Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Meet the Guys

As anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time probably has figured out I have a slightly overzealous interest in the Miracle on Ice, so when I had a chance to buy a VHS (those tapes that are a pain in the neck to rewind and flash forward that we used to watch back in the ‘90s before DVDs were invented to spare us the agony if you can remember those technological Dark Ages) of the 1981 made for TV movie called Miracle on Ice at a garage sell, I had to spend the two bucks it took to purchase the relic. Of course, the fact that I even go to such garage sales is a source of eternal embarrassment to my family, as is the fact that we still have a VHS player hooked up to one of our TVs. To make my family’s humiliation complete, I decided to watch the Miracle on Ice VHS that I bought nice and cheap at a garage sale on our antiquated VHS player and then blog about it in ten to twenty minute segments.

Now to give my audience fair warning, I’m so excited about this rainfall from heaven in the form of a Miracle on Ice VHS that I might not be entirely coherent throughout this viewing and writing experience. Seriously, the last time I was flailing so much over something Miracle related was when I ordered a book about the Miracle on Ice used on Amazon and it arrived with Eric Strobel’s signature in it, making me feel like I had just committed the online equivalent of highway robbery since I would have paid a lot more money for the book if I had known it had Eric Strobel’s John Hancock in it. Gosh, that was like the pinnacle of my Miracle fan glee, and the only way it could have possibly been improved was if the signature had been Mark Johnson’s or Rob McClanahan’s, because those two are my absolute favorite Miracle boys. Okay, that’s more than enough about me and my freakishness. Let’s get on with the show, ladies and gentlemen of the blog world…

The movie opens with a rather impressive declaration that it’s based on the events leading up to the USA men’s hockey team winning gold at the Lake Placid Olympics, but some characters and events have been compressed for dramatic purposes. With all these fancy words, it sounds like the beginning of those forensic shows on the Discovery channel. Maybe Herb will commit a murder in this film, and we’ll have to go on a journey to find DNA evidence to convict him by confiscating his Coke can or something.

Credits are rolling, and I want to get on with the actual film. I’ve got all the patience of a sugar high toddler here, basically, and I’m remembering how hard it is to fast forward a VHS.

All right, the credits are finally over, and we’re at Herb’s house near St. Paul, Minnesota. The camera focuses on the Coach of the Year Award and assorted honors that Herb has received that are hanging on his bedroom wall. It’s a good way of subtly establishing his character as a decorated college coach, and the fact we don’t see any coffee mugs with “Number 1 Coach” written in bright colors is probably a sign that he’s not a touchy-feely guy or else that he coaches the most ungrateful brats ever.

The camera drifts over to Herb’s face, and if I don’t make a crack about Karl Malden nose right away it’s going to be distracting me the whole movie, which will hinder my enjoyment of all things Miracle on Ice, so, on that note, Karl’s nose is so big that it looks like they got two actors to play Herb.

Patty’s awake, and she’s fretting about Herb being up all night like the obsessive nut that he is. Herb comes over to their bed (and the fact that they are allowed to be on the same bed and not have to sleep in twin beds shows that this is an ‘80s film not a ‘50s one, since the ‘50s were so prudish that not even husbands and wives were allowed to share beds) and protests that he had to decide which players he was going to invite to the Olympic try-outs.

Patty is sassy, pointing out that was Herb’s excuse for not getting any sleep last night, and he can’t use the same one twice. Nice to see her given some personality in this film.

Herb explains that he delayed sending out the invitations until today (since he’s such a terrible procrastinator) and then provides a little bit of an info-dump, describing how he’ll have to cut forty-two of the sixty boys at the Olympic trials, and then he’ll have six months to narrow the roster down to twenty. I’d probably be a sarcastic jerk about Herb flipping out this much over sending out invitations if I didn’t just think about how miserable an experience mailing a million Christmas cards can be, but since I remember that I’ll graciously hold my fire.

Of course, in the modern era, mailing invitations isn’t a concern for USA hockey. They just send out text messages to players, and if that sometimes means accidentally inviting a sixty-seven-year-old Canadian to the Olympics instead of Ryan Kesler since Kesler changed his number that is just the price of doing business. Anyway, the lesson in all this is that the technology may have improved, but inviting players to the Olympics still remains a messy process because USA Hockey is a marvelously inefficient organization, as most bureaucracies are.

Since Herb sounds like a ball of stress, Patty points out that Herb didn’t need to take the job, and when Herb worries about what will happen if he can’t succeed, she reassures him that she’ll still be there for him as always. This is a pretty sweet scene, to be honest.

Herb hops into Craig Patrick’s car and begins acting as if he has the social skills of a rhino on a rampage. In response to Patrick’s question about how he’s doing, he just demands to know where the list of the boys they’re going to invite is, and Patrick whips out a clipboard. It’s interesting that the film has Herb treating Patrick like a clod of dirt, since Herb was actually known for treating his assistant coaches and trainers with a lot of respect. He was just mean to his players mainly.

