In February, when Jack Hughes discovered the area underneath Team Canada goalie Jordan Binnington’s left pad, an area barely larger than the one made earlier on his entrance tooth, snatching the first U.S. Olympic men’s hockey gold medal in 46 years, it triggered euphoria, reduction, redemption and no matter else you bought.
For me, it was simply triggering. Why did the hero should be named Jack Hughes?
Hughes is the ninetieth hottest surname within the United States, and the Jack in entrance of it persistently lands within the high 30, and oldsters nonetheless wake predawn to take their children to the rink. But come on. Jack Hughes? The similar identify because the final participant reduce from the 1980 Miracle on Ice team?
There’s irony, there’s karma, after which there’s rubbing it in.
Five nights after the victory over Canada, I’m up watching Miracle, the 2004 much-more-good-than-flawed Disneyfication of the 1980 workforce. Twenty-nine minutes in, Patti Brooks (Patricia Clarkson) has this change together with her husband, U.S. coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell):
Patti: “I know what this is about. I know it and you know it.”
Herb: “What? Know what?”
Patti: “This. What you’re doing. Chasing after something that you didn’t get. That you may never get. What if it doesn’t work out, Herb, huh? Are we gonna do this every four years?”
I had a primary seat for what occurred with the unique Jack Hughes: the press field. I coated him for 3 years at Harvard, the place he was a Geryon-like, three-bodied defenseman (block, bang, end), and I adopted the Olympic workforce within the final three months of 1979 for the Albany Times-Union, the place I wound up after I left Cambridge. If you’ve been to Albany, it’s not a few of God’s finest work. But it was the one job provide I obtained in May 1979, and I knew the Winter Games have been solely 9 months and 140 miles away in Lake Placid.
By Christmas, I used to be in Placid for a pre-Olympic hockey event, the place I interviewed Herb Brooks for the primary and final time. I requested a pair questions. It, uh, didn’t go properly.
Me: “Is there anyone you wish was here?”
Brooks: “Like who?”
Me: “[Boston College goaltender] Paul Skidmore.”
Brooks: “I got my goalie. Next.”
Me: “What about [All-American and future Hockey Hall of Famer] Joe Mullen?”
Brooks: “Joey Mullen made a decision to take care of his f—ing family.” (Mullen’s father was sick and his household’s Hell’s Kitchen condominium had collapsed, forcing him to show professional and seize a $30,000 signing bonus from the Blues. Noted.)
Me: “You have to cut two more players.”
Brooks: “Right.”
Me: “How tough is that?”
Brooks: “Well, you’re talking to the guy who was the last player cut from the 1960 team, so you tell me …”
This. What you’re doing. Chasing after one thing that you simply didn’t get. That it’s possible you’ll by no means get.
Herb Brooks was reduce two weeks earlier than the opening ceremony in Squaw Valley, Calif. Coach Jack Riley added three gamers on the deadline. All have been silver medalists from the 1956 Games in Cortina: John Mayasich, previously of the University of Minnesota, and the Cleary brothers, Bill and Bob, two years out of Harvard. Post-Miracle, youthful brother Bob usually informed the story of pulling on his hockey pants earlier than the primary sport in 1960 and seeing BROOKS inked into the liner.
“Jack Riley was calling me all the time to come out and join,” recollects Billy Cleary, now 91 and sharper than you or I ever have been, and who would win an NCAA championship throughout his 20-year teaching profession at Harvard. “I said I can’t afford it. He brought in me, Bobby and John. It caused some problems. They had been playing in Denver against Denver University the night before, lost, and had another game there the following night. We showed up. No one said a word. I thought, Well, this is gonna be fun. We went out for warmups and the three of us didn’t get a puck. But we wound up tying Denver.”
The 1960 workforce upset the Soviets (after Khrushchev ordered them to “bury the U.S.”) and the Czechs within the gold-clinching finale. The Clearys and Mayasich mixed for 19 objectives in seven video games, all wins. Back house in Saint Paul, the 22-year-old Brooks watched the 9–4 win over the Czechs together with his father. “Well,” his dad stated, “looks like they cut the right guy. …” (Brooks wasn’t simply reduce from the workforce, he was retouched. In a post-Games picture of the 1960 squad distributed by USA Hockey, he’s within the again row, besides that his head had been lopped off and changed by Mayasich’s.)
