From 1920 through 1952, Canadian teams dominated Olympic ice hockey. They won 37 games, lost one and tied three times. They scored 403 goals while allowing only 34. The sport became a regular event in the Olympics after that, and it has evolved over the years, with women’s hockey added in 1998 further diversifying the Olympic program.
When the puck dropped on the semifinal game against the Soviets at Lake Placid in 1980, more than 10,000 people jammed into Blyth Arena. They had heard of the “Miracle on Ice,” but no one in that crowd, not even a hard-staring coach like Herb Brooks, expected anything quite so dramatic. But midway through the second period, Bill Cleary took a pass from his brother Roger, darted toward the Soviet zone and drilled a shot past goalie Nikolai Puchkov.
With the score 4-3 and ten minutes to play, the U.S. team looked ready to crumble under the weight of its mounting deficit. But then Mike Eruzione picked up a loose puck in the Soviet zone, used a defenseman for a screen and shot the puck home to make it 5-3.
The Soviet/Russian/United States dynasty would not last long, but the collapse was a foregone conclusion that had been hinted at by the media before the 1988 Calgary Games. It was a logical outcome of the political changes ushered in by Perestroika, as more than two hundred top players jumped ship and sought jobs abroad.