@Consolation is right. When the coach made his choices, apparently there was shock in hockey circles that he hadn’t picked the “best” players. I don’t know if he really said this, but in the movie, the coach responds, “I’m not looking for the ‘best’ players; I’m looking for the ‘right’ players.” He wanted the kids who he thought would be the most cohesive, tight group of guys, who would play like a team rather than a team of individual stars.
February 22, 1980. I was on Magnetic Island off the coast of Queensland, Australia when I heard. No access to television. It was in the middle of a sweltering summer, and the game wasn’t even on my radar because it wasn’t the gold medal game. I overheard someone talking about it in a milk bar. It seemed inconceivable to me, an American student overseas, that the US had won. I thought the person must be mistaken.
@Pizzagirl I think one reason it was a big deal is that a month earlier (Jan 20, 1980) President Carter had announced his intention to have the US boycott the Moscow Olympics over the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. There was a lot of tension at that time. The Iranian hostage crisis was in its fourth month. The hockey win provided brief, welcome relief from a lot of problems internationally.
Australia ultimately decided not to boycott the 1980 summer Olympics, which was a rare break from supporting US policy. The Moscow Olympics were shown in their entirety on Australian TV, and they were spectacular. I’ve often wondered if President Carter regretted his decision, given that the USSR boycotted the LA games in 1984 in retaliation. Politics wasn’t supposed to enter in to the Olympics, and a lot of athletes on both sides ended up being hurt by these decisions.
I just read the Wikipedia account, and between mopping tears–I’m such a sap–I marveled at what Jim Craig did in goal during the last two periods. The number of Soviet shots on goal was just overwhelming.