It is all the talk here.
The 2002 U.S. men’s hockey team coached by Herb Brooks will play Russia on Friday. That’s Feb. 22.
In 1980, the U.S. men’s hockey team coached by Brooks played the Soviet Union on a Friday. That was also Feb. 22.
The U.S. men won 4-3. It became known as the “Miracle on Ice.”
Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s all anyone can talk about heading into Friday’s semifinal.
Anyone except Brooks, that is. He doesn’t think there are any similarities between his college players back then and his current NHL pros.
“We played the Soviet Union in an exhibition game [in 1980] and our guys were applauding them on the bench,” Brooks said. “That won’t happen here.”
Brooks also doesn’t plan to wear the screaming plaid pants he is shown wearing in the endless 1980 replays.
“Wasn’t that awful?”‘ the fashionista said with a laugh.
No, Brooks isn’t biting on any questions of fate. He does not want to play it that way, so he says he knows nothing about it.
What he does know about are the mind games required to meld a team quickly.
In 1980 the autocrat with the voice as loud as his plaid pants unified a bunch of impressionable college kids by screaming so much that their common bond was they all hated Brooks and took it out on every opponent.
Twenty-two years later he has unified pros by taking them back to when they were kids playing hockey. At the same time he is making them act like adults when it comes to taking responsibility.
First he constantly says this is not his team, but Chris Chelios’.
“It’s what he says, what he does, his sensitivities, willing to pay a price–name it, he does it,” Brooks said of the team captain and former Blackhawk. “His leadership has been fantastic.”
It has had to be, because Brooks has made his captain accountable for things you would expect only a coach to deal with.
“I asked Chris Chelios the other day, `You walk in the locker room and ask how many of you boys play on the power play,'” Brooks said. “Chris said, `Jeez they all raised their hand.’ I said, `What are we going to do about it? You’re the captain. What are we going to do?'”
Note the “we.” Brooks, the man who refused to make his players available for interviews for most of the 1980 Games, has left Chelios and the rest of the team to answer for themselves.
“He has to give us responsibility,” said Blackhawks defenseman Phil Housley, who has three assists and is among the team leaders with a plus-6 rating. “I mean, we’re the ones playing the game.
“It’s great to have great veterans and leadership in the locker room. It’s showing in our play. Guys are working hard for one another, backing up one another. You have to have that closeness coming into the tournament. Whatever team has that closeness and plays as a team has a good chance to win.
“You’ve got to have the guys out there with the heart and character to play the game.”
Funny that Housley would mention “playing the game.” That’s exactly what Brooks is doing here. Consider:
“I said one thing to them: `How many games do you play in the National Hockey League?'” Brooks began. “They all looked up at me and said, `82.’ I looked at Johnny LeClair and I said, `What do you think, John?’
“He said, `I don’t think I want to answer because I think you’re going someplace different with it.’
“So I said, `You don’t play 82 games in the National Hockey League. You play one game 82 times.’ And actually, you don’t play one game. You play 60 minutes.
“I’m trying to break this thing down to the smallest common denominator of their work and their commitment to their job that day. Some guys get 20 minutes [of ice time], some get 25, some 15, five–whatever the case may be, so you focus on that. That’s how we want to approach every day, day-by-day.
“I told the players that and they just all laughed at me.”
But they believe, and Brooks knew they would, especially after the embarrassment on and off the ice at Nagano in 1998. They will believe anything from the man who made a miracle out of Mike Eruzione. Brett Hull calls this year’s success “that Herbie Brooks magic.”
Really, though, it’s the Herbie Brooks magic act. The 1980 Brooks model was just as calculating as the 2002 edition. Back then he was doing the Herb Brooks shtick before we knew there was a Herb Brooks shtick. It was dictatorial then. It is aw, shucks now.
“These are very sophisticated professional athletes,” Brooks said. “I feed off of them. They’re very happy to be playing and they’ve picked our whole staff up. They’re just little boys playing a grown man’s game.
“I’m just a passenger. I’m just directing a little traffic.”
It’s shtick. It’s Brooks. It apparently has a 22-year shelf life.
