The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team

by Wayne Coffey

  Some guys have trouble with life after the limelight. Broten liked it. Simplicity is best, and fame sometimes isn’t simple. He came out of retirement briefly in 1998–1999 to help the United States qualify for the world championships (playing with his brothers for the first time on a national team, he had six points in three games), but that was just being a hockey patriot. He doesn’t watch hockey on TV, doesn’t read about it in the paper, and skates about a half-dozen times a year, usually in charity games. The only hockey keepsake on display in the house is the replica of his No. 7 jersey the Stars gave him.

  “We’ve done our time in hockey,” he said. “Now our life is horses.”

  Pro hockey is ruled by the clock, the schedule tight and unforgiving, over games, practices, travel. Broten relishes that his time is his own again, the ice sheet of his life awaiting his next move. Soon he would be out in the barn, moving 180 bales of hay to make room for a new shipment. A horse sale was coming up in a few weeks, and he and Sally would be off to that. “Neal’s someone who will go whichever way the wind blows,” Aaron Broten said. “He’s a happy-to-be-alive person. He pretty much doesn’t know what’s going to happen next week or next month or the next hour, and that’s how he likes it.”

  When Neal was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, he asked his father to introduce him. Newell Broten is not much keener on speeches than his son. He got some mild sedatives from his local pharmacist and got through it fine, except for the choking up at the end when he called Neal “the greatest son a father could ever hope to have.”

  “It’s not like you’re up there talking about duck-hunting,” Newell Broten said. “You’re talking about your kid, and that kind of gets to you.”

  ____

  A stiff backcheck by Zhluktov spoiled Christoff’s prime opportunity via Broten, but he had another chance, O’Callahan steering a superb cross-ice pass from the point. On the left side of the goal now, Christoff wristed a shot but Alexei Kasatonov picked it right off his stick. Five minutes remained and it seemed as though it had been a fortnight since anyone had scored. The Russians were charging again. Morrow and Ramsey doubled up to thwart a streaking Kharlamov as he swept down the left side, and then Craig turned away Vasiliev’s slap shot and kicked away Petrov’s attempt to stuff the rebound. Time was starting to get short. Craig had been brilliant and the United States had done a solid job containing the Russians, but you wondered if the Americans didn’t need to commit more to the attack, put the wheels in fast-forward, and not worry so much about having sufficient numbers back to fend off the next Russian wave. It was time to see if the legs really do feed the wolf.

  With under four minutes remaining, Ramsey started out of his own end and nudged the puck ahead to Strobel. On the right side, long blond hair poking out from beneath his blue helmet, Strobel started to fire up, cruising past Lebedev, the crowd sensing something good might be unfolding. Strobel had been a football standout in high school in Rochester, Minnesota, but he always seemed to do better in open space than in high-contact zones. Brooks had known Strobel for most of the kid’s life. Art Strobel, Eric’s father and a one-time New York Ranger, used to play with Brooks on the Rochester Mustangs, a semipro team. Brooks recruited Eric for the U, and more than a few people shared the coach’s opinion that Strobel was the best pure skater in the country. He had the biggest thighs this side of Eric Heiden, and jet fuel in his skates, a fluid, straight-up style that came with the ability to lean into turns and stay at full speed, making defenders look as if they were skating with ankle weights. “He was so smooth, so fast, so good,” said Don Micheletti, his roommate for two years at the U. “He had the most talent of any player I ever played with.”

  Strobel’s nickname was Electric at the U, but his demeanor was definitely unplugged, laid-back, the current coursing at its own rate. He was unfailingly pleasant and utterly unflappable; his amiable detachment left you wondering at times what was going on within. Brooks knew that Strobel had precisely the sort of high-torque game he needed to attack the Soviets; the only question was whether all the torque would be there and would be revving in the right direction. From the time he was in peewees, Strobel could take over games seemingly at will. His coach, Don Lecy, once asked him before the third period of a big game if he could get a couple of goals; Strobel got him the goals. In the 1979 NCAA semifinals, Strobel wrecked New Hampshire all by himself, scoring a hat trick, leaving coach Charlie Holt to say, “If we could’ve stopped him, we had a chance.” On each goal, Strobel streaked across the blue line, faked to the inside, swept wide, and went in on the defenseless goaltender. The next night, in the final against North Dakota, the Gophers won without much contribution at all from Strobel, and that always seemed to be the rub with him. You knew he could do it, but would he? His inconsistency drove Brooks crazy, but it wasn’t about laziness or willful indifference. Strobel just didn’t burn with the white-hot intensity that so many of his teammates did. His was an artful, almost whimsical game, a palette full of speed and skill, but the finished canvas varied. “You never knew if he was going to get back on defense, or be doing pirouettes in the neutral zone,” trainer Gary Smith said.