The U.S. received the 1980 pre-Olympic tourney simply, dispatching JV groups from the Soviet Union and Sweden, and have been offered with gold medals that appeared extra like upgraded participation trophies. I used to be conscious of how precarious Hughes’s spot was, particularly after Brooks moved Dave Christian, a lock to make the workforce, again to protection. I assumed Jackie was extra versatile and a step quicker than the lumbering Bob Suter from Wisconsin. And I used to be assured Brooks wouldn’t be so uber-provincial that he’d carry 9 of his former gamers from the University of Minnesota, and solely 4 gamers from again East, all out of Boston University. But I used to be 22 and also you couldn’t inform me something. I’d seen Jackie Hughes dominate the ECAC for 3 seasons, and I’d seen him at an Eliot House occasion one evening, doing a beer-soaked model of “Mother’s Little Helper” with two different guys years earlier than karaoke was within the lexicon, or the equipment retailer.
Doctor, please, some extra of those
Outside the door, she took 4 extra
So, you inform me.
“You’re wrong about Suter,” says John Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter and writer of One Goal, the definitive and relentlessly vivid ebook concerning the 1980 workforce. “When Suter was healthy, he was a better skater than Jackie, more speed. Much better at puck movement, which was Herb’s whole Soviet-style game. Also, he was the kind of tough guy Herbie loved. Suter broke his ankle in late November and he thought he was done. That’s why he looked slow. But Herbie took him aside and said, ‘Take care of the ankle. You won’t lose any ground.’ Which he didn’t say to anyone. He wanted to keep them all on edge. The Wisconsin guys [Suter and leading scorer Mark Johnson] were always afraid they were gonna get cut because Herbie hated their coach [and Mark’s father], ‘Badger Bob’ Johnson. He hated the way his wife would show up at games in a red jumpsuit clanging a cowbell. Herb would say, ‘If Patti Brooks did that, I’d kick her ass all the way back to Shoreview.’ ”
What if it doesn’t work out, Herb, huh? Are we gonna do that each 4 years?
If Brooks had saved Hughes any extra on edge, he would have had to make use of his stick like a Felipe Petit balancing pole. Powers had been writing about Hughes since he was a one-man gang at Malden Catholic, 5 miles north of Boston. “Herbie really got into his head,” Powers remembers, “Jackie told me he’d lie in bed at night and hear Herbie muttering ‘Hughes … Hughes …’ every time he would lug the puck out rather than pass it. Another time, he took me aside and said, ‘You know me. You’ve seen me play. I can play.’ ”
I left Placid simply after Christmas, assured Jack Hughes and I might see one another in six weeks. But two issues occurred. At the top of January, I used to be informed I might not be going to the Olympics. It was a plum gig for the closest midsize metropolitan day by day, and the Times-Union determined to ship two different guys, each older, each not me, one I had an issue with. Which was all you wanted to learn about me then.
Not lengthy after—lower than two weeks earlier than the Games started—Jack Hughes was let go. Don’t imagine Miracle, which claims that Ralph Cox from the University of New Hampshire was the final participant reduce. No. Herb known as Jackie’s room, obtained no reply, then known as Cox’s condominium, which he shared with Mike Eruzione. Cox was not shocked. (As Brooks usually stated about him, “Ralph’s got one problem. He just scores goals.”) Herb then known as again and requested Eruzione, who answered, if he’d seen Jack.
“He’s right here.”
“Hand him the phone.”
Three days earlier than the Olympics, the U.S. was routed by the legit Soviet workforce, 10–3, at Madison Square Garden. During the sport, Jack O’Callahan, a gifted backliner with an infectious core, obtained his often cranky knee caved in by an inexpensive shot. At first, docs stated he would want surgical procedure and be out eight weeks. Herb was about to cellphone Hughes in Fort Worth, the place he was enjoying for the Colorado Rockies’ CHL workforce, and inform him to get on a airplane. The type of cellphone you wish to be handed. Instead, Brooks sought a second opinion, and was informed O’C would possibly miss three video games. There was no name to Fort Worth. O’Callahan solely missed the primary sport in opposition to Sweden, which the U.S. tied within the closing seconds after two and a half intervals of play that Powers’s ebook described as wanting “flatter than a 14th century globe.”