Being a complete thunderhead, Herb grouses about how even if he had twenty of the best players in the world, he couldn’t build a team in less than seven months, and this is why the Russians don’t take American hockey seriously. I guess he would love it if he were named a commander in the army who could draft hockey players to his unit and force them to live in barracks away from their families for eleven months of the year since that was what the Soviet team success was rooted in. I hope that he doesn’t continue in this vein all the way to Lake Placid, because that would just be annoying.

Patrick makes a valid point about hockey being more important to Russians than it is to Americans.

Herb snarls at Patrick to mail out the invitations and then slams the list down like a toddler having a tantrum over Mommy not buying the Oreos at the supermarket. He tops the rant off with a statement that Patrick should start praying that enough of the boys to make a team will feel like showing up, but if that’s really a concern shouldn’t he send out more invitations to more players instead of whining about a potential lack of turnout?

We’re in Boston now, and Rizzo is walking through a park filled with historical statues as all Boston parks are legally required to be with his girlfriend. As they stroll along the path, Rizzo’s girlfriend asks Rizzo if he’s nervous.

At first, Rizzo tries to scoff off the question, then he mans up enough to admit that he is nervous because he’s a hockey player and he needs to get noticed. It should be noted that Rizzo’s Boston accent makes “Donna” sound like “darling.”

Donna gives Rizzo a look to let him know she’s not impressed by this logic, and he says that the pros know where he is, but he needs to prove himself to them if he wants them to give him a real opportunity. He feels that the Olympics would give him that chance to prove himself.

Rizzo’s Boston accent is so excessive that it’s difficult to take him seriously even when he is being so intense in this scene. His actor could have followed the less is more philosophy when it comes to portraying an accent in film.

Donna smiles and asks Rizzo how long he’s going to wait. Rizzo slings an arm around her and says he’ll tell her after the mail comes.

With that as a transition, we move over to North Easton, Massachusetts, where Jim Craig lives. He enters to find an opened invitation to the Olympics on the mantle next to a picture of his mother, who, of course, died of cancer but dreamed of her son going to the Olympics.

As he reads the letter, his dad comes into the room and tells Jimmy not to be angry with his brother who tried to get to it first. Yeah, as someone from a large family, let me tell you that if a sibling was snooping through my mail, I wouldn’t be angry—I’d be searching for a knife. In large families, you shouldn’t get mad; you should just get even.

Jim tells his dad that he wasn’t trying to hide the note and that he just was waiting to see what offers he could get from the pros. Jim’s father says there will be time to speak with the pros later, and Jim counters that it costs money to keep playing amateur, and he feels like his family has spent enough already. Many families do struggle to cobble together the money to give their children a shot at the Olympics that I applaud this film for examining some of the tension that results from that. I imagine it puts a ton of pressure on the athletes knowing how much their family sacrificed to give them a shot at the Olympics, and then for the families it has to be stressful to because they feel like they should be doing everything possible to give their talented kid the best opportunity to succeed but that’s so hard to do when you money is tight.

During the course of this discussion, the camera really zooms in on Jim’s face, and let me tell you, the actor who plays him looks absolutely nothing like the actual Jim Craig. He’s about as far from objectively good-looking as it’s possible to be, he doesn’t look remotely Irish, and his peepers aren’t a dazzling blue. Was this the best casting could do because it’s kind of pathetic?

We’re back in Minnesota, and some guy who I assume is Steve Christoff is watching some reels of himself getting slammed into the boards in awkward ways. Thankfully we are distracted from these frankly weird poses by Rob McClanahan materializing in the doorframe and saying like the obnoxious know-it-all that he is, “Don’t tell me. Slapshot.” No, Robbie, it’s the Three Stooges.

The guy who I’m just going to call Steve until proof that he’s not comes along says he’s actually watching a play of himself getting nailed into the corners.

Rob replies with a joking, “You never give up, do you?” This script is quite terrible, since half of what people say isn’t very related to what was offered in the previous comment. It’s as if everyone in this film has never engaged in an actual conversation with other human beings before.

Steve (or whoever he is) responds that “we can’t all be naturals.” That’s definitely true about the acting in this movie, let me assure you.

Rob, deciding to hop onto the next topic and get to the real point of his visit, asks if Steve “got one.” This forced dialogue that’s trying to sound organic and bantering is quite grating to listen to in case you’re wondering.

Steve (or whatever his name is) answers that he hasn’t checked yet, and Rob crows that he saved him the trouble and they’ll be going to camp together. In other words, the script writers have a fetish for people committing the federal offense of opening mail not addressed to them. I mean, seriously, this is the second time in less than five minutes that someone has nosed through a letter that doesn’t belong to them. Come up with a new way of revealing information. This is already getting old, and we aren’t ten minutes into the movie yet.

I can’t help but picture other conversations Rob might have engaged in with friends in the past, though, and it’s rather amusing. I can just envision him strutting into a friend’s living room during his senior year of high school and announcing all smugly, “I saved you the trouble of getting your mail and opening it. You got that letter from the admissions office of that university you really were dreaming of going to and that you thought was so perfect for you. You were outright rejected. What a bummer, but let’s focus on what’s really important in life. Do you want to watch Slapshot? Wait. Why are you crying and hurling blunt objects at my head?”

