On Feb. 22, 1980, when the United States upset the Soviet Union in the most famous hockey game in American history, UW head coach Jeff Sauer was in the middle of his ninth season as head coach of his alma mater, Colorado College. That Friday the Tigers had just hit the ice in preparation for back-to-back games against, of all schools, Wisconsin.
In Colorado Springs, Sauer had just heard from his Lake Placid contacts that Mark Johnson, the son of then-UW head coach Bob Johnson, scored two goals in Team USA’s 4-3 victory over the much-favored Soviets. When he saw the elder Johnson at the CC-UW game later that night, Sauer made a marked attempt to persuade him to join his son in New York–and therefore abandon the Badgers in Colorado Springs.
“Bob felt he couldn’t leave the team,” Sauer said. “He coached the game [Friday] night, and then Saturday morning got up and flew to Lake Placid. Wisconsin beat Colorado College on Friday night, beat me on Friday night. Saturday night, with Bob off the bench–and I encouraged him to go to Lake Placid–CC beat Wisconsin.”
In spite of the obvious benefits the Miracle on Ice presented to Colorado College hockey, Sauer says he nudged Johnson eastward with only the best intentions in mind. After all, as a member of the committee that selected the 1980 team, Sauer knew better than anybody that the chances of Johnson trading Colorado Springs for Lake Placid that Saturday were slightly slimmer than your average strand of dental floss.
“There was no way [Team USA should have] won the game,” Sauer said. “There was no way we should have even been on the ice with them. An analogy would be like the Wisconsin Badger football team beating the Green Bay Packers.”
Sauer’s analogy, however, doesn’t wholly fit. For if the “powers that be” ever staged a Badger-Packer exhibition, some Wisconsin TV station would undoubtedly see fit to produce a live telecast. Not so for the 1980 Olympics: the USA-USSR match only appeared on national tape-delay hours after the final horn. And despite Al Michaels’ “Do you believe in miracles?” melodrama, Sauer says the crowd in Colorado already knew the outcome.
“In Colorado Springs, for an example, the TV broadcast of the game didn’t even start until eight o’clock at night,” Sauer said. “And the game had been over for four or five hours. I guess the feeling that was in the rink in Colorado was, ?We gotta watch this, because we don’t believe it happened.'”
Twenty-two years of mythmakers have also skewed the game’s overall importance in those Olympics’ medal standings. Although the Americans celebrated their win as if they’d won the gold, the victory over the Soviets didn’t even assure the USA of a bronze. Because of the ice-hockey tournament’s complicated points system, Team USA would have finished out of the medals if it had lost to Finland on Sunday. The Americans actually trailed 2-1 going into the third period that Sunday morning, then scored three goals in the final period to clinch USA hockey’s first gold medal since 1960. But the game against the USSR–a semifinal match–still represents the pinnacle of USA hockey.
“Like your life the day that the Challenger blew up and Sept. 11, that’s going to be something ingrained in your memory for the rest of your life,” Sauer said. “For me, it’s Kennedy’s assassination, the ’80 game, the Challenger and Sept. 11. Those are days that you know exactly where you were, what you were eating, what you were doing.”
