Mike Eruzione

And that's an important value that you have to have in life, not just sports.

And I think that's what we talked about a little earlier.

I think that's what we've lost sight of in our countries.

People just don't respect people anymore.

and you know we i can mention it what we we just got awarded uh our team's going to receive the congressional gold medal which is i think did i say that earlier you did yeah i did well i repeated myself um but that is an ultimate honor for our team and i think that's you know what makes our team and separates our team from other athletic achievements is that it was a u.s story and not

Boston or Chicago.

So I think Herb was the right guy to keep and maintain those values that are so important in life.

And he, he was an old school guy.

You know, he was, he was, you know, lunch pail hard hat.

That was our team.

That's the way he coached us.

That's the way he was.

And why we scheduled the game, I have no idea other than maybe Herb wanted us to play the Soviets just to see what the competition was going to be like.

because during our season we played 68 games against colleges minor league teams uh we had a great series with the canadian olympic team we played him eight times uh we had a great series with the soviet b team not the a team the a team was playing the new york rangers the new york islanders the you know nhl teams as they prepared so the last game was in madison so you guys understand this like so they're the 1980 team that mike is on they're playing against

Yeah, so we step on the ice.

You've got to remember one thing, too.

Some of the Soviet players were going for their third consecutive gold medal.

That's playing together for 12 years, some of these guys.

The average age of our Olympic team in 1980 was 21 and a half, 22 years old.

Matter of fact, I don't know if anybody here follows college hockey, but our Olympic team in 1980 would be the youngest team in college hockey today.