Herb Brooks Miracle

Disney, in 2004, recreated the story behind the game the players’ and coach’s perspective to what everyone outside the team was experiencing from the very start to finish. The film, Miracle, begins with the hiring of the coach, Herb Brooks, and ends with conclusion of the Olympic games. The movie places Brooks at the center as a lone individual because of his drive and orthodox style of coaching to win the game.

The reason why Herb Brooks had the drive was because of his past with playing and being apart of Olympic Hockey. It all started back twenty years earlier than the 1980 Olympic games, when Brooks was on the United States National Hockey Team that was going be representing the United States in the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, California.

In the film Jim Craig explains from a player prospective of tragedy Brooks’s Olympic playing career: “we all know Herb made the Olympic team back in ’60, so a week before the games Coach Riley calls him in his office and send him home…one week later Herb is home on his couch with his old man watching his team win the gold. Come that close and get nothing. He’ll do what ever it takes.” Brooks was replaced by the 1956 standout Bill Cleary, who would only play with his brother. This replacement cut Brooks deep; it was one among the many that drove his passion and intensity to win the game. One line that really stuck in his mind even when he made the 1964 and 1968 Olympic team was one that his dad said, “Well, I guess they cut the right guy.”
He was lucky enough to be interviewed because of the top candidate turned it down. He was considered as lone wolf, because of how he wanted the to win at he Olympics, he would be the coach, general manager, along with other positions. But he presented a different style of play that would change the way the United State would play hockey to compete with the worlds best. His radical style was “… a hybrid of Eastern European and North American Hockey - [which] was not warmly embraced by USA Hockey…For the United State to compete internationally… on considerably larger ice surfaces like used in the Olympics, players had to focus on puck possession, passion, weaving in and out of lane and all at tremendous speeds.” Brooks believes it will be impossible to have success in Lake Placid unless USA hockey makes those changes to their game. The reason for his drive and unconventional style was knowing that the only way that he could take down the world leader in hockey was through ways that have never been done before.
The movie shows Brooks’s drive and unorthodox style of coaching/managing a team in his ways of selecting the players that wanted for his team.

During the time the only players that were allowed to the try out were amateurs. The next Olympics USA Hockey allowed the professionals to compete and create dream teams (Hardy 944). He held tryouts in Colorado Springs in the summer before the winter games. Although the best players were there, he was not looking for them; he was looking for the players were willing to rewire the brain for his system skate hard and fit together as a team. Once the team was finalized, Brooks had to shave six more guys of the roster in order to make it meet the Olympics’ requirements. Brooks’s main concern was with strategy but break the college loyalty and hatred of other players due to rivalries. In the 1970s and 1980s hockey was not played in most places other than Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New England. Drawing the players from the collegiate level, players had a great loyalty to their colleges of Boston University, University of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, they was bond to be heated rivalries still carried over from 1976 heated blood bath of a semifinal. Brooks was cruel to everyone no matter where each player came from. One line that stuck to players and him “I’ll be your coach I won’t be your friend”(Goldberg). The coach that was a friend to the players was soft-spoken 1967 national teammate of Brooks’s was Craig Patrick. His ways were warranted for the reasoning of the unifying the team under the hatred of

Brooks.
For three weeks in September preceding the Olympic games Brooks scheduled games in Europe to play against teams “from Reipas of Finland to the Cincinnati Stingers of the Central Hockey League.” To make sure the opposing teams were trying, the teams were willing to make those games count as apart of the schedule. There would be game after game with the intention for payers to have the new style of play in their mind so it would be second nature. Previously there was no extended pre-Olympic schedule before this time around. Before the team would go to different cities, usually one that had deep hockey roots and paly games against local college teams to fundraise and also get some competition before they would go to play in the Olympics. Now with Brooks, the team went on a big road trip to play as many games as he could to try to implement his style of play in the player’s brain as second nature. Brooks’s new style of Play was “ They Started out String wining six of eight, but herb want to keep that intensity up, he issued a challenge, by putting them up against Norway a team that they would have to face during the Olympics.
After a close loss to Sweden, the United States tied them, which could have jeopardized their chances to even make it to the medal round; they easily win the rest of their games coming from behind. But the entire build up of the movie is leading up to Unites States vs. the Soviets, the movie shows this by Brooks saying to Walter Bush, the head of USA hockey, that “they are just kids Walter, so lets not turn this in to anything more than that,” Bush responds “ I’m not sure we have any control over it” as they are walking past Coach Tikhonov of the Soviet Union, with his players all single file dressed in bright crimson red track suites with straight faces, as if they were to smile they would be shot. Also there was a montage of the United States winning multiple games but then stops and focuses on the details of the time of the game and preparations for the game that they were preparing most for. Also Brooks had made his famous pregame speech about how “great moments are born from great opportunity”(Brooks), and also during the game the musical score, the most dialogue in any game the United States had played showed how focused the movies was about it was the United States vs. The Soviet Union.
Something must be said about his style of coach in relevance to Cold War politics. The whole basis of the cold war as democracy, a government of the people, for the people, and by the people vs. Communism, where one dictator rules, there is no private property, there is only one political party, and capitalist enterprise is considered evil. Although Brooks is American as one could possible be his style of play and philosophy is the least American as it could be. He took the Canadian style, and Eastern European, and Soviet style. Brooks “established close ties to leading figures in the Russian hockey federation and was given access to hours of footage showing how Soviet players practiced, footage he would later share with his players” (Abelson 84). Brooks was using the system breaking his players down to conform to the system where he was the one person who held all the power. Brooks believed that better hockey players would be cultivated in a democracy, and he devoted a lot of time and effort to try and teach 20 American college students the key aspects of the Soviet style of play (Abelson 84).
The 2004 Disney film, Miracle, portrayed a lone individual because of his drive and orthodox style of coaching to win the game. The film shows us through his playing experience, his strategy of picking players and style of the game, and his practices. He uses different styles in order to beat the unthinkable.