Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice: Herb’s Warm Welcome

Ladies and gentlemen of the blog world, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve found some spare time between watching playoff hockey and working my rear end off for pennies to see the next segment of Miracle on Ice. Since I’m sure that you’re all quivering masses of excitement at the prospect, I’ll get on with the welcome the boys will be receiving to the trials, so hold onto your hats because this wagon doesn’t have any brakes and will be smashing through Colorado Springs.

In case you didn’t pick up on the subtle hint in the last sentence, these trials take place in Colorado Springs, which, as the name suggests, is in North Dakota, just as Baja California is in Mexico. Just kidding, of course. Colorado Springs is really in Colorado, unlike Baja California, which actually is in Mexico. Look it up if you think I’m a typical American who can’t navigate her way off her block with a GPS and a map.

A bus pulls up to the curb, and a stream of hockey players climb out, carrying their equipment. This river of hockey players includes Rob McClanahan, the guy I’m referring to as Steve Christoff until proof (which could be a long time in coming given this movie’s penchant to not give characters names) that he’s not arrives, and a blond dude I’m going to assume is Eric Strobel on the basis of hair color and age. What I mean by that is Rob, Steve, and Eric were all in the same class at the University of Minnesota, so, even if they weren’t friends, they still might find it somewhat reassuring to show up to trials together, because the devil you know is less scary than the one from Michigan, Wisconsin, or—God forbid—Massachusetts that you don’t know, right? Yeah, operating under that unassailable logic, the blond dude is definitely Eric Strobel until someone in the movie calls him by another name.

Rob, the guy who will be known as Steve for the time being, and the dude I’m presuming is Eric gawk at their surroundings for a bit, because Minnesota boys just don’t get out enough obviously, bless their hearts. While they drink in Colorado Springs, Eric says in a tone that sounds uncannily like a stoned skateboarder, “Wow, this is awesome! It makes me feel important.” Want to know one thing that isn’t awesome? This atrocious dialogue.

Getting beyond the fact that I’m cringing in embarrassment over dialogue that I wasn’t even born yet when it was written and so am in no way responsible for (so my audience should not point their pitchforks at me), Eric really should break his addiction before he’s subjected to a random drug test at the Olympics. After all, the only team allowed to have a drug-enhanced performance was the Soviet team. Should you think I’m being bigoted implying the Soviets cheated in international hockey competitions, check out Igor Larionov’s accounts of the suspicious injections members of the Soviet National team received annually leading up to the World Championships, which he insists that he, Krutov, Makarov, Fetisov, and Kasatonov all refused. The Soviet hockey program was so wacky that I don’t have to make stuff up for this blog to be exciting and scandalous.

Now that we’ve addressed the specter of suspicious Soviet injections, we can get back to the movie, where Rob, fiddling with his bag, tells his friends (who may or may not be named Eric and Steve) to “get over there for a second” so he can take a picture. Basically, Rob is that friend who you think you’ll have fun visiting the Lincoln Memorial with but who actually makes it so you never get to see much of the monument because you have to pause at every step to snap a photo.

Steve (or whoever he is) doesn’t think this is a Kodak moment, so he groans, “Come on, Robbie. Let’s stash our gear.”

Since Rob, like most tyrants with cameras, is not about to be dissuaded this easily, he responds, “No way. I promised your dad.” Jeez, so, basically, Steve’s dad is the ‘70s version of my mom, who always tells my friends (never me) to take a ton of pictures and post them on Facebook so she can admire them. I believe this is her method of monitoring my sobriety levels. Steve should be wary of such tricks from his old man, I think.

Steve snorts, “Well, that’s your problem,” and my problem is that this dialogue may have been written by a second grader. Seriously, if I hear a fart joke, I will take it as definitive evidence that the script writer never graduated elementary school, which would explain a lot about the relative maturity levels of everyone in this film.

Holding up his camera, Rob tells his friends to smile, and they actually cooperate. We can only assume that after this, Rob subjects them to about a million more pictures, because the lighting is never perfect and whatnot.

Fortunately, we are spared the ordeal of watching that as we move into an assembly room where Herb is going to give his idea of a welcome speech, which means, of course, that it will be about as welcoming as a mugging in a dark alley. In this room, the camera focuses on a knot of New England boys, including such notable personages as Ralph Cox, Jim Craig, Dave Silk, and Jack O’Callahan.

With his hands in his pockets, Silk confesses, “These guys make me nervous.” He’s going to be wetting his pants when Herb makes his grand entrance, in that case…

Jim says that he recognizes a lot of the guys from the Moscow tournament and they’re all right. My inner Miracle geek is doing cartwheels right now, because that ’79 World Championship team Jim alludes to did contain Jim Craig, Jack O’Callahan, Phil Verchota, Bill Baker, Rob McClanahan, Steve Christoff, Eric Strobel, Mark Johnson, and even this random retired NHL player named Craig Patrick. In other words, the 1980 Olympics was totally an awesome remix of the ’79 World Championship team.

Cox argues that there are “too many of them and not enough of us.” I feel like I’m watching the beginning of an after-school special on tolerance and diversity.

OC drawls, “Ah, it’s a big country, boys, we’ve got to make room for some of them—like maybe two.” OC is a riot. He gets some of the best lines in this movie, just like he does in Miracle. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

The New Englanders take their seats, and we move over to a knot of Midwesterners in time to hear Ken Morrow say, “Hey, I’ve never seen most of these guys before.”

This results in some supposedly witty but actually painful banter about most of the guys not having seen Kenny before either, and how the other guys are Easterners who never leave concrete streets. By this point, I fully believe that Herb did his honest best to take the most annoying cast of characters possible to Lake Placid, perhaps theorizing that the Russians would capitulate instantly under an onslaught of their terrible jokes.

