now Quebec.) Game 2 of the series also went to the Canadiens, 2-1, as did Game 3, with a final score of 5-2. On April 14, the Canadiens shut out the Maple Leafs, 4-0, to sweep the series and take home their fifth Stanley Cup championship in a row. No other team in hockey had ever won five straight Stanley Cups and the record still stands today. After the Canadiens’ victory, one of their star players, Maurice “Rocket” Richard, the first man to score 50 goals in 50 games (in the 1944-1945 season) and the first to score 500 career goals, retired.

The Montreal Canadiens were founded in December 1909, as part of the National Hockey Association (NHA). In 1916, the team claimed its first Stanley Cup by defeating the Portland Rosebuds of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. The Canadiens left the NHA to join the National Hockey League when it was established in 1917. They went on to capture the Stanley Cup again in 1924, 1930, 1931, 1944, 1946 and 1953. In 1956, the team won the first Stanley Cup in its five-year streak, which culminated with the 1960 victory.

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First indoor game of ice hockey


Year
1875
Month Day
March 03

On March 3, 1875, indoor ice hockey makes its public debut in Montreal, Quebec. After weeks of training at the Victoria Skating Rink with his friends, Montreal resident James Creighton advertised in the March 3 edition of the Montreal Gazette that “A game of hockey will be played in the Victoria Skating Rink this evening between two nines chosen from among the members.” Prior to the move indoors, ice hockey was a casual outdoor game, with no set dimensions for the ice and no rules regarding the number of players per side. The Victoria Skating Rink was snug, so Creighton limited the teams to nine players each.

Hockey, traditionally played on grass with a stick and a ball, has its roots in ancient Greece, Egypt and Persia. In this form, the game spread north to Europe and then west to the Americas, and is still popular in the Southern Hemisphere as well as in North America, where it is called field hockey. North America’s indigenous people were playing games with a stick and ball long before the French and English crossed the Atlantic. Cherokee, Ojibwe and Mohawk tribes all had different names for what the French branded “lacrosse,” as did the Iroquois native to Quebec. Meanwhile, ice skating was popularized by skating on sharpened animal shinbones in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, and games played on ice included a Dutch version of golf and an on-ice version of hurling, an Irish stick-and-ball game.

Ice hockey was initially thought too dangerous a game to play, as the ball was difficult to control on the ice. For the 1875 Montreal game, the ball was replaced with a wooden disc, now known as a puck. The disc was less likely to fly off the ice, and was less dangerous to both players and spectators. Creighton also instituted an early off-sides rule, mandating that there be no forward passing ahead of the player with the puck. The Montreal Gazette reported the next day that the first ice hockey game at Victoria Skating Rink attracted 40 spectators. Ice hockey then caught fire in Montreal, and in 1877 Creighton published rules to the game, known as Montreal Rules. Canada’s now legendary national passion for ice hockey was ignited, and the new sport began to spread across the country.

Years later, in 1994, bill C-212, making ice hockey the official winter sport of Canada, was made law by Canada’s parliament. Lacrosse—which had been Canada’s national sport since 1859—remained the country’s official summer game.

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First Stanley Cup championship played


Year
1894
Month Day
March 22

On March 22, 1894, the first championship series for Lord Stanley’s Cup is played in Montreal, Canada. The Stanley Cup has since become one of the most cherished and recognized trophies in sport.

The Stanley Cup was the creation of Sir Frederick Arthur Stanley, lord of Preston and the 16th earl of Derby. Stanley was of noble birth, the son of a three-time prime minister of England. He served in Canada’s House of Commons from 1865 until he was named governor general of Canada in 1888. Stanley became an ice hockey fan after watching an 1889 game at the Montreal Winter Carnival. Stanley’s family, sons and daughters alike, also became enraptured with the game that had taken Montreal’s sporting public by storm since its introduction in 1875. In honor of the new sport, Lord Stanley then donated a lavish trophy to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. The trophy, originally called the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup, was first presented in 1893 to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) team, champions of the Amateur Hockey Association. Stanley had intended for the cup to be presented to the winner of a challenge series, or tournament, so in 1894 it was given to the Montreal AAA team upon their defeat of the Ottawa Generals in the championship round of a tournament specifically created to award the Cup as Lord Stanley had intended.

Since 1926, the Stanley Cup has been awarded solely by the National Hockey League every year except 2005, when the NHL was on strike. The original trophy that Lord Stanley donated was retired in 1962. Since then, only one trophy has served in its place, making the Stanley Cup the only trophy in major sports that is not reproduced each year. When a team wins the Cup, they are allowed to hold on to the trophy for one year, and the name of every player, coach and front-office employee is inscribed onto it. (In 1954, Detroit Red Wings owner Marguerite Norris, a former goaltender, became the first woman to have her name engraved on the cup.) Each player and front-office employee of the champion team is given 24 hours with the Cup, which they can take anywhere, along with the its full-time escorts, provided by the Hockey Hall of Fame. Since 1895, when the Winnipeg Victorias began the tradition of drinking from the Cup, people have filled it with everything from beer to bath water as they celebrate with friends, family and the public. In its travels, the Stanley Cup has been thrown into swimming pools, taken fishing, played host to a baby’s christening and been drunk from across Canada, the United States and Europe.

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