Book Review: The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey

The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team

It's that time of the year again, when ponds and lakes and rivers and streams freeze up north, and kids of all ages lace up their skates to enjoy one of the greatest feelings on earth: skating outdoors, in bright sunshine, under clouds, in the snow, or under the starry Milky Way. You don't properly know how amazing it is to skate with no roof over your head.

Those young kids grow up with dreams of being a pro hockey player, of tasting success at the highest levels of the sport, of winning Stanley Cup rings, Conn Smythe trophies and Olympic gold medals. Wayne Coffey's epic The Boys of Winter is a story of a group of college-age kids who, united by a coach with strange tactics and an even stranger personality, shocked the world at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics in 1980. 

Given that we have the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia (in which Team USA and the Russians are expected to figure in the men's hockey medal race) now seemed as good a time as any to revisit and enjoy once again one of my favourite books.

Sports Illustrated suggested the Miracle on Ice was the greatest moment in Olympic history. They're not far off the mark. As far as hockey lore goes, there are few games that have ever matched the David vs Goliath quality that the USA vs. USSR semi-final at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York did. The all-conquering USSR outfit came into the game and the tournament as the most unbackable of favourites. 

The team in the red sweaters were basically hockey professionals, despite the strict amateur laws in place for Olympic hockey competition back then. The USSR boys were experienced, as players and as team-mated. Some had been playing together since the first time they had ever laced up skates. This team was made up of legendary names: Tretiak, Mikhailov, Kharlarmov, Fetisov and Krutov. They were coached by a legend, Viktor Tikhonov.

Against them, a bunch of American college kids from an under-rated NCAA system, who hadn't been together for more than a year. They came from schools like Boston University, Minnesota, Wisconsin and others. Thanks to notable collegiate rivalries, these kids didn't like each other. They didn't like their coach, Herb Brooks from Minnesota. At least, the kids from Boston didn't. Soon-to-be team hero Mark Johnson's father, Bob, a legendary coach at Wisconsin, didn't like Brooks, either, and Brooks had been worried that he might pull Mark from the team out of spite.

Yet, those rivalries soon took a back seat, and Brooks' team soon gelled. Brooks cast himself as the bad guy, and united the team as one, against him. Risky, but a master stroke in the end, because there was a unity about the Team USA skaters that's rarely been seen since. Moreover, he came up with a plan to beat the Russians at their own game. And succeeded.

Coming into that fateful semi-final in Lake Placid, which would forever change hockey in both countries, the Soviets had been on a tear. In the Olympic tournaments since losing to the USA in the Gold Medal game in the Squaw Valley Olympics of 1960, the Soviets had gone an incredible 27–1–1, outscoring their opposition 175–44. In that time, the cumulative score against the United States was 28-7. Even the biggest American optimist had grave doubts whether their team could match it with the USSR, let alone win. 

The Boys of Winter - The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team tells the story of that most famous of Olympic hockey games, and of the players, the coaches and the match officials who participated, and the Olympics of Lake Placid themselves. After a foreword from goalie/hero Jim Craig, Wayne Coffey proceeds to bring to life the game as expertly and vividly as any other writer I've ever read. It's so well written and so intricately described that you feel you can see each play come to life, as if springing from the page and to life.

In between thrilling game narration and description - every big play, from a sprawling Jim Craig save to crisp moments of Russian puck possession, to goals that are now slices of history: Mark Johnson's last-gap first period marker, and Mike Eruzione's desperate, thrilling game winner in the third - are insights on the key characters in the game. This book presents both sides of the story.

You learn as much about Johnson and Eruzione as you do about Tretiak and Krutov. Brooks is brought to life brilliantly, as is Tikhonov. Coffey takes time to delve into the current-day whereabouts of a lot of the players, detailing how Miracle fame - or infamy, depending on which jersey you wore - has changed life for those who had their lives inexplicably altered over the course of sixty desperate minutes of hockey in February of 1980.

There's interesting detail about the changing face of USSR sport and their ideas about victory and competition since the 1917 revolution, and in the years after the Second World War, when, in the devastated Soviet nation, sport was seen as a way to take people's minds off the larger problems plaguing their country. Learning about the Olympics, and the Miracle on Ice game, from a Russian perspective makes them seem less like the cardboard cut-out bad guys, and more like human beings, Soviet versions, if you will, of Eruzione, Craig, Christian or Broten.

Interestingly, Coffey also paints a vivid picture of Lake Placid and it's almost rustic Olympics, perhaps the last true amateur games, held in a beautiful village snug in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, so far from the sprawling urban host cities and mammoth commercial deals that now seem to dominate Olympic competition.

Coffey sets his story well against the climate of the world and of an Olympic  set against rising gas prices, American despair and the continuing Cold War. Also, Al Michaels' road to being the play-by-play commentator for the game is documented. And record-setting speed skater Eric Heiden - for whom, also, 1980 was a memorable Olympics - is woven into the fast-moving and interesting narrative, as are the incredible scenes of jubilation post-game. 

Through it all, you come to know well players on both sides (and the officials) and despite knowing how the game ends, there is a great build-up to the history-making goal by Mike Eruzione, and the finale does not disappoint. How can it, when, throughout the retelling of the game and the exploration of it's participants, you come to feel a personal connection to all the characters.

When the game is over, the book continues - but not for long enough. It's one of those books that you never want to reach the last page of! 

Boys of Winter is a brilliant story of two hockey teams, and how the game itself, a simple contest for sixty minutes on a sheet of ice in Lake Placid, New York, was and became so much more than that. If you're a hockey fan, this is a must-read. And even those with a limited knowledge and love of the game will find something in this, for it tells the incredible story of one of the greatest feats in Olympic history.

Trust me, if you live and breath hockey, this is a story that simply won't disappoint.