40 years later, 'Miracle on Ice' story still resonates

The players mostly are over 60. The people who remember watching the game mostly are over 50. The people who remember seeing the famous movie about it in first run mostly are over 25.

Then there are Mike Eruzione’s three hockey-playing grandchildren, ages 5, 6 and 7.

“They skate at the Mike Eruzione Center in my hometown, and they don’t even know who Mike Eruzione is,” he said, only half-joking. “But they know about the miracle. They know about this moment.”

Such is the enduring appeal of the United States’ 4-3 upset of the Soviet Union in the medal round of the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament in Lake Placid.

It created outsized figures of the young men who did it, to the point that Mike Eruzione the 65-year-old grandfather senses a disconnect among his own young relatives to Mike Eruzione the captain and game-winning goal-scorer with an arena named for him in Winthrop, Massachusetts.

Forty years later, their story resonates across generations and never gets old, even as they get older. The latest big event will be a reunion in Las Vegas next weekend to mark the anniversary of the Feb. 22 win over the Soviets.

Eruzione said he frequently hears stories from people about where they were “when we won.”

“I always say, ‘We? I didn’t know you were on the team,’  ” Eruzione said. “But people felt a part of it, and it’s nice to know 40 years later that — it’s not on the tip of people’s tongues, but it’s nice to know people remember and share some great stories about what we did so long ago.”

Eruzione joined Al Michaels, whose call on ABC is part of the game’s lore, on a call with reporters to discuss the anniversary and promote an NBCSN special that premieres at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, during which Mike Tirico will discuss the 1980 tournament with Michaels.  (Eruzione will appear with teammates Jim Craig and Mark Johnson on an ABC special about the anniversary at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23.)

“I know I’ve been asked this 100,000 times: ‘Do you ever get tired of talking about it?’  ” Michaels said. “The answer is ‘no,’ because people love to talk about it.”

Michaels was 35 at the time and already an established announcer but one with only one hockey game on his resume, during the 1972 Olympic Games in Sapporo, Japan.

That was one more hockey game than any of his colleagues had worked, plus he had grown up a Rangers fan in Brooklyn and North Bellmore, so he got the gig alongside recently retired goaltender Ken Dryden.

“There were not a lot of miracles on the biathlon course,” Michaels said. “I could have been assigned to that. So it all worked out.”

Michaels, of course, is best known for saying, “Do you believe in miracles — yes!” as the clock wound down on the victory over the Soviets.

But to Eruzione, the more memorable — and more on-point — line was the one with which Michaels punctuated the 4-2 victory over Finland two days later to secure the gold.

“I never thought it was a miracle, but it was a catchy phrase and it sounded right,” Eruzione said. “I thought Al’s best call, which I thought got lost in this whole thing, was ‘This impossible dream comes true’ when we beat Finland, because it was an impossible dream.”

Eruzione added: “Al and I have played some golf together out in some of the celebrity events, and we’re walking down the fairway and we always hear it; ‘Hey Mike, hey Al, do you believe in miracles? Yes!’ I walk through an airport and somebody will say, ‘Hey, Mike Eruzione, do you believe in miracles?’

“It’s the catch line everybody talks about, and it was spectacular, and it’s why Al is such a great commentator. He captured the moment and what it was. But I still think the second line after Finland kind of got lost in the shuffle because I thought that was spectacular as well.”

Michaels said when he watches highlights of those games now, “you almost become like in the third person, like somebody else is doing this and announcing this game. I exult the way I think the way most of the country did and do when they see highlights of it.

“So it’s kind of an out-of-body experience in a way, but it’s a beautiful thing.”

The U.S. team had plenty of NHL-caliber talent, such as Ken Morrow, who went on to become a four-time Stanley Cup winner with the Islanders, and its success helped legitimize both American hockey and college hockey.

But Eruzione never played in the NHL and has used the Olympic triumph as a springboard to a long career as a motivational speaker who remains a popular draw.

He said the 2004 movie “Miracle,” with Kurt Russell as coach Herb Brooks, has helped keep the story alive.

“Kids today, they’ve all seen the movie,” he said. “When I speak at sales meetings, I’m in a position now where most of the people I’m speaking to weren’t born in 1980.

“I always ask the question, ‘How many of you were born in 1980?’ and they’ll raise their hand. Then I’ll say, ‘How many people watched the movie ‘Miracle?’ And almost everybody raises their hand.”

Time has blurred many people’s memories of the Soviet game, especially the fact that it was not for the gold medal.

Also largely forgotten is that the Soviets dominated for large portions of the game, outshooting the Americans 39-16. And that it was not shown live on American television but rather tape-delayed from the 5 p.m. start to ABC’s air time of 8 p.m.

ABC tried to get it moved to prime time, trading places with Sweden vs. Finland, and was willing to pay for the privilege, but the Soviets would not agree to the idea. So why not show it live at 5 p.m.?

“I think there was a little discussion about it, but at the end of the day, they wanted to go prime time [on delay],” Michaels said. “Could you pull this off now? Not a chance in 18 million years. But if you go back to 40 years ago, cable TV in its infancy, no internet, no national newspaper .  .  . no social media, none of what we have today. So you could truly keep a lot of people in the dark as to what the result was. Now? Impossible.”

Eruzione and Michaels both praised Russell for getting Brooks right in the movie. (Michaels said he watched the movie for the first time in years on Wednesday.)

“He really got it dead on,” Michaels said.

Brooks died in a car accident in 2003. Bob Suter is the only player who has died, in 2014, and Mark Pavelich was arrested and charged with assault last year, then ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial.

All of the other players are expected to attend the event in Las Vegas.

By the 50th anniversary, Michaels will be 85 and the players will be well into their Social Security years. But there is no sign of their story fading into history, not when so many people born in the 21st century are interested.

Michaels has a 13-year-old grandson who plays hockey in Southern California and is on a traveling squad that last autumn won a tournament in Lake Placid.

“I’ve been able to sit down with him and a couple of his teammates, and we go through the [1980] game,” he said. “So that makes it a lot of fun.”

Said Eruzione: “My grandkids haven’t seen [the movie] yet, and at some point someday they’re going to watch it and they’re going to understand a little bit more about the story and I’ll be able to kind of tell them about it.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.