Two sides to every miracle: The fascinating story of the Soviet Union hockey machine

Jonathan Hock's "Of Miracles and Men" tells the
story of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" from the Soviet
Union perspective.

As the saying goes, there are two sides to every story, even the ones we cherish with fairytale-like zeal. 

The remarkable tale of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s miraculous victory over the Soviet Union in Lake Placid is no exception.

The American perspective is undoubtedly heartwarming, inspiring, and inevitably reminds us why we love sports. It’s the ultimate underdog story – how a rag tag group of 20-something-year-olds united to stun the Soviet Union, perhaps the greatest hockey team of all time, before going on to win the gold medal.

Sunday marks the 35^th anniversary of the United States’ epic 4-3 victory in sleepy Upstate New York. But for as much as we all love the story of the Americans’ impossible triumph, the Soviet narrative is more nuanced, complicated, and maybe, just maybe, more compelling than its American counterpart.  

Coming from an American hockey player, that might sound like sacrilege or high treason.

But for the first time, fans of American hockey – and America in general – are getting a glimpse of the other­ side of what’s been called the “greatest moment in sports history.” It comes courtesy of a pair of documentaries – Gabe Polsky’s “Red Army” and Jonathan Hock’s “Of Miracles and Men” – the latter of which premiered this month on ESPN.

(Note: I haven’t yet seen “Red Army” but the similarities are well publicized.)

As part of the network’s “30 for 30” series, Hock’s film takes an honest and comprehensive look at the rise and fall of Soviet hockey, delving far deeper than the country’s stunning 4-3 loss in 1980.

“It’s probably the greatest hockey team ever, and we only think about them because they lost,” Hock said in the introduction to “Of Miracles and Men.”

Hock’s film examines the post-World War II origins of the Soviet hockey program and spotlights its founding father, Anatoli Tarasov. A beloved and venerable figure in Russian hockey lore, Tarasov was appointed by Joseph Stalin’s son and charged with starting the country’s ice hockey program practically from scratch. Though he never played the sport, Tarasov knew that the Soviet brand of the game had to deviate from its Canadian equivalent. From that simple assessment, he crafted an innovative, new incarnation of ice hockey that seamlessly weaved on-ice individualism into a team structure.

The country soon became an international powerhouse championing Tarasov’s philosophy. Yet, his romantic vision of the sport eventually gave way to a different voice behind the bench when the hard-driving Viktor Tikhonov became the Soviet national team coach in 1977. A dictator on skates, Tikhonov exercised nearly complete control over his players, restricting them to a training facility 11 months out of the year and even choosing their living arrangements.

 

And while Hock spends a considerable portion of the film recounting the events that played out at the 1980 Olympics, the audience makes an immediate connection with former Soviet defenseman Slava Fetisov, a national hero profiled in the film.  

Yet, for an American hockey player who grew up playing once a year on the same sheet of ice in Lake Placid that once bore a miracle, I must admit Hock’s film creates cognitive dissonance in my mind. 

On one hand, I’ve seen Disney’s “Miracle” enough times to know why Ralph Cox wanted to “play cawlidge hawkee.” I can practically recite the movie word for word. The story is irrevocably a part of every American hockey player, regardless of age, occupying the same corner of their imagination where childhood fairytales dwell.

On the other hand, Hock’s documentary has changed the way I look at the Miracle on Ice. Suddenly, I admire the Russian players in the same light as the Americans. Suddenly, the Soviet team is no longer the lifeless, mechanical creation as it’s portrayed in "Miracle."

Slava Fetisov returns to Lake Placid and talks with his daughter
about the Soviet Union's defeat at the 1980 Olympics during
"Of Miracles and Men."

Instead, Hock tears down those perceptions and shines a light on the innovation and creativity that made Soviet hockey the machine it became. Most importantly, he does so while humanizing the Russian players who are depicted as mere robots in the Disney movie.

Even the most hot-blooded American hockey fan can’t help but feel for Fetisov, who is shown in the documentary taking a return trip to Lake Placid with his daughter in 2013. Footage of the Americans’ remarkable victory runs simultaneously to Fetisov quietly reliving the game inside the locker room that he sat in 33 years earlier.

Hock's crew is there as Fetisov picks at the emotional scar, reopening the wound that never quite healed. The pain and puzzlement are engraved on his face as he thinks back to his team’s stunning defeat. 

“I remember when we lose the game, it was kind of…” Fetisov says with a brief pause, “silent.”

“We couldn’t believe we lost it,” he adds. “Thirty years later and I can blame myself, not to be at the best at this moment. That’s for sure.”

His daughter listens intently as silence engulfs the room, surely as it had three decades prior. It's a masterful scene.  

Yet, one defeat did not undo an era of Russian dominance. Instead, the Soviets regained their stranglehold of the international stage by winning the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo and the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. In fact, the defeat in 1980 was the Soviets' first Olympic loss in 12 years.

Fetisov eventually won a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings in 1997. But that could only happen when the government released him from military service (hockey players were soldiers in the Soviet Army) and unprecedentedly permitted him to leave the country and join the New Jersey Devils.

While the legend of the Americans’ achievement is neatly encapsulated in “Miracle,” the complexity and depth of the Soviet hockey tradition can’t be spun into a 100-minute Hollywood docudrama.
 
It would need its own HBO series.

The Miracle on Ice lives on in the hearts and minds of Americans, but if you’re a true sports fan, so should the Soviets’ remarkable hockey history. 

“In America, people always want me to talk about the ‘Miracle on Ice,’” Fetisov says at the beginning of the film. “But we made our own miracles and that’s what I want to talk about.”