  Strobel had missed a breakaway in the opening minutes of the first game against Sweden, backhanding a shot high and wide. He’d started the Olympics on the first line with Johnson and McClanahan—as fast a skating line as the United States has ever put on Olympic ice. But Brooks wound up switching things up, putting Dave Silk on the first line, and putting Strobel with Mark Wells and Phil Verchota on the fourth. Strobel never seemed to be on his game offensively in the Olympics, putting most of his energy into stopping goals rather than scoring them. It was okay, the same way it was okay when Brooks moved him from center to right wing and back again when he was at Minnesota. “Some days are better than others,” Strobel said. “If you get on a roll, you get on a roll. Hockey is a funny game. Things bounce funny all the time. I think everybody fit into a role during the Olympics. Going into it, I had a lot of chances early. Things didn’t seem to be clicking for me offensively. I kind of fit into the role of protecting. That’s where I saw myself in those games. Make sure when they are out there you’re not going to get scored on. That’s where I thought I could be most effective.”

  It’s hard to get Strobel worked up. It’s one of the reasons the parents whose kids he coaches in peewees in Apple Valley, Minnesota, appreciate him so much. When the 1980 team was inducted in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in October 2003, Strobel’s team took out an ad to congratulate him in Let’s Play Hockey, the bible of Minnesota hockey. In a world populated by coaches who are over-the-top intense, Strobel keeps it low-key and fun. “Last year we only lost two or three games all year and this year we’ve only won a couple of games,” said Lynn Freeman, one of the team parents. “He’s exactly the same coach this year as he was last year. I have never seen him riled up.”

  Like Bah Harrington, Strobel was drafted by the Sabres and started his pro career with the Rochester Americans. One of his teammates was Dave Schultz, the notorious Broad Street Bully for the Philadelphia Flyer teams of the 1970s. Strobel joked to Schultz that he should teach him how to fight. “You’re not here to fight. You’re here to make plays and score goals,” Schultz said. Strobel’s plan was to do his goal scoring in Germany the following season, thinking that the bigger rinks and more open European style would suit him better than the more physical NHL. Then, in an Americans’ playoff game, he went into a corner to get a puck, got rammed from behind, and broke a bone in his leg. It was the last competitive hockey game Eric Strobel ever played. He reported this with neither regret nor wistfulness as he sat on a sectional sofa in his spotless and comfortable contemporary colonial. Located in an upscale subdivision south of St. Paul, the house is done in whites and earth tones, with big windows, soothing in a monochromatic way, like Eric Strobel himself.

  He went back to the U and got his degree, met his wife, Kim, at his favorite Minneapolis bar, Sergeant Preston’s. He became a pa
rtner in a computer and telecommunications firm, and he and his sister took over the family office-acoustics business. He and Kim had two daughters ten months apart, Strobel sliding into career and fatherhood as effortlessly as he used to wheel up the ice. He’s invariably accommodating if people approach him for an autograph or a conversation about 1980, but he has never had any desire to seize the spotlight or relive the glory. “We came home, people slapped us on the back and said, ‘Way to go,’ and they had parades for us. And that was it. That’s the way we are in the Midwest. Obviously people were proud, but they didn’t go overboard, and that was fine. It was a great moment, but where is it going to get you? You just get on with your life.”

  ____

  Strobel deftly avoided a hip check and headed toward the blue line, but his open ice closed quickly, and so did his options. He got jammed up by the defense and he and his left wing, Phil Verchota, almost collided. Strobel somehow slid the puck cross ice to Wells, who wound up tying up Pervukhin and forcing a face-off. Strobel, Verchota, and Mark Wells skated off, replaced by Broten, Christoff, and Eruzione.

