Forty years later, the Boston boys from the Miracle on Ice reflect on how life would have changed without a gold medal (2024)

Gold medal or no gold medal, Mike Eruzione always planned on settling down in Winthrop. And why not? It’s a neat, neighborhoody little town, sitting out there in its own little oceanfront world across the harbor from Logan Airport, a place where it’s not uncommon for three generations of one family to be living on the same block.

“The only difference,” Eruzione likes to say, “is that I live in a bigger house than if we didn’twin the gold medal.”

But they did. Oh, they surely did. Eruzione famously captained the United States men’s hockey team that defeated Finland for the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid. That came after the American college boys had pulled off an upset for the ages with their 4-3 victory over the powerful Soviet Union, thus adding “Miracle on Ice” to our sports and pop culture lexicon. The 40th anniversary of that win will arrive on Feb. 22.

To borrow a phrase that would be deployed eight years later by the campaign of presidential contender Michael Dukakis, it was also a Massachusetts Miracle. Eruzione was joined on Team USA by fellow Bay State natives and Boston University products Jim Craig (Easton), Dave Silk (Scituate) and Jack O’Callahan (Charlestown). Of course, O’Callahan is ever quick to point out, “Only one of us is from Boston, and that’s me. The others are from the f*cking suburbs.”

But we needn’t trifle over technicalities: They are forever Boston’s Boys of Winter, the Hub’s Fab Four. It was Eruzione who scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period of the semifinal against the USSR, thus setting the stage for 10 anxious minutes of desperate flailing by the Soviets that culminated with Al Michaels posing the most memorable rhetorical question in the history of sports broadcasting.

Do you believe in miracles?

Turns out we did.

And then came Finland, and the gold, and a different life’s course for every member of Team USA.

“No member of our team would ever be the same because of the Olympics,” said Craig, who minded the nets for every second of every game at Lake Placid, after which he delivered that great Kodak moment, seemingly skating in a daze, an American flag draped over his shoulder, while looking to the stands and speaking the words, “Where’s my father?”

“I look back at Lake Placid,” Silk said, “and I realize we went through this portal from boys to men. That’s how much it changed us.”

By settling down in his hometown, Eruzione has never run short of old buddies who enjoy giving him the verbal equivalent of a two-minute elbowing minor, pointing out he’d be painting bridges had his third-period shot caught a piece of Soviet goalie Vladimir Myshkin’s pad. As Eruzione notes in his recently released autobiography, “The Making of a Miracle,” even his beloved high school football coach, a Winthrop living legend named Bob DeFelice, often gets in his grill just by speaking these five words: “Three inches to the left.”

It’s a topic Eruzione has often pondered, to the degree that he addresses it in the closing paragraph of his book.

“I consider how far life has taken me, yet how close to home I’ve remained,” he writes. “Then a new thought comes to my mind. I smile and whisper to myself, ‘Man, I’m glad that shot went in.’”

But what if it had notgone in? What if the Americans had lost? Indeed, what if the outcome had been along the lines of what had happened a couple of weeks earlier in New York, with the Soviets skating to a 10-3 victory in a pre-Olympic tuneup between the two teams at Madison Square Garden?

Forget for a moment the talent and commitment of that 1980 American squad. As Silk observed, “There have been lots of great players and great teams that nobody remembers because they didn’t win. The 1972 team that played in Sapporo was as good as any Olympic team anywhere. They won silver.”

Because of that — silver, not gold — life went on as normal for the members of that ’72 squad.

As for Jim Craig, and Mike Eruzione, and Jack O’Callahan, and Dave Silk, Boston’s Boys of Winter were asked to speculate on an alternate history that begins here: The 1980 team wins the silver, or the bronze, or maybe returns home with nothing around their necks other than their Olympic Village identification cards.

What happens then?

Jack O’Callahan would have held onto his Boston accent for the rest of his life

“I had a plan,” O’Callahan said. “I knew what I wanted to do, and in a way, the Olympics got in the way of that. And then life kind of got in the way of that, and that’s how you end up doing things you didn’t plan on doing.”

Explain, please.

“So, yeah, I had a pretty good plan,” he said. “I was interested in never leaving Boston, that’s No. 1. I was also interested in going to business school. I was interested in real estate, and real estate law, and real estate development. And doing it all in Boston, and looking forward to it. That was important.”

And then Lake Placid happened?

“Well, I had already signed a post-dated contract with the Chicago Blackhawks, so I was going to play whether we had won or lost,” he said. “But I was never really planning on playing pro hockey for a long time. I would have been really happy going to grad school and then wrapping it up, the hockey. I figured, worst-case scenario, I spend three years in the minors, maybe one year in the NHL, and I could use that money, and I can pay for graduate school and not get into debt.”

