Four players who played for Team USA in 1980 played in the Buffalo organization
The Buffalo Sabres had four players; defenseman Mike Ramsey, and forwards Rob McClanahan, Eric Strobel, and John Harrington who played in the monumental game between Team USA and the Soviet Union 44 years ago today.
Ramsey was Buffalo’s first-round pick in 1979 and spent 13-plus seasons with the Sabres, before finishing his career with Pittsburgh and Detroit. McClanahan played parts of two seasons with Buffalo before being claimed off of waivers by Hartford, and finishing his NHL career with the NY Rangers.
Both Strobel and Harrington played at the end of the 1980 season with the AHL Rochester Americans. Strobel broke his ankle and chose to retire from hockey, while Harrington played a season in Switzerland and returned to play for the US in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.
Written By Tom Murray for the March 7, 1980 edition of The Hockey News
At 1:29 in the afternoon of Sunday, February 24, less than 48 hours after they had pulled off one of the most stunning upsets in sports history, the incredible, never-say-die United States Olympic hockey team clinched the gold medal by beating a tough, scrappy Finnish team, 42.
That victory, and the gold medal that came with it, was the culmination of a fantasy weekend that started on the preceding Friday evening when, by a 4-3 margin, the U.S. team defeated the same Soviet team that had rolled over them, 10-3, just two weeks earlier and had picked apart all but two National Hockey League teams in January.
While words can’t really do justice to what this U.S. team, with an average age of 22, accomplished during that unforgettable weekend, here’s a capsule report on “Fantasy Weekend, 1980”, from about 5 p.m. on Friday evening, February 22, to about the same time on Sunday, February 24: USA vs. Soviets: The game was supposed to be a mere formality, another pushover for the Soviet professionals to step all over as they moved up the ladder toward their fifth gold medal in six Olympic appearances.
The U.S. team, although still undefeated (4-0-1) after playing five preliminary round games, was not even supposed to make it to the medal round. Their coach, Herb Brooks, had been saying for months that “winning a bronze medal in 1980 would be like winning a gold medal in 1960.”
But from the very opening faceoff of the game, the young U.S. players kept up a ferocious pace, bodychecking their bigger and more experienced opponents into the boards or onto the ice.
As the seconds ticked away on the clock, the pace of the game increased as both teams exchanged breathtaking rushes, crunching bodychecks, and alert saves by goalies Jim Craig and Vladislav Tretiak.
The Soviets finally drew first blood, at the 9:12 mark of the first period, when defenseman Aleksei Kasatonov took a slapshot from the blueline which was tipped past Craig—moving in the opposite direction—by pesky little Vladimir Krutov, who had singlehandedly decimated the U.S. in that 10-3 fiasco at Madison Square Garden only two weeks earlier.
While Krutov’s goal took a lot of the wind out of the lungs of the wildly partisan, flag-waving crowd, the U.S. team wasn’t fazed in the least. They kept working, patiently digging away in the corners, moving the puck up-ice and religiously adhering to Brooks’ system, which emphasizes puck control and coolheadedness. Their discipline finally paid off at the 14:03 mark Of the period when Buzzy Schneider, at 25 the told man” of the team and the only member of the squad to play on the 1976 Olympic Team, blasted a 55-foot slapshot over Tretiak’s left shoulder and into the net.
But before the ecstatic cries of joy from the crowd had abated, the Soviets had stormed right back, taking a 2-1 lead at 17:34, when Sergei Makarov shoveled a shot behind Craig.
But the U.S. was relentless, incessantly pounding away at the Soviets. With just seven seconds showing on the clock, David Christian, whose father Billy scored the medal-winning goal for the U.S. team against the Russians in 1960, blasted a desperation 80-foot slapshot toward Tretiak. The Russian goalie, normally perfect in handling his rebounds, let the shot bounce off his leg pads and out into center ice where Mark Johnson, the MVP of the team, picked up the puck, split the dumbfounded Soviet defense, and slid the puck by a startled Tretiak with one second remaining in the period.
Chinks began to show in the supposedly impregnable Soviet armor at the beginning of the second period when Tretiak was replaced by diminutive Vladimir Myshkin, the hero of last year’s third Challenge Cup game with the NHL. “Tretiak was nervous,” a Soviet coach would say later. “He played those two goals poorly and we felt it would be best to replace him.”
For the first time ever, as far as this North American audience was concerned, the Soviets looked confused and disoriented, seemingly ready to be taken.
Then John Harrington received a penalty for holding Valeri Kharlamov and the Soviets jumped at the opportunity and broke the tie when Alexandra Maltsev scored on a breakaway.
But the U.S. team, never losing its poise, playing within the parameters of Brooks’ system, kept chipping away at the Russians, forcing them into making little, subtle errors which opened up the ice for the U.S. And while the period ended with the Russians outshooting the U.S., 30-10 and leading, 3-2, the U.S. had many opportunities—especially a breakaway by Harrington (he missed the net), a two-on-one by Johnson and Schneider (Schneider took Johnson’s pass and missed the net and a missed stuff stuff by captain Mike Eruzione.
As the third period got underway, the U.S. kept the pressure on, skating stride for stride with the Soviets until Mr. Pressure, Johnson, took a feed from linemate Dave Silk, skirted around defenseman Sergei Starikov, and beat Myshkin between the legs to tie the score. Less than a minute and a half later, at exactly the 10:00 mark, Mark Pavelich, a gutsy, vastly underrated scrapper, found Harrington, who immediately fed Eruzione near the blueline. The 25-year-old captain took a few strides and blasted a wrist shot by Myshkin’s right side. USA 4, USSR 3.
The arena erupted into sheer bedlam as Eruzione was mobbed behind the Soviet net by his teammates. People in the crowd waved flags, embraced each other, and screamed, “USA! USA! USA! “
For the remaining very harrowing 10 minutes, the Russians came close several times. But every time the U.S. team seemed ready to retreat and fall into a defensive shell, the implacable Brooks pulled those players off the ice, reminded them to maintain their poise, and then put them right back out.
“We haven’t clinched it yet,” he said, reminding everyone that the U.S. would still have to beat the Finns on Sunday to assure themselves of it.
“I’ve thought about the gold medal a lot, sure,” Brooks said, “but I’m very pessimistic. The Finns are a very sound hockey team technically. And we have not won any medal right now. That’s a rather sobering thing. I’m still in a state of euphoria, but they scare the hell out of me.
“Besides that,” Brooks added, grinning, “why shouldn’t I be scared? How would you like to put your future in the hands of a bunch of 20-year-old kids?”
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