I find my dad, Gary Smith, in the family room sitting in his favorite spot, a La-Z-Boy recliner nicknamed “the Cat Napper.” He is an avid indoorsman (it says so on a magnet on the refrigerator, a gift from my mom) and loves to sit here in his chair, commanding the room and the house like Captain Kirk on the bridge of the star- ship Enterprise. Everything he needs is within an authoritative arm’s reach: There is a bowl of cheddary snacks in his lap; his beloved Dan Patrick Show plays on the wall-mounted TV immediately before him; newspapers and magazines are scat- tered on the floor; and an arsenal of remotes and one cordless phone are strate- gically placed on a table near the arm of his chair. He is a man at rest in all his glory.
But look past his current sedentary life at the ring finger on his right hand and you’ll see a symbol of the greatest athletic achievement in the last one hundred years, if not ever. It’s a gold band with a bulbous top that’s studded with diamonds and represents months upon months of sweat and toil exerted by an American hockey team. More important, his ring represents a moment when the hockey- strong ethos was pushed to the outer limits of endurance and sanity.
My dad was the head athletic trainer of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” United States men’s hockey team, whose monumental upset of the mighty Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, was ranked as the greatest sports moment of the twentieth century by Sports Illustrated. He was entrenched for the entire year at the end of the bench and inside the locker room, inside the miracle it- self, on the road to gold-medal glory right there alongside cantankerous American coach Herb Brooks and the American players. The ring on his right hand was a gift from the U.S. Olympic Committee (only athletes are awarded Olympic medals). I’ve never seen him take the ring off, largely because its weight goes far beyond any standard measurement. The stories from that year and those miraculous moments are too strong and alive to ever let go.
Today, I’ve come to my parents’ house to hear the hockey stories that are embedded in his famous Olympic ring. The 1980 Olympic hockey miracle is indis- putably one of the greatest underdog sports stories of all time. It is a real-life ath- letic version of David versus Goliath, a group of fresh-faced college kids fighting tremendous odds and staring down the “Red Army,” the Soviet Union hockey team considered one of the greatest teams ever assembled. The “Miracle on Ice” also galvanized a nation at the height of the Cold War and helped ignite a passion for American hockey in generations of young players that continues to this day.
I grew up listening to my dad’s sports stories, and they became our conduit, the eternal bond of communication between us. The world of sports and the language it creates has always been our native language, a natural dialect that connects us like no other. And today is no different. I take my usual seat at the corner of a small couch to his immediate left. This is the exact spot where I first heard his stories, and the very place where this book originated. That is because it was while sitting here at my dad’s side that I first learned what it truly means to be hockey strong.
Since I was a child, my dad has regaled me with hockey stories. These stories were seasoned with just the right amount of foul language, and the dialogue crack- led with so much flavor that they are forever lodged deep in my memory. There were tales of the hockey fights and bench-clearing donnybrooks; of players getting hit so hard they swallowed their own tongues; of folk heroes disguised as hockey players with names like Snuggerud and Chorske and Pavelich and Homer and Brauts; and, of course, stories about all the injured players who gutted it out de- spite broken bones and even worse, all for the good of the team. More than any- thing, though, in his stories and anecdotes my dad passed down to me the ancient thread of playing in pain that extends from hockey’s humble beginnings to the modern day. From father to son, the hockey-strong ethos was fortified and made into a living thing.
My dad has made a career out of tending to this strength, this unwavering men- tal and physical stamina that hockey players possess. He has spent a lifetime wit- nessing world-class hockey at every stage of his career, a period that includes two NCAA ice hockey championships with the Herb Brooks–led University of Minne- sota Golden Gophers men’s hockey teams in the 1970s, as the head trainer for the Philadelphia Flyers and for the Minnesota Moose of the IHL in the late 1990s, and most recently as the head trainer for high school powerhouse Eden Prairie in sub- urban Minnesota, an elite hockey program that has produced numerous state ti- tles, several collegiate stars, and a few NHL players in the 2000s. He has spent his time putting hockey players back together so that they can continue playing, be- cause that’s what hockey players do.
Today my dad is also going to try to put one more hockey player, albeit a terrible one, back together. I have a severe case of plantar fasciitis, so my left foot is cur- rently in a cumbersome hard plastic walking boot, and my dad wants to give me some much-needed treatment. He’s ordered me to stop all activities such as jog- ging and soccer. But he has cleared me to continue playing hockey because of the supportive structure that my hockey skate provides.
“How we doing?” my dad says as I settle into the couch. He leans forward a few degrees in his recliner. He looks at my walking boot and asks, “How’s the blown tire?”
It’s been better.”
“For athletes, plantar fasciitis is known as the career killer. Good thing you’re not an athlete,” my dad quips.
He clicks in the leg rest of his recliner and sits upright. Then he gets up, strolls over, and unstraps my walking boot. With a raised eyebrow he says, “My son, the beer league all-star.”
I reach down and pull out my digital recorder. I’m mainly here for the hockey stories, the ones that have bonded us together for so many years. He knows it, too, because he grunts out a small smile. Despite the fact that he’s technically working on his day off, he loves this. He loves that even though I’m forty-three years old and he’s seventy-three and nearing retirement, we are still connected, still tethered together by the games we love and the stories they create. I look at his Olympic ring and then turn my eyes up toward him. There is just so much history in his ring, in his workingman’s hands, and in his life at the end of the bench.
“Tell me the story about Rob McClanahan, the one when he hurt his leg at the Olympics and Herb Brooks went nuts on him,” I say, pressing Record.
With my injured foot in his hand, my dad looks down and says, “That story’s a
whopper.”
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