When coach Herb Brooks was molding his hockey team for the Olympics, a huge challenge he had was meshing the 9 players from the University of Minnesota and the four from Boston University. Back then, those two programs literally hated each other. In the 1976 NCAA semis the pucked dropped and then the gloves dropped and they fought for 30 minutes. The trainer for Minnesota hit a Boston U player. Their rivalry was just short of Hatfields and McCoys. At the start of training camp 7 months before Lake Placid, the players from Minnesota didnt like the streetwise ways and fancy dressing of the Boston guys. The Boston guys would snicker at how the Minnesota players would leave their doors unlocked and wallets out in open and how they only wore flannel shirts and jeans. We thought they were hicks from the cow pastures, said one Boston U player later. Yet 7 months later after they won the gold it tore them up emotionally to all separate. What Herb Brooks did to make them a team was to make himself their common enemy. By pushing them past the limit mentally and physically he would force them to forget their dislike of each other and develop total animosity towards him, as well as a common bond of well show him! When Herb put them through Herbies (skate to the blue line, back, center line, back, blue line, back, far wall and back) over and over, they would get back to the wall and a Boston guy would look at a Minnesota guy and say, Dont let this bastard beat us. When actor Kurt Russell was talking to Herb during filming of Miracle, he said that the Olympic year must have been a blast. Herb looked at him and said, It was the loneliest year of my life. He told the players Day One that he would not be their friend. He was their coach. As Wayne Coffey writes in the wonderful book The Boys of Winter, he didnt just put up a wall, he put up a moat with crocodiles. Over the course of several months, they became a team and much more. A few weeks before Lake Placid, he brought in two players to possibly join the team. Players from Boston and Minnesota went to him and said not to do it, because they had become a family. The players came to realize that Herb was simply trying to get the best out of him. At a team Christmas party where everyone got gag gifts, the present he opened was a big bullwhip. Everyone laughed, including him. To this day, every player will tell you that they could not have won gold without the way he pushed him. He made them tough enough to beat the big red Bear. But as far as out and out affection for him, several did name their dogs Herb after the Olympics....
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 20:03:54 +0000
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