A defenseman, O’Callahan was not whisked directly to the NHL on the strength of Team USA’s gold medal victory at Lake Placid. He instead played two full seasons — ’80-81 and ’81-82 — with the AHL New Brunswick Hawks and then 35 games the next season with the Springfield Indians in the AHL. But he also landed in the NHL for 39 games with the Blackhawks, and that’s when things got interesting.

He would go on to play five seasons with the Blackhawks and two seasons with the New Jersey Devils, and it was during his time in Chicago he had a chance meeting one night with the late Walter Payton, the legendary Chicago Bears running back.

Payton was impressed that O’Callahan had been a member of Team USA in 1980.

“It was May of ’84,” O’Callahan said. “He asked me what I want to do with my life and I told him I’d like to get in the real estate business out here, I want to learn commercial real estate and I’m trying to get a freaking internship other than just banging on someone’s door because I don’t know anybody.

“I was trying to go through the Blackhawks because the Wirtz family has a pretty good presence in Chicago. And I couldn’t get them to help me. I was very frustrated.

“I told Walter that when I was drafted by the Blackhawks in ’77 I never thought I’d be in Chicago playing in the NHL. Zero chance. And then we started talking about trade commodities and how hard that is to get into. He said, ‘Really?’ And he said he knows some guys and would you mind if I made a phone call for you, and I said, no, not at all.

“So that was a Saturday night, and he took my number. And he called me the next day and said, ‘You have a meeting with this guy, he’s a board member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.’ And he said, ‘Call me back and let me know how it went.’ I mean, Walter Payton’s asking me to call him back. That’s like Tom Brady asking you to call him if you’re a kid in Boston.”

O’Callahan landed a job as a runner. Things began to click. He borrowed money here and there and bought a membership in the Chicago Merc, and, he said, “I never really came back to Boston.”

So here’s the question: Would Walter Payton have extended himself for this workingman Chicago Blackhawks defenseman if O’Callahan didn’t have the added distinction of having been a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team?

“I don’t know, I just don’t know,” he said. “The fact I ended up being a professional hockey player at all was an absolute surprise. I don’t know whether that was due to Lake Placid or because just playing for (1980 Olympic coach) Herb Brooks helped develop me so much.”

He eventually ran a company called Beanpot Financial Services with Jack Hughes, a former Harvard hockey player who had played on the 1980 Olympic team but was cut before Lake Placid. O’Callahan later moved on to Ziegler Capital Management.

“I have a pretty senior seat there, and I can do my business pretty much from anywhere,” he said. And he doesdo his business from pretty much anywhere: He relocated to Jacksonville, Fla., last August.

And the Boston accent? Long gone.

“If I still had my accent from growing up in Charlestown I would not be able to communicate with people in the Midwest,” he said. “When I moved out there, I swear to God, I understood I had to enunciate my words a little bit. And people would still look at me, like, ‘What the f*ck did you just say?’ And I’d say, ‘Look, I’m really trying hard here, just listen.’ And then I’d go back to Boston and my friends back home would say, ‘You’re starting to talk like you’re from Chicago.’ For a couple of years there, I was a man without a country.”

But now, he said, “There are times when maybe there’s a couple of beers or whatever, I’ll say a few words and someone will say, ‘Are you from Boston?’ So it’s still in there somewhere.”

Dave Silk would never have stood around watching Desmond Tutu, Lech Wałęsa and John Glenn drink bad coffee

Dave Silk — or as everyone calls him, “Silky” — considers himself the “lowest-profile” member of Boston’s Boys of Winter.

“And that’s fine,” Silk said. “I don’t mind that a bit.”

He wasn’t the captain of Team USA, he wasn’t the goaltender with the American flag draped over his shoulder. And though he enjoyed a seven-year career in the NHL — mostly with the Rangers, but also parts of two seasons with the Bruins — he’s been content working in management with Aberdeen Standard Investments.

“We were out playing golf one time on Long Island after the Olympics, and this would be blasé to Eruzione, but Bryant Gumbel was there and we met,” he said. “I saw him years later and he said, ‘Hey, Silky!’ and whoever I was with said, ‘Wait a minute, Bryant Gumbel called you Silky?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, he did.’”

While Silk agrees that of coursewinning the gold medal was a life-changing event, he chooses to discuss two distinct alternate histories — one in which Team USA doesn’t win the Gold, the other in which he never even makes the team.

“If I had not been a member of that team I would have missed out on playing for Herb Brooks,” Silk said. “That’s pretty vivid right now because my old hockey coach at Thayer Academy, Art Valicenti, just passed away and it dawned on me that I had this incredible benefit of playing for Art, who was an icon, and then for Jack Parker at BU, and then Herb Brooks. I played for three incredible coaches who were instrumental in developing me, and so I was really fortunate.”

