Here is my Miracle on Ice story (glad for the chance to tell it): I was a Michigan State graduate student at a research conference in Green Bay, Wisc. About 15 of us gathered in my hotel room and we listened to the game, plus were drinking everything we had from the beginning of the game. After we won, I ran down to the restaurant and found our professors who had planned a research meeting that night. I burst in on their dinner and say "you have to cancel the meeting because the US just beat Russia in Olympic hockey and they are going to show the game at the same time." Fortunately, rather than canning me, they canceled the meeting and we got to watch it!

But the unfortunate thing about the game is that the only VCR-DVD version of the game I have ever seen is incomplete -- it includes only the ABC portions of the game which not only was tape-delayed but edited. As far as I know there is no complete (60-minute playing time) version of that game. It would be incredible if the game was available from whatever Canadian station might have had the good grace to show the whole game in a VCR or DVD form. Has anyone seen a full version of the game.

As for the Big Chill -- 113,000 or 104,000 is not really the point. There were OVER 100,000 fans there (plus a couple thousand more). Over one hundred thousand people! Few of us writing on Hockey-L live in towns that big. If only Michigan State had put up a fight.

Nathan Hampton
________________________________________
From: - Hockey-L - The College Hockey Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joe Makowiec [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, January 15, 2011 3:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Miracle on Ice (was: Small glitch)

At 1-15-2011 03:35 PM, Pamela Sweeney wrote:
>If we use THAT criterion, it'd probably end up as the second most
>attended hockey game, behind the 1980 Miracle on Ice game, which I
>believe approximately 250,000 people now claim to have attended...

I was sitting with friends in Troy, NY, about 130 miles away.  We
listened to the game on the radio in the afternoon.  We then flipped
on the TV and had fun with Jim McKay as he sat in the anchor
booth.  He kept a straight face while he promo-ed that evening's
USA/USSR hockey game.  You could see the streets of Lake Placid
behind Jim, and in the background people were jumping up and down,
waving flags and shouting "We won!  We won!".

Meantime my brother, a Saint Lawrence student at the time, was in a
lumberjack bar somewhere in the Adirondacks where they got Canadian
TV.  The Canadians had the good grace to show the game live, so he,
too, knew the results before McKay did.

Joe
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