Certain historical events are so vivid that people remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news. One of the few that makes them actually smile is the victory of the U.S. hockey team over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. As such, it’s a story that deserves retelling, and it gets it in “Miracle: The Boys of ’80.”
This moving Netflix documentary is far from the first film to attribute this
Certain historical events are so vivid that people remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news. One of the few that makes them actually smile is the victory of the U.S. hockey team over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. As such, it’s a story that deserves retelling, and it gets it in “Miracle: The Boys of ’80.”
This moving Netflix documentary is far from the first film to attribute this unlikely victory to divine intervention. In 2004, director Gavin O’Connor’s “Miracle” starred Kurt Russell as coach Herb Brooks, who was played by Karl Malden in the 1981 made-for-TV “Miracle on Ice.” HBO’s 2001 “Do You Believe in Miracles?” was a doc, as was “Of Miracles and Men,” part of ESPN’s “30 for 30” series in 2015. You almost want to say: “Hey! They worked hard. And they still had to beat Finland.” Like “Titanic,” there are few spoilers when “miracle” is in the title.
But the novel hook in “The Boys of ’80” are the “boys,” the surviving members of the team that Brooks had assembled partly from his own squad at the University of Minnesota and partly from Boston University, a collection of blue-collar kids who beat a team almost universally recognized as the world’s best. The much-ballyhooed faceoff in Lake Placid, N.Y.—hot on the bladed heels of the U.S. team’s flogging by the Red Army at Madison Square Garden—was between amateurs and de-facto professionals: The U.S.S.R. players might have identified themselves as “students” or “soldiers,” but they were in the full-time employ of Soviet hockey.
All this is recalled in highly entertaining fashion, the highlights on ice interspersed with the warm memories of the players, many of whom still harbor mixed feelings about Brooks (whose son and daughter also appear, and admit dad, who died in 2003, was tough). The Boston and Minnesota players were natural enemies; in order to create a bond among his players, Brooks made them all hate him. What did he do after they won the medal-round game against the Soviets? Ran them through what one player describes as the fiercest workout of their entire time together.
The recollections of the players—who include Jim Craig, Mike Eruzione, Ken Morrow and Mark Johnson—are mostly about their training, their families, and the forming of the team. Ralph Cox, the last man cut from the Lake Placid squad, recalls that Brooks had been the last man cut from the team that had won the U.S. gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in what is now Palisades Tahoe in California; he acknowledges the pain it must have caused Brooks to cut anyone so late in the process.
The players ruminate widely, but directors Max Gershberg and Jake Rogal leave it mostly to others—columnist George Will, for instance—to reconstruct a political era that included the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, lines at gas stations, Carter-era malaise, runaway inflation, the Iran hostage crisis, and the hunger for some kind of American victory during a sub-zero stage of the Cold War. The hockey team provided. “We went from burning the flag to waving the flag,” says veteran ABC announcer Al Michaels, who delivered the live sportscast and the emphatic “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” So “miracle” is his fault, one supposes. Though the way he chokes up rewatching the game, you’d forgive him almost anything.
Miracle: The Boys of ’80
Friday, Netflix
Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.
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