Olympic Hockey
Talk about getting goose bumps… That’s exactly what I told my young friend, John Galluzzo, when I read the following article (for the umpteenth time). Never mind that his brief recap of the Miracle at Placid really touched me, but I know (or knew) many of the characters John mentions here. Actually, the author’s dad worked with me as an assistant high school hockey coach eons ago, and a young John skated in a few of my clinics way back when. Then, I worked with Bobby Sheehan, Ed Taylor and Peter Breen, and I even had the chance to watch a young teen named David Silk in his youth hockey days at the old Cohasset Winter Gardens and Pilgrim Arena (where my NEHI Teams often practiced).
No matter how you connect with the following, however, I doubt anyone forgets where he or she was the day Al Michaels spouted those magic words (through a snowy, pre-cable broadcast?).
Many, many thanks to John for sharing this…
– Dennis Chighisola
Olympic Hockey
As originally published in “South Shore Living”
By John Galluzzo
Broadcaster Al Michaels’ final call of the astonishingly unexpected wrestling of the Olympic Gold Medal for hockey away from the juggernaut Soviet Union team by the United States in Lake Placid, New York, in February 1980 still echoes in the minds of hockey fans across the country. “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”
While the victory itself was one for the United States as a whole, and one which had obvious political overtones during the strenuous days of the Cold War, the story of the accomplishment ultimately grew from early morning skating drills and hockey practices in only four states: Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and right here in Massachusetts.
We may never fully understand the effect that Boston Bruins defenseman Bobby Orr had on the development of that 1980 team. Much like the Tiger Woods craze of the late 1990s is responsible for the overabundance of golf courses today in the U.S., the urge to be like Bobby drove kids in the Boston area to beg their parents for skates, pucks and sticks in the early 1970s. Their wishes spurred the construction of ice rinks all over the region which were soon filled to their rafters with town teams of “mites, squirts, peewees and bantams,” sometimes two and three levels deep, organized into leagues that kept the lights burning from pre-dawn until post sunset.
The South Shore already had a love of the game, played until the mid-sixties outdoors on frozen ponds, and more formally in places like the Hingham Skating Club, where a small wooden hut with a wood-burning stove gave players a place to lace up before hitting the pond. “There has always been a strong hockey tradition down here,” said Richard Johnson, curator of the Sports Museum at the TD Garden. “In the late 60′s and early 70′s no less a team than the Montreal Canadiens signed both Larry Pleau [of Lynn] and Bobby Sheehan of Weymouth at a time when you could count the number of Americans in the NHL on the fingers of one hand.” In Pembroke, Hingham, Rockland, Cohasset and elsewhere, indoor rinks became the schooling grounds for the boys whom Johnson calls “the sons of Bobby Orr.”
“Dave Silk started skating at the Winter Gardens at a very young age, 7 or 8 years old,” said Peter Breen, former owner of the Cohasset Winter Gardens, which sat on what is now the site of the Cohasset commuter rail stop on Route 3A. “He skated a lot with Ed Taylor, in his hours,” he remembered. Taylor, a champion of South Shore youth hockey, founded the Scituate Braves program in 1968, coaching, managing and even driving his team from home to the rinks and back. Young Silk, who had just lost his father, found “a surrogate father” in Taylor, he told the Boston Globe years later. And so the road to the Olympics began for the Scituate youngster.
Thayer Academy called first, and Silk answered with an astounding 85 points (goals plus assists) in his freshman year. Boston University’s attention was gained. In his first year there, 1976-77, Silk broke freshman records for goals, assists and points, earning New England rookie of the year honors. In 1978, he and his teammates earned a national collegiate championship, and the National Hockey League’s New York Rangers could wait no longer. They drafted him that year.
But Silk had one final item on his hockey agenda before giving up his amateur status, which, in 1980, was still required to participate in Olympic sports. He skated for the national hockey program through 1979 and into 1980, alongside a final squad composed of twelve Minnesotans, two skaters from Wisconsin, one from Michigan, and three of his Boston University teammates: Mike Eruzione of Winthrop, Jack O’Callahan of Charlestown and goalie Jim Craig of North Easton.
Their story has been told repeatedly through nearly thirty years, most recently notably through the Disney movie Miracle. Silk netted 48 points in international competition, climaxing with two assists in the 4-3 victory over the Soviet Union on February 22, 1980, the penultimate game on the road to gold medal, but, to all true fans of the sport, the gold medal game (the United States beat the Fins two days later 4-2 to officially claim the medal).
As the final seconds ticked off, Al Michaels began his call, giving Scituate and the rest of the South Shore youth hockey community – the coaches, the rink owners, the teammates, the Zamboni drivers, the fans, the pro shop skate sharpeners, the moms and dads who sacrificed early morning sleep to help their kids follow their dreams – a moment they would never forget: “Eleven seconds, you’ve got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?”
“YES!”
