All-stars never impressed Herb Brooks. The man most responsible for 1980's "Miracle on Ice" took a different approach to team building.
Take the scene near the beginning of 2004's Miracle, the Disneyfied version of how Brooks motivated (and often manipulated) a group of disparate collegiate hockey players to win Olympic gold, which sums up Brooks' attitude well.
In the scene, a horrified Craig Patrick, the team's assistant coach, is reviewing the lineup--which Brooks has already finalized before tryouts have begun.
"You're missing some of our best players!" Patrick says.
"I'm not lookin' for the best players, Craig," Brooks replies. "I'm lookin' for the right ones."
That's a sentiment now understood by everyone who witnessed the greatest moment in 20th century sports--as Sports Illustrated declared in 1999--played against a backdrop of long-simmering Cold War tension.
In 1980, the Soviet team dominated hocke y. Stars like Boris Mikhailov, Vladislav Tretiak, and Valeri Kharlamov were the equivalent of the United States sending Jordan, Bird, and Magic to challenge all takers in basketball 12 years later. Now imagine how it would've felt had the 1992 Dream Team been spanked by a bunch of anonymous Russian college kids.
Team USA's victory wasn't just dumb luck. Unlike his predecessors, Brooks forced players to abide by an extreme training and diet regimen--building the strength and speed necessary to keep up with the Soviet team.
He also instilled a more aggressive, creative, two-way system that was defensively sound, but also created turnovers and seized on offensive opportunities by design. And above all, he picked the right men to do the job.
Most of those players--after enjoying modest NHL careers--have faded back into relative obscurity. But while Brooks may have been averse to stars, his team produced two. Watch a highlight reel of the game, and you won 't soon forget Mike Eruzione, the hard-nosed team captain who scored the go-ahead goal to give USA the win (and inspired Al Michaels' most legendary call). Nor will you blank on goaltender Jim Craig, who made 36 saves, many of them sensational.
Olympic gold, however, never caused Craig's ego to swell. Thirty-four years later, and one of the tournament's only recognizable players still speaks as if coach Brooks might be standing nearby, waiting to correct him.
"What's great about hockey is that it doesn't matter what your role is on a team," Craig recently told Men's Health. "You do whatever it takes to win."
(Watch Friday as undefeated Team USA faces Canada in the semifinal round at 12 p.m. EST, NBC)
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