What about an alternate history that has him playing on a Team USA that doesn’t return home with gold medals?

“There was definitely the splash in 1980 and everything that happened because of that,” he said. “I went to the Rangers for a couple of games because of that, but if we didn’t do well in Lake Placid there’s no doubt I would have stayed in minors that season. Or maybe if we lost a close game to the Russians the Rangers might have brought me right to New York out of sympathy.”

And then Silk started to talk about the Olympics — not the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid but the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

As part of the Opening Ceremonies for the 2002 Olympics, the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team was invited to take part in the torch-lighting ceremony, and that’s how Dave Silk found himself in the same room with Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Lech Wałęsa of Poland … and United States Sen. John Glenn, the iconic Mercury astronaut whose flight on Friendship 7 in 1962 was the Miracle on Ice of its time in that everyone knew where they were when it happened.

“We were all in this green room, and LeAnn Rimes is there, she’s going to be singing, and everyone is trying to get a look at her getting her hair done,” Silk said. “And then I look the other way and I see these world leaders, they’re sitting in a corner over by the coffee urn drinking sh*tty coffee out of Styrofoam cups. And I’m thinking, ‘There’s something wrong here.’

“So I wouldn’t have seen thatif we didn’t win the gold medal,” Silk said.

Silk kids. But, yes, he does see the bigger picture of 1980, how he was blessed to be a part of it, to make history by making America proud. It chills him still.

“But you do have to move on,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, I’m really grateful that I was part of this and fortunate to have been there.’ But I also had the next 50 or 60 years of my life to fill. And at some point, I was going to have to buckle down and figure out what I was going to do, and being on that team was a nice calling card.

“When you’re introduced to people, and Eruzione says this a lot, it’s one of the few times in history when people remember where they were when something good happened. So it’s a blessing. It’s a blessing for sure. I still wake up at night sometimes and with this nightmare that it didn’thappen.”

Rather than debut in the NHL six days after Lake Placid, Jim Craig would have returned to Easton to chill for a while

The Flames selected Craig in the fourth round of the 1977 NHL Draft, the eighth goaltender chosen. The first goaltender selected was Dave Parro — in the second round by Craig’s hometown Bruins. Whatever plans the Flames had for Craig, they wouldn’t have included rushing him to Atlanta so soon after Team USA’s victory over Finland.

“I don’t even think I would have played any hockey for the rest of that year,” Craig said. “I would have gone home. I only went to BU for three years, so I would have gone back to school. I think we would have waited for training camp (for the next season).

“We had played a lot of hockey. And back then goalies didn’t play every night like they do today.”

Of the 66 games played by Team USA — a 61-game pre-Olympics schedule and five games at Lake Placid — Craig played in 48. All this after logging a full season for BU in ’78-79.

“You go right from playing at BU, right to the world championships, right to the Olympic tryouts, right to a 61-game schedule, play the Olympic Games and turn pro,” Craig said. “I don’t think any of us would have gone to a minor-league team — or any place — right after that.”

But Lake Placid changed everything, with the Flames rushing Craig directly to the Omni for their March 1 game against the Colorado Rockies. The Olympic hero stopped 24 of 25 shots in Atlanta’s 4-1 victory; the one goal scored against him was netted in the second period by Rockies center Jack Valiquette, with an assist going to future Hall of Famer Lanny McDonald.

“Within a week I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated,” Craig said. “And then I join the Flames, not knowing anybody on the team. I didn’t even know what end to skate out to.”

Craig always intended to play professional hockey, regardless of what happened at Lake Placid. “But it was hyper-accelerated,” he said. “I think the perfect plan would have been to enjoy the Olympics, take some time off, and maybe go home to finish what you started, which was a degree at BU and try to get ready for a career as a professional hockey player.”

Craig wound up playing just four games for the Flames, and his only win was his NHL debut against Colorado. He was traded to the Bruins in June for Boston’s third-round draft pick, which turned out to be goaltender Mike Vernon, who would go on to play 20 seasons in the NHL, 13 of them with the relocated Calgary Flames. Dave Parro, selected ahead of Craig in the ’77 draft, never did play for the B’s but logged parts of four seasons with the Washington Capitals.

Craig played in just 23 games for the ’80-81 Bruins. Later signed as a free agent by the Minnesota North Stars, he appeared in three games during the ’83-84 season.

Now 62 and based in Florida, Craig runs the appropriately named Gold Medal Strategies. Its website notes that Craig “guides, motivates, and inspires your employees and associates through a 45-minute to one-hour speech that is customized to your organization’s needs and objectives.”

