When we beat the guys wearing the CCCP jerseys

February 22, 2025 by Silvio Canto, Jr.

We celebrate today another anniversary of George Washington’s birthday in 1732. We used to celebrate his birthday as a special day. It reminded everyone of the greatness of the man.

Back in 1980, many of us spent President Washington’s birthday watching an Olympic hockey game. It passed into the history pages as the “Miracle on Ice.” It was sort of like the recent U.S.-Canada game without the fights but a million times more tense.

As you may remember, we were in the middle of various crises, abroad and at home.

First, the USSR had just invaded Afghanistan and was throwing its weight around in Nicaragua and paying for Cuban troops in Africa. Second, Iran had kidnapped U.S. diplomats and mocked President Carter every day. It seemed as if no one feared the U.S. and the bad guys certainly didn’t. Third, the U.S. economy was struggling, from long gas lines to inflation. I remember all of this because I sat waiting in one of those gas lines.

In the middle of all of this, a bunch of young Americans gave us the time of our lives. It was the first hockey game that I ever paid attention to!

The U.S. beat the old USSR in the Olympic semifinals to move on to the gold game. What a great game. In fact, listening to Al Michaels of ABC call the last minute of that game was unbelievable.

Here is the story of that day:

The story first needs a Goliath, and even the most cursory look at the Soviets shows their might. They had won each of the previous four Olympic gold medals in hockey and 12 gold medals in the 16 world championships they played in between 1961 and 1979.

The USSR also won all 12 matchups with the United States between the 1960 and 1980 Olympics, outscoring the Americans 117-26…

The idea of competing with the Soviets was absurd on paper. But the victory becomes even more miraculous when you see how badly the U.S. was outchanced that day by the older, more experienced Soviets...

The most basic metric is total shot attempts -- the total number of shots a team takes, whether they hit or miss the net or are blocked by the opposition, commonly known in the hockey stats community as Corsi -- specifically those taken when both teams are skating five players a side. It is commonly presented to show possession tendencies. Consider:

In all situations, the USSR had 52 shot attempts, while the U.S. recorded just 25 (67.5% of the total attempts).

When taking that same statistic and looking at only 5-on-5 situations, the USSR held a 46-21 shot attempt advantage (68.7% shot share).

When looking at shots that hit their target, the official box score credited the USSR with 39 total shots on goal, and we determined it had 31 at 5-on-5. The United States? Try 16, and just seven at 5-on-5. We actually classified six of those 16 American shots as dump-ins on goal, too, meaning there were really 10 true shots from Team USA. A ridiculous 71% of shots on goal in the game came from the Soviets, and that number jumped to 81.6% at 5-on-5.

Running a possession deficit that substantial is not usually going to lead to success, and it's somewhat rare to see. Over the past three NHL postseasons, only five playoff games out of 258 have had a possession disparity as large or larger than what we saw in the Miracle on Ice.

Yes, "Running a possession deficit that substantial is not usually going to lead to success" except when you are playing on Washington's birthday. Maybe George persuaded the Gods of hockey that the country really needed this one. I don't know how it happened but the good guys won that day and people like me began to take hockey seriously. All of a sudden, the Stanley Cup was a sports final rather than a gift for newlyweds.

It gave us the lift that we all needed back then! Again, what a game and how timely that it happened on George Washington's birthday.