“Herbie wanted the uncommon man,” Powers says. “He loved O’Callahan, especially after he volunteered to be his whipping boy.” The deal had been made early within the Team USA’s barnstorming tour. “When I call you Jack,” Brooks tipped, “I’m yelling at you. When I call you O’C, I want them to see me yelling at you .”
Street-savvy and scary vibrant, O’Callahan had turned down a digital full trip at Harvard for the precise full one on Commonwealth Ave., which Brooks adored. “O’Callahan’s smarter than you are,” Brooks stated to Hughes at one level, “You were both admitted to Harvard, and he decided not to go.”
O’Callahan was additionally a townie’s townie. Another man I had coated for 4 years. I wished to interview him in Troy, N.Y, after the U.S. beat RPI in November, however was informed he had gone house early to get his cranky knee checked out. I waited until simply after 7 p.m. and known as the Dugout Cafe, the dive-iest of BU dive bars.
“Dugout.”
“Jack O’Callahan there?”
“Hang on.”
“Hello?”
“O’C, this is Billy Scheft. We’ve known each other a while.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m in Albany following your team, and I was told you’d gone home, so I figured I find you here.”
“Well, aren’t you a hot s—?”
Yes. Yes, I used to be. Just ask me. After I realized that I wouldn’t be returning to Lake Placid, I got down to: 1) drink bit extra; 2) flip myself into John the Hockey Baptist about how missed Team USA was; and three) attempt to not be smug and bitchy once I was confirmed appropriate. I went two for 3. I wrote two columns for the Times-Union. The first (u.s. hockey workforce not like ‘pick-up’ squads from the previous) ran two weeks earlier than the Games and opened with the lede “Americans like two things—underdogs and underdogs who live in the United States,” and concluded that something lower than a medal could be a disappointment. I additionally referred to frivolously regarded Finland, which the U.S. wound up having to defeat Sunday morning after the Miracle game for the gold, thusly: “Here’s your sleeper ….”
The second column (“… and we did it their way”) got here out two days after the Finland sport. The level I used to be determined to make was that the upset had nothing to do with America, that it was finally a tribute to the Soviets. We had co-opted their fashion of play, their dedication to conditioning and their perception that amateurs ought to play for pay. (The 1980 workforce was the primary to offer gamers a stipend, $7,200 for six months, twice what I used to be making on the Times-Union.) It was some extent that actually might have waited (see: smug, bitchy), however I obtained to squeeze within the phrase “jingo jangle of the morning,” so there was an urgency. Yes, I did get some mail, most of which contained ideas to the impact of “Maybe Comrade Scheft would be more comfortable covering sports in Minsk.”
I noticed the workforce once they reunited that summer time for a parade down Main Street in Lake Placid and the 4 gamers from BU have been now sporting Massachusetts vainness license plates with the Olympic rings and USA subsequent to their uniform numbers (Jim Craig: 30, Eruzione: 21, O’Callahan: 17, Dave Silk: 8).
There could be extra reunions within the ensuing 45 years. Ralph Cox and Jack Hughes have been all the time invited. Don’t learn about Cox, however Jack by no means confirmed. And actually, are you able to blame him? Jack Hughes moved on. For a few years, he and his brother George (one other proficient Harvard iceman, the older half of a pair, who, in mid-disco period, I had nicknamed the “Hughes Corporation”) have been in enterprise with O’Callahan: Beanpot Financial Services. Though initially primarily based in Chicago, the outfit was named for the long-lasting native school hockey event, the Beanpot, held on the Boston Garden each February.
So sure, the unique Jack Hughes moved on, which is greater than you possibly can say for me. Which dovetails again properly to the topic of uniform numbers.
