A Miracle (2008) On and Off the Ice

Title: A Miracle (2008) On and Off the Ice

Description: The 2022 Winter Olympics are here and what better way to get ready is by celebrating one of the most epic wins in US Olympic history – the 1980 Miracle on Ice. We will explore the challenges this USA Hockey Team faced and how they were able to overcome almost certain defeat.

Learn More About our Guest:
Shane Guilfoyle and the History of Hockey Podcast
https://historyofhockeypodcast.wordpress.com/

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Music Provided by:
“Crossing the Chasm” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Image Credits:

Begin Transcript:
, [00:00:00] this is beyond the big screen podcast with your host, Steve Guerra. Thank you so much for joining us again for. New special episode of beyond the big screen. Today, we are joined by Shane Gilfoyle of the history of hockey podcast to discuss hockey in the Olympics, particularly one of the most important and exciting times in us Olympic hockey history, the famous miracle on ice team of the 1980 Olympics in lake Placid, New York USA.
We will be using the 2004 movie miracle as a lens and jumping off point to discuss this fascinating time in sports history, depending on when you are listening to this, the 2018 Olympics and piano, Chang, South Korea are still going on or just wrapped up. So I hope this will [00:01:00] contextualize Olympic hockey a bit more.
Thank you so much for coming on. Today’s Shane Stevenson. Thank you so much for having me. This is really an honor, truly. I mean, that. I’m really excited to dive into. It’s a great, a great story. And you have a really great podcast detailing the history. I love the history of sports. There’s just so much there.
There really is. I, I, uh, I kind of feel like there’s almost not enough of it out there. It’s, it’s kind of something that people maybe don’t don’t think about. Um, you know, there’s a history of warfare and all of that really juicy stuff, but sports kind of seem to fall by the wayside. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and your interesting backstory on how you got yourself interested in hockey and starting a hockey podcast.
Uh, yeah, I’d love to. Um, originally I I’m, uh, from Colorado, I grew up in a little town of [00:02:00] about 5,000 people, uh, two or three roads, only one of which was paved, uh, that was in. Central Colorado. And I’m kind of up in the mountains a little bit. So it was always cold, always snowy. And, uh, I spent my winters there with my mom, my older brother, and a.
I, I really owe a lot of my love for hockey to my mom, which is kind of funny because she’s never, ever been a sports person. Uh, but she, she saw that I liked it and, and really encouraged me to do it. And, and we would sit down and watch games, uh, and my. Neighbor actually had an NHL sports package and he would let us come over and watch the games.
And, you know, growing up, playing myself, we had about, uh, two sheets of ice. One was, was really, really big. It could fit tons and tons [00:03:00] of kids on it. And then one was, uh, about the, the size of a modern day. Just one zone of, of a hockey rink. Um, and so, you know, one was really big. One was small. And, uh, and, and both, I was so lucky they were very, very nearby.
And, uh, so my brother and I would, would go out there and, uh, he he’s older. So I would, I would cry more often than he would about getting cold. And, uh, I, you know, I I’d come home cry and swear, and I’d never go back. And, uh, then you know, the, the, the toes would thought and the hands would thaw and I’d warm back up.
Sure enough the next day I’d be, I’d be right back out there. Uh, and, and as far as you know, my love for professional hockey, I, uh, I was a mighty ducks of Anaheim kid. You know, I, I grew up with those movies and then when the, the team. Started in, [00:04:00] uh, in Anaheim. I was all about that. I’ve got to, I even have one of the old starter jackets that were the hot, the hot thing back in the early nineties.
And. You know, and, and, and part of my love for that was, was that we didn’t have a team of our own, uh, in Colorado. And that all changed in 1995 when com Comcast, uh, COMSAT bought the Quebec Nordiques and, uh, and moved them to Denver. And it was all of a sudden, I, I had my own team and I liked, I really liked all of the players.
And then. And I always fancied goalies too. Um, and then December of that year rolled around and we got a guy by the name of Patrick Wall from the Montreal Canadians and his arrival. I liked the team already, but his arrival made me truly, truly fall in love [00:05:00] with, with that team. And I, I mean, they, the, the, the rivalry between them and the Detroit red wings in that era was just second to none.
I mean, it was so much fun to watch. And, um, I mean, you could pretty much count on whichever one of those teams emerged from the playoffs was, was going to win the cup and. And so that, that was always, uh, very nice to have. Um, and, uh, you know, growing up, my parents were divorced. My dad, uh, always lived in Ohio.
In fact, my, my entire family, both sides are from Ohio. Um, it just so happened that that when they split my mom moved to Colorado, uh, when I was really young and. You know, in kindergarten. And then I grew up out there. My dad stayed here. Well, I would spend summers here. Um, so I’m, I’m just as much in Ohio kid as I am a Colorado kid.
And, um, and we would go to the Eastern coast hockey league that was in town, uh, [00:06:00] by the name of the Columbus chill and anybody from central Ohio, his hockey back in those days remembers the Columbus chill. They were. So far ahead of their time and so much fun to watch. And what I mean by ahead of their time is their, their in game antics that, that got the crowd involved and their promotions and just all of the, the fun stuff, um, that they would do.
They they’re still missed in, in Columbus to this day. Um, I think if this town could support the local NHL team and the Columbus chill. Many people would, would have them back. I’m certain of it. And then, um, the success of the Columbus chill led to the NHL, expanding in Columbus, Ohio on June 25th, 1997.
And that brought a team called the Columbus blue jackets to town. And I was still very [00:07:00] young, still very impressionable. And so now my dad lives. Just a Stone’s throw north of downtown. And so all of a sudden I’ve got another NHL team right down the street from my house and I, you know, and they were, they were terrible.
They were the absolute antithesis of the Colorado avalanche. The avalanche were winning division titles, winning cups. Um, kicking butt every, every single year. And, and then the blue jackets were the opposite of that, but it really didn’t matter because they were from my town and I absolutely loved them.
And, and even to this day, really, I feel, you know, despite the divorce and all the, all the stuff that comes from growing up in a split home, um, I feel very lucky to be from two places. Both of which had NHL hockey and, and both of these teams that I absolutely love. So in, uh, in, in June [00:08:00] of 2015, I started a podcast.
I’ve always liked history. I’ve always had fantastic history teachers, uh, most notably my seventh and eighth grade teacher, um, who just, he, he told stories in such a fascinating way. That it was so clear that, that he enjoyed the story he was telling. He wasn’t just reciting chapter and verse and, and all of that stuff.
Uh, it was, he was so very much into it and that just came out in his teaching and, um, and, and that really made me fall in love with history. And, um, and so I, I always liked hockey and, um, and so I started thinking. You know, maybe all these people are doing podcasts and, um, and that, but there’s not one about hockey history out there.
Nobody’s doing it. And very similar to, uh, Ray Harris Jr. Of the world [00:09:00] war II podcast, whose show I believe you’ve been on. And, uh, Mike Duncan of a history of Rome and revolutions. They created their podcasts because that’s what they wanted to hear. Nobody was doing a world war II podcast. And Ray finally was like, you know what, I’ll do it myself.
And that’s where I got to with hockey. I waited a couple of years for somebody that. You know, to come out with this thing and nobody did. So I was like, all right, well, I like hockey. I like history. I’ll put the two together. I got some encouragement from my wife. Uh, funny enough when, um, when I was saying some things about the, the local teams of the blue jackets about what they should be doing with their team.