  Christoff’s first contribution was a defensive one, bodying Krutov off the puck as he bolted through the U.S. zone. The ubiquitous Krutov regained control and whipped a pass out to Kasatonov, who wound and fired, a low, hard drive that Craig stopped and smothered. Krutov charged toward the goal and again tried to scavenge the puck loose, and this time it was Morrow who was the policeman, cross-checking him from behind. The force of the shot sent Krutov barreling into Craig, his helmet crashing into Craig’s mask, the goaltender falling backwards to the ice. As tempers flared and scrums were breaking out all around the goal, Jim Craig lay prone in the crease. He covered his mask with his blocker. It may have been the scariest moment of the Olympics for the Americans, the star goalie on his back, the crowd booing, the anxiety palpable. In front, Morrow, Christoff, and Eruzione bumped with Krutov. Behind the net, Ramsey was entangled with Lebedev. At the end of the bench, Steve Janaszak, who hadn’t played since the Madison Square Garden game thirteen days before, wrestled with the possibility that it might be his time.

  Apprehension mounted as Craig remained down. Slowly, he shook his head and pulled himself up to a seated position. He flipped the puck from his glove to Kaisla and clambered to his feet. The crowd cheered, thinking the Americans were getting a power play, but Kaisla sent off both Morrow and Lebedev. Craig dropped to his knees and rechecked his pads, then stood up and rapped his stick against his leg. Baker and Johnson skated by to make sure he was okay, tapped his pad with their sticks. On the bench, Janaszak stopped wrestling.

  Steve Janaszak had his routine while his teammates slept, and he kept to it. He and Craig Patrick would get up early and go to the rink, and Janaszak would strap on his gear and get in the net, and Patrick would shoot pucks at him in an empty arena. Janaszak was a two-time national champion with the University of Minnesota Gophers. He was the most valuable player of the 1979 NCAA finals, eleven months before Lake Placid. Those solitary sessions with Patrick were the only ice time he would get in the Olympics.

  There were 12 hockey teams at the Olympics, 20 players per team, 240 players in all. Steve Janaszak was the only one of them who did not play. The closest he got to action was when Craig got dinged by a Mike Eruzione shot in warm-ups before the West Germany game—and then allowed two soft goals in the first period. Janaszak had the hardest and most thankless role on the team, having gone from standout goalie to spare part, All-American to skate sharpener. Brooks had forewarned him that this could happen, and Janaszak appreciated the heads-up. He stayed ready and positive, the epitome of a team player, putting aside his own agenda for the larger good. One of the first things Jim Craig did in the final press conference was to publicly thank Janaszak and acknowledge his contributions to the team. Then the two Olympic goaltenders, the Olympic poster boy and the answer to a trivia question, embraced.

  “In his own way, Janaszak was as important as Craig, because of the way he handled not playing,” Lou Vairo said. “The way he supported him and the team and the coach’s decision was something special. Imagine if he was a whining, miserable creature in that position? He was perfect.”

  “I had the best seat in the arena and in the locker room for the greatest sporting event of the twentieth century,” Janaszak said.

  Larry and Betty Janaszak, Steve’s parents, had a harder time dealing with his role than their son. It hurt them to see the big computer printout all the Olympians got of the results in every sport, and to note that their son was the only athlete in the Games who never got to compete. They both sent angry telegrams to Brooks after the Olympics, the coach getting them before the team went to see President Carter in the White House. Larry Janaszak had played hockey a few years before Brooks at St. Paul’s Johnson High School. They shared the same hockey roots, the same east side background. It was hard to understand why his boy, who had done so much for Herb Brooks, couldn’t get him in for so much as a period in a five-goal rout of the Romanians. Was that too much to ask? Betty didn’t think Larry’s words were strong enough, so she sent her own telegram. She is a devout Christian woman; the Janaszaks stayed in a lakeside Bible camp during their one week in Lake Placid. She now is sorry for what she did.

  “Herb Brooks made Steve a better person,” Betty Janaszak said. “He made him stronger, and gave him what he needed to bear up under the whole thing.”

  Said Steve Janaszak, “The guy had a bigger influence on my life than anybody outside of my parents. It wasn’t easy playing for him, because he pushed you beyond what you knew to be your limits. But it was the same thing that made him a great coach. He taught you a lot about yourself, and what it takes to succeed.

  “As a competitor it was very difficult for me to play the role of a backup. I’m basically not wired for that. I would like to believe that I provided a good, challenging incentive to Jimmy to perform, but the fact is that this is something which is impossible to measure, and it would be foolish to claim any impact for this. Jimmy was the best amateur goaltender in the world at the time, and the results proved it. And the results are all that matter.”