We have to listen to more agonizingly unnatural dialogue trying to convince us that it’s humor as the Midwestern boys discuss how the gold medal ’60 team was loaded with Easterners and how much they don’t need a history lesson. Can Herb make his grand entrance soon because this is getting to be excruciating?

The camera now shifts over to the Coneheads, who are sitting in a row diagonal to the other group of Midwesterners. Pointing across the room as if he were raised in a barn, Bah asks Buzz and Pav, “Hey, did you see McClanahan’s jeans?”

Yep, this is definitely an after-school special, all right. Now we’re getting to the point where people are being mocked behind their backs for their clothing selections. I eagerly anticipate the incoming anti-bullying sermon where we’ll be taught that we can all be buddies no matter what our socioeconomic status.

Buzz replies that he doesn’t check out guys’ jeans, and Bah continues to obsess over Rob’s pants, claiming that Rob’s wearing a fancy brand that costs “sixty bucks at least.” Presumably, he’s bitter because that money could have fed a starving child in the Iron Range for a year or something.

Pav decides not to be a bystander, and demands, “So what? He plays good hockey?” Here, a cynic could certainly speculate that Pav has a vested interest in creating a team atmosphere where nobody cares what anyone else is wearing, so that he could show up to his medal ceremony looking like a total ragamuffin, and nobody would be able to taunt him into dressing as if he had actually spared a thought to his appearance.

Bah dismisses this point, scoffing, “Yeah, I know, but what’s a rich kid doing playing hockey?”

Okay. I’ve got to give this movie props for courage here, even if I make fun of the rest of the script. Rob McClanahan was raised in North Oaks, an affluent suburb of St. Paul, while most of the team was from more blue collar origins, so he got a lot of ribbing about his upper-crust background.

Many sources, like the Miracle movie, decide they aren’t going to poke that class grenade with a ten-foot pole, and most of the sources that do touch it do so in a pretty blundering way, basically asserting that Rob was fine because while he might have seemed like a snot like all the other lazy, arrogant upper-middle class jerks in their gated communities driving their elegant cars, he wasn’t actually a snot unlike all those other rich snobs who really are arrogant, lazy jerks. In a nutshell, most of the sources just end up affirming the stereotypes about upper-middle class people instead of confronting them, so we’ll see what the movie does with the class issue. Either way, I’ll applaud their bravery for trying to deal with the issue even if I can’t approve of their execution. So far, though, I think that they’re doing pretty well, since I believe the audience is intended to identify Bah’s remark as a sort of reverse snobbery and not be sympathetic toward it.

The camera switches to Les Auge, who, when asked how he is doing, admits that he’s feeling a little nervous. I’m kind of overjoyed to see Les Auge in this film, since I’ve only ever read about him in books before. It’s nice to see him get some attention for a change.

Now that Les Auge has prepared us for Herb’s entrance by alerting us to the fact that we should all be nervous wrecks, Herb strides in and marches up to the podium to deliver his welcome speech to his crowd of Olympic hopefuls.

Herb opens with a declaration that “some of you have had the pleasure of playing on my teams before.” Way to go, Herb. When the tension between different groups in a room is thick enough to need a knife to slice through it, it’s great to crack a joke to set all the warring factions at ease. I hope he continues his standup routine with a quip about the pleasure of getting a root canal.

Sadly, Herb elects to go into serious mode instead of making any more wisecracks. He attempts to assure his audience’s attention by asserting that this isn’t a case where a player can look to his right and to his left, and then know that one of the three of them will make the team, because the odds, according to him, aren’t that much in their favor. Instead, Herb tells them to look two places on either side of them and assume that maybe none of them will make the team.

Since the boys who do ultimately make the team are organized in bunches, a more accurate version of the speech would point out that there are also some people who could look two places on either side of them and know that all five of them would make the team. Really, Herb could have glossed over the formality of a trials process and just pointed at clumps of players, announcing which ones passed muster and which ones didn’t.

Herb then talks about how the twenty boys who will make the team will be the best skaters, the bravest players, and the guys who believe in themselves and each other the most. This is all music to my ears as this team over the years has somehow been stigmatized as a talentless bunch, so it’s a wonderful change to hear them being called good.

After this, Herb waxes romantic about how he’s not looking for winners, since winners are a dime a dozen, but rather for people prepared to sacrifice for the chance to become winners. This line rings very true, since Herb once defined winners as those who are willing to make sacrifices for the unknown.

Herb concludes with a declaration that he doesn’t know what brought his players there, but he knows what can send them home, and that he’s not interested in their questions, only their answers, so if they have any questions, they should direct them to Coach Patrick, who seems astonished by Herb’s abrupt speech.

As Herb walks by him, Patrick remarks that the boys look eager, and Herb counters that they are a “bunch of cliques” that are “a long way from a team.” In other words, this Olympic team sounds like middle school.

Patrick walks up to the podium and makes a sorry excuse for a jest by commenting, “Welcome to Colorado Springs, where the atmosphere isn’t just friendly and warm; it’s downright hot.” That terrible joke may be the reason the facepalm was invented.

There is an outbreak of polite, pitying laughter from the boys who probably want brownie points from the assistant coach who apparently just wants to be one of the guys.

Coach Patrick asks if there are any questions, and everyone raises a hand. That’s good. Patrick deserves to answer stupid questions for the next century as atonement for his awful joke. On that note, we’ll end this post with Herb’s pleasant words of welcome ringing in our eardrums like a merry wedding bell.