Was Herb Brooks a Hero?

Although the book provides an in depth analysis of all the players and assistants of the 1980 U.S. hockey team, Herb Brooks was the main subject of the book. He was a sturdy man, a former hockey player, with medium-long, matted brown hair. Prior to taking the job as the Olympic coach, he led the Minnesota Gophers to an NCAA championship. He led a happy life with his two kids and wife Patty, whom he met while being treated with a broken wrist at a local hospital. However, many speculate that the reason he wanted to coach in the Olympics was because he never made it as a player. Herb Brooks was the twenty-first man on a twenty-man team, cut less than one week before watching his former team take home the gold against the Soviets. While he never outwardly stated that his goal was to medal in the 1980 Olympics, he wanted a gold medal badly, and would push and push to get it.

While fixated on winning the gold medal, Herb Brooks's main goal was to beat the Soviets. Since the 1960 Olympics that he himself missed playing in, the United Stated had failed to beat the Soviet Union's primer hockey team. In fact, after 1960, the Soviets became the most feared team with a hockey stick. The Soviets used a weaving system, constantly in motion, opening up options. They were also highly athletic, probably the fastest ice hockey team around. They were proactive, forcing a team to either react quickly or lose. The United States, along with the rest of North America, played a reactive game, dumping the puck and chase after it, reacting to what the other teams did.

Herb Brooks believed that the only way to beat the Soviets was to learn a completely new kind of game: a hybrid of the North American and Soviet styles of play. The up-tempo game that the Soviets played along with the dump and chase of the North Americans would lead the U.S. to victory, so Herb Brooks thought. However, no one else did, and USA Hockey, the official amateur hockey governing body in the United States, did not want to change the style of play that the players had grown up learning. However, after getting USA Hockey to agree to the play change, he had to deal with players who were used to an old style of play. He had to develop different coaching strategies to work the team. He practically invented suicides and had the team do hundreds in order to be properly conditioned. To build camaraderie Herb Brooks united the team against him, offering Assistant Coach Patrick, or the team doctor “Doc” up for people to talk with. The job of these two men was to keep the team together, after Herb Brooks tore them apart.

The success of Herb Brooks depended greatly on three of his friends. Assistant Coach Craig Patrick, Physician Dr. George Nagobads, and Goaltending Coach Warren Strelow were all instrumental in the team's success. Craig Patrick, along with Dr. George Nagobads, counseled the team, and gave insight to Herb Brooks. Warren Strelow made Jim Craig the goalie he was, and convinced Herb Brooks to start Jim Craig, and to keep him in a game against West Germany. These proved to be game saving decisions that Herb Brooks could not have made without Warren Strelow.

These three people game into play big time in especially at the summer tryouts and the practices in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. At the summer tryouts, they stood by Herb Brooks when he made to decision to make the final roster after one day of tryouts. During the practices they helped Herb push the team as far as they would go, and then some, training them to be fast and proactive. The Olympic Games were especially trying, when Herb Brooks decided, with the help of Warren Strelow, to keep Jim Craig in Net, which led USA to its first hockey gold medal in twenty years. However, it was not all easy, Herb Brooks, had to over come many hardships to win the gold medal.

Herb Brooks had to face building a hockey team from the ground up, teaching them a new hockey system, and making them the most conditioned team in the Olympics. He also had to beat the Soviet Union to prove to his detractors that he deserved his job and he was not crazy. If he had taken over a team that had played together for a decade, as the Soviets had, it would have been very easy. However, he had to unite a team of enemies, players from Boston College and Minnisota-Deluth to from a well-oiled hockey machine. They also had to play with the fluidity that the Soviets did. For the United States, it was not enough to be at the same level as the Soviets, they needed to win. With the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan and all, this is not just the Soviet Union versus the United States, it is Capitalism versus Communism. Washington vs. Stalin. Freedom vs. Oppression. A win for the United States could seemingly end the Cold War, and although this had no chance of happening, that is what the American public believed.