  Janaszak came out of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, north of St. Paul, the son of an electrician. He started playing hockey at age five, a fifth-line center on a team that carried three lines. “I spent a lot of time sitting on a snowbank with a frozen butt,” Janaszak said. The goalie on the team was a kid named Pee Wee Peliquin, who liked to blow bubbles with his gum, the trouble being that they would stick to the inside of the mask and then freeze. One day Pee Wee got fed up with the bubbles and the stickiness and bolted from the goal, never to return. Steve volunteered and never played fifth-line center again. His father would come home from a long day of wiring and take Steve out to the rink at the local junior high school, where they would play by the headlights of Larry’s old Rambler. Steve would skate and skate until it was time to go, and then they’d drive home together, cold and tired and happy. In a lifetime of playing hockey it may be Steve Janaszak’s sweetest memory.

  Janaszak came to the U from Hill-Murray, a private school in St. Paul, an athlete who wasn’t big—five feet eight inches and 160 pounds—but versatile enough to letter not only in hockey but in football, golf, and soccer as well. He was bright and funny and self-deprecating, a math major with a Fu Manchu mustache and a steady-going disposition. He spent summers doing electrical work with his dad and fishing from the dock by a boatyard called Johnson Boat Works, and he spent his winters between the pipes. In three seasons following the Olympics, Janaszak appeared in three NHL games, one with the North Stars and two with the Colorado Rockies. He floated around the minors, to Fort Wayne, Fort Worth, Wichita. In Texas he worked as an electrician on the side. On the first night of his pro career, his Baltimore Skipjacks of the Eastern Hockey League provided an unforgettable initiation: Nickel Beer Night. The Zamboni broke down twice, and there was a full-scale brawl after the winning goal was scored. “I stepped onto the ice and got a bucket of be
er dumped on my head,” Janaszak said. “And all I could think was, ‘A week ago I was with the president.’ ”

  More than most, Janaszak would learn that life can defy all expectation. A short walk from the team’s trailers in the Olympic Village was an entertainment complex with a small theater. One day a bunch of U.S. players came in to watch a movie, rearranged the furniture, and got a stern talking-to from an interpreter who was working in the complex. Several days later, Janaszak went down to Main Street and purchased a ceramic heart for Valentine’s Day, when the United States beat the Czechs and the backup goaltender was beginning to become very interested in this interpreter. He gave her the heart. Her name was Jackie Minichello, and she would become Mrs. Steve Janaszak. After the Russia game, he and Jackie and her family went out to eat in a little place on the outskirts of town. It was the first time he met his future in-laws.

  During his hockey journeys, Janaszak met a top executive with an investment firm and wound up getting into the world of finance. He is a bond trader who lives in the village of Babylon, on the south shore of Long Island, a short walk to Great South Bay, a world apart from White Bear Lake. He is a contented husband and father of two daughters. When he thinks of Lake Placid, his memories go far beyond the spectacle of the game against Russia or the joy of scrambling onto the podium and having a medal put around his neck and hearing the national anthem. “I met a person who became my wife, my best friend, and who was able to turn a conceited young jerk hockey player into a productive husband and father,” Steve Janaszak said. “In the vocabulary of my current business, the whole thing is a trade I would do again in a heartbeat.”

  From his spot on the bench, Janaszak watched the teams skating four-on-four with just under three minutes to play in the period. Brooks wanted the best-skating foursome he could come up with at such a critical time—players who could cover all the open space and not let the Soviets set up one of their passing clinics. Mark Johnson was set to take the face-off, joined by McClanahan, Christian, and Baker. The Soviets went with Petrov, Mikhailov, Vasiliev, and Starikov. To the left of Craig, Johnson and Petrov faced off, and the draw was a draw. Baker rammed Petrov into the sideboards and rode him down, Petrov bounding up angrily but thinking better of exacting revenge. Johnson started out of his zone but he was pickpocketed by Mikhailov and, moments later, pickpocketed the puck right back, off the stick of Vasiliev. Johnson started up ice and pushed the puck ahead to a streaking McClanahan on his left, a two-on-one taking shape, the crowd letting out an expectant roar. But Starikov played McClanahan superbly and Vasiliev raced back to hound Johnson, and the Soviets escaped without so much as a shot on goal being taken.