If there had been no gold for Team USA in 1980, there naturally would never have been a Gold Medal Strategies. Not run by Jim Craig, anyway.

Instead of being happily married with three kids, Mike Eruzione would be happily married with five kids

Upon returning to Winthrop, and with no gold medal to show his many friends and relatives from the old neighborhood, Eruzione would have needed to find a job.

He was already 25 and had played four seasons at BU followed by a couple of seasons with the Toledo Goaldiggers of the International Hockey League before auditioning for Team USA. He could have kept plugging away — “There’s never a doubt in my mind I could have played, and I think I could have been a Steve Kasper-type player, that third-, fourth-line line guy, a good penalty killer, but not playing as long as he did,” he said — but Lake Placid or no Lake Placid, he likely was going to get on the phone and place calls to three people: BU coach Jack Parker and Winthrop coaching legends Bob DeFelice and Tony Fucillo.

“First, I would have sat down with Jack to see if there was an opportunity to coach here at BU,” he said. “Next I would have talked to Bob DeFelice about being a phys ed teacher in Winthrop, ask him what do I do, what does it entail, are there any spots, any positions open anywhere. I had a great relationship with ‘Deefer.’ He was a mentor for me when I was in high school and we played baseball together in the Intercity League. ‘Deefer’ was actually in Lake Placid for the Olympics. Bobby’s been a very close friend of the family for years.

“And then I would have called Tony Fucillo. He’s my cousin, but he’s like my brother. We lived in the same house. He later replaced ‘Deefer’ as head football coach at Winthrop, and he’s now an assistant coach at Tufts University.

“I would have been saying to those three guys, ‘Give me some advice, give me an opinion.’ Jack might have said, ‘Hey, I have a spot for you.’ So maybe I would have been an assistant to Jack for 30 years and then become a head coach at some point.”

Leaving Winthrop was never an option.

“I bought a house two doors from the house that I grew up in,” he said. “My mother-in-law lives around the corner, my cousin Tony lives next door. My brother lives down the street. I’d be a member of the Winthrop Golf Club and hanging out with the same guys. Maybe I wouldn’t go out to eat as often, because I wouldn’t have the income that I have now.”

Ahh, yes, the income. The money has been rolling in since the moment they placed that gold medal over Eruzione’s neck at Lake Placid, beginning with an offer to make some appearances for IBM.

“They called and offered me 10 appearances, five at the Fontainebleau in Miami and five in San Francisco,” Eruzione said. “They said, ‘We just want you to come out and say a few words and we’ll pay you $3,000.’ I said, ‘Per appearance?’ They said yeah. So that was $30,000 right off the bat. My dad never made $30,000 in a year in his life. So I went, ‘Jesus, this is pretty good money, $30,000, five minutes here, five minutes there, everything paid for.’”

Stories such as these go hand in hand with his long-held belief that he and his wife, Donna, his sweetheart since high school, would have had more kids if there had not been a Miracle on Ice.

The former Donna Alioto grew up around the corner from Eruzione, who has fond memories of seeing her and her sister kicking back on lounge chairs, taking in the sun, when he’d walk by the house. That was the beginning of a relationship that continues to this day.

Mike and Donna Eruzione have three kids.

“Take away Lake Placid,” Eruzione said, “and we’d have five kids.”

The reason: He wouldn’t have been traveling so much.

“I tell my wife that all the time,” he said. “She’s one of 13. I don’t think we would have had 13, but for the first five or so years after the Olympics I sure as heck would have been home a lot more than on the road.

“So, yeah,” he said, winking, “we would have more kids.”

When he’s not off somewhere making personal appearances — this past Sunday he was in Jupiter, Fla., and then was headed for a pair of gigs in Bonita Springs — Eruzione’s day job is director of special outreach at Boston University. It’s a fancy title with a fancy office overlooking the Charles River — “It’s a great place to watch the Regatta,” he said — and he has a fancy desk on top of which you’ll find so many Sharpies you’d think he was doing promotional work for the company that makes them. For all we know, he does.

Eruzione needs those Sharpies because there is always a photo, or a puck, or a shirt, to be signed.

“I played golf with President Trump last year,” he said. “That wouldn’t have happened. The golf, the celebrities I’ve met, the people that I hang around with, the restaurants I go to … if you break down all the things that I’ve done in my life, it’s pretty amazing. And if we didn’t win, none of these things would have happened. Maybe I would have returned to BU, maybe I would stayed here, but I wouldn’t have this office.”

And he wouldn’t have that pile of Sharpies on his desk.

(Top photo of Craig after beating the USSR: Focus on Sport / Getty Images)