Getting beyond the fact that Rob doesn’t understand human emotions too well in this movie, we’re moving up to Eveleth, Minnesota to meet some Coneheads at a bar.

We get some shots of the mines because Eveleth is in the Iron Range of Minnesota, so mining iron ore is what the economy of that whole region is based on. Good to get some local flavor.

We follow Pav as he dashes into a bar, glances around at the patrons, and then takes a seat at a table with Bah Harrington and Buzz Schneider.

Buzz makes a wisecrack about Pav only being an hour late this time. Pav would be the dude who couldn’t arrive on time to anything, since he is the exact opposite of a social butterfly.

Pav explains that he was fishing. This feels so in character, since Pav loved nature and hunting, so I could totally see him blowing off his friends for an hour or more to catch some fish.

I think the scene with the Coneheads is the best yet, because Bah actually sounds natural when he gives Pav a hard time about fishing instead of hanging out with his friends, and Pav does to when he responds that if it’s between Bah and fishing, fishing is going to win.

That natural feeling kind of fades away though when Bah and Buzz want to know if Pav got an invitation to the Olympic trials, but at least this gives Pav a chance to show his prankster side by putting on a blank face for a few seconds, and then whipping out the invite with a slight smile.

After this, there is some manly hand-shaking and celebratory shouting from the Coneheads.

Then we shift scenes to a cemetery where Jim and his father are standing over his mother’s grave. It’s a poignant touch to have them both offering the Sign of the Cross at the end of their prayers, since it’s annoying in films when Catholics act like evangelical Protestants and don’t make that gesture. Really, it’s almost as bad as when a Catholic priest decides to lead his congregation in the Protestant version of the Our Father, because Hollywood just doesn’t understand Catholicism at all and doesn’t realize that’s just as unbelievable as a backwoods Baptist chanting a Hail Mary. They don’t mess this bit up, though, so props to them.

As they walk away from the grave, Jim’s dad asks him how it feels to being going to the Olympic trials, and Jimmy sighs before answering that it’s what he wants to do. The poor guy needs a hug, because he’s making me a very sad panda right now.

When his dad asks if he’s doing okay, Jimmy responds that he is but it’s still hard for him to believe that his mom is gone. Way to snatch my heart out of my chest and stomp on it, Jimmy. I hope you’re happy about that now.

Some of the touching melancholy of this scene is squandered when Jim’s father just responds that it’s hard for everyone in the family. It just seems like there would be about fifty more comforting things he could have said at this juncture, so it sort of rips me out of the moment and reminds me of the vexation I experienced when I vented to a friend about how upset I was when I got a C on a test I thought I aced and instead of sympathizing she took the opportunity to wax poetic about an F she’d gotten on an exam several years ago. She was so determined to prove that she had suffered more than me, while I was thinking that I was sorry she had a bad day years ago, but I was having a bad day now and some consoling might be in order…

Jim worries aloud that him pursuing his Olympic dream is asking too much of the family, and Jim’s dad points out that it is really Jim’s mother who is doing most of the asking. The scene is back to being touching now.

Jim’s father tells him to just make his mom proud and repeats that instruction as if to pile on the pressure. If I were Jim, I’d probably feel like the weight of the world was on my shoulders after those words from dear old dad.

Jim’s father slings an arm around Jim’s shoulders, saying, “Come on. Let’s get you to the plane.” This serves as our transition to an airplane that’s taking off.

Aboard this plane, we are introduced to Jack O’Callahan gambling with some guy named Graser. Graser loses the card game for what seems to be the umpteenth time and takes out his temper by smacking OC’s mouth with a hand of cards. OC gasps and clutches his face, which seems rather inconsistent with the fact that OC had hundreds of stitches and no teeth. He’s tough guy. He’s not going to find some paper hitting his lips painful.

In another row, we have Silky and Rizzo talking about how many of the boys will go pro before Lake Placid rolls around. Silky remarks that he can’t blame anyone for choosing to go pro when that’s where all the money is. Rizzo suggests that Silky should leave the pros alone for now since he still has a year of college eligibility left.

In a comment that doesn’t directly respond to what came before, Silky says that his family wants him to become a doctor but he prefers performing surgery with his stick. From the row up front, someone chips in that Herb would want to see him playing the body not the stick, and Silky retorts that is why Herb’s not coaching in the NHL.

Rizzo points out that maybe Herb doesn’t want to coach in the NHL, and Silky scoffs that the NHL is where all the money is. Rizzo flares up and snaps that Silky still has other options and that he should finish school to give himself something to fall back on. I think that Silky’s allusions to the fact that the best play and coach in the NHL because that’s where all the money is poked a raw nerve with Rizzo, don’t you?

Flashing back to OC, we learn that Graser is three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the red to OC. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a ton of money. Good Lord, did Graser think the plane was Las Vegas or what? If you’re going to lose that kind of money, at least do it in a snazzy casino.

That’s all for now, folks. We’ve met the boys, and next we’ll get to watch them partake in the trials. Oh, and OC wants me to tell you that the over/under odds on Graser making the team are really great, so bet on it with him…