Mike Eruzione

And it was like, there's Kalimov, there's Yakishev, there's Kutov, these great players we heard so much about.

Herb was a great speaker, great motivator.

We go in the locker room to get ready to go to Lake Placid.

He said, gentlemen, if you ever get a chance to play the Soviets again, and we don't know if we are because they're in the other division.

We had to win our own division or come in second in our division to even get a chance to play them.

He says, remember how you played in the second and third period, not the first period.

We were losing six to nothing after one period.

And I tell you that because he turned a negative into a positive right away.

He said, look how even you played with them when you guys were ready to play.

So instead of screaming and yelling at us, saying how much we sucked or how bad we were, we walked away thinking, wow, we played even with the best team in the world.

And I tell that story because when things don't go well, and there are times things don't always go well.

Find something positive and build off of that because if you think negative things, guess what?

Nothing but negative thoughts will stay in your head.

So we get on the bus clearly excited about what just happened.

We played even.

And we don't know if we're even going to play him again.

So our mindset going into Lake Placid was totally different than if he had screamed and yelled at us.

So we get to Lake Placid and the tournament starts.

But that game that we lost 10-3 was never, ever talked about again.

Even when we got to play him the second time in Lake Placid, the day before at practice, Herb never said, remember what happened last time, that game didn't, it was like it didn't even exist.