During the final three years of my 24 writing for David Letterman, the boss and I got here up with a semi-regular section, “Uniform Numbers with Bill Scheft.” The format was what we used to name a “refillable.” Me in a pretend soundproof sales space. Announcer Alan Kalter asking me obscure uniform numbers for a ridiculous sum of money. Me nailing it. Alan then correcting me on a mistaken reply. Me correcting Alan. Alan asking nonexistent judges for affirmation. SFX: A bell. Alan decreasing the cash to nonsense and asking me to return again subsequent week.
It was, like quite a lot of issues, developed to tickle Dave, and it did that, together with me and virtually nobody else. We wound up doing 5. The third featured Alan asking me for the numbers of the final 4 gamers reduce from the 1980 workforce. Purposely, I didn’t give my solutions so as. I simply booth-barked, “Tim Harrer, No. 18; Jack Hughes, who shouldn’t have been cut, No. 12; Ralphie Cox, No. 14; and … Les Auge, No. 2.”
I thought of reaching out to Hughes, particularly after his identify was unwittingly resurrected, however come on. Not the cellphone you need handed to you. I did attempt to come up with the girl who had put us down this highway: Ellen Hughes. The former UNH hockey standout and Team USA participant—who served as a participant improvement marketing consultant for the 2026 U.S. Olympic girls’s workforce—had dubbed the second of her three NHL boys Jack. The roux of this karmic gumbo solely thickened once I realized that Ellen Hughes was actually Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, with whom I had labored on the 1998 ESPYs, the place she was a first-line member of the manufacturing workforce and I used to be including the wiseass to Norm Macdonald’s now legendary monologue. (A monologue that ended with a line I nonetheless want I might take credit score for: “Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson is here. Charles, that’s something nobody can ever take away from you, unless you kill your wife and a waiter.”)
Ellen and I by no means linked. But actually, what might she presumably have stated? “Yeah, I heard that …”
Cleary chuckles once I run the identify irony over him. “I hadn’t thought of it, in those terms.” he says. “Jackie was a great kid, but that has to happen when you’re putting a team together. I never talked to Jack after it happened. It was a fait accompli. You’re certainly not gonna second-guess a coach.”
One different factor. Herb Brooks had gotten the Olympic job solely after it had been turned down. By Billy Cleary. Harvard coach Billy Cleary. Jack Hughes’s coach Billy Cleary.
This. What you’re doing. Chasing after one thing that you simply didn’t get. That it’s possible you’ll by no means get.
Patricia Clarkson’s Disney dialogue compelled me to lift the unconscious. I prompt to Billy that possibly on some degree, having been changed on the 1960 workforce on the final minute by a Harvard man, a Cleary brother no much less, and getting the ’80 U.S. Olympic teaching job solely after the opposite Cleary brother had handed, Herb Brooks was, on some unprobed degree, attempting to avenge a mistaken.
“Absolutely not,” Billy says of Brooks, who died in 2003. “I was happy when Herbie got the job. I vouched for him. We were friendly. I knew him. I liked him. I coached against him. He was always a straightforward, principled guy.”
And then Billy Cleary sweep-checked that notion away with one story.
“Lake Placid was the only time I had gone back to the Olympics since 1960. I went to the arena before the game with Russia. I saw the players coming off after warmups. Hell, I knew half of them because I recruited them. I saw Herbie. I said, ‘I wish you well.’ That’s it. I start to walk out of the arena, and the trainer came after me and said, ‘Herbie wants you to speak to the players.’ I said, ‘Me?’
“People asked me, ‘What did I say?’ I told them, ‘I think I know what’s going through your mind. You’re up here in oblivion, in the middle of nowhere, and you think you’re isolated and no one is paying attention. But I’m telling you, you have captivated everyone. And there’s 20 guys rooting harder for you than anyone. And that’s the 20 guys from the Squaw Valley team.’ ”
All this manner, and no person’s sharing the set off. Flailing, I reached out to Ed Swift, this very journal’s Virgil for the epic poem that was Placid. “I actually didn’t put that together till later,” he wrote in an e mail from New Zealand. “I did love it that the winning goal was scored by the guy who lost his teeth, highlighting how friggin’ tough hockey players are compared to other sports. Absolutely nothing, nothing ever reminds me of or compares to 1980.”
O.Ok., O.Ok. … Don’t rub it in.
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