A Very Swear-y Summary of the Greatest Hockey Movie Ever Made: Miracle (2004)
In honor of the 2026 edition of The Games
Our protagonist is college hockey coach Herb Brooks, the world’s grumpiest Minnesotan. When we meet him, he is preparing to interview for Team USA’s head coach vacancy. He is drawing a diagram of the world’s simplest hockey play and studying it with a very furrowed brow, so you know he’s a serious person.
His pitch for the job is quite simple. He tells his prospective bosses that they should hire him and then shut the fuck up and go away. This makes the people interviewing him think he’ll be difficult to work with, but they give him the job anyway because no one in their right mind would want it.
Coaching the American Olympic Hockey Team, you see, is not exactly an attractive position in 1980. The Olympics required teams to be composed of amateur players, not paid professionals. This meant that whoever coached the team was almost certain to embarrass the nation by losing to the evil, awful, no-good Soviet Union, which had the best Olympic hockey team the world had ever seen. This was for two reasons. First, the Canadians thought amateurism was fucking stupid, so they swore off the Olympics. Second, the Soviet players were amateurs on paper only. Yes, they were technically officers in the Red Army, but in practice, the only shooting they did was with a hockey stick.
The Americans, meanwhile, were not smart enough to use this loophole, dipshit capitalist pigs that we are. So instead of drafting hockey players into the 101st Power Play Division, the US hires a bunch of college kids from Minnesota and Massachusetts, the states with the second and third funniest accents in the English language.
After Brooks assembles his team of the goofiest sounding frat bros this side of Alpha Beta Kappa, a problem becomes apparent: everyone is from rival universities and hates one another with the intensity of an autist studying his special interest while on ritalin. But Coach Herb has a plan to solve for this. He is going to be such a massive asshole that they hate him more than they hate each other.
This backfires. They just end up hating him and each other. Their hockey play is the gutter. They suck more shit than a vacuum in a septic tank.
Herb eventually realizes he has to check his big-jerk energy at the door and show some goddamn leadership. He tries out some icebreakers, having everyone introduce themselves by stating their name, where they’re from, and who they play for. This also doesn’t help. It just reminds everyone why they hate each other.
The mediocrity comes to a head after an exhibition match in Sweden where the boys are more focused on the blondes in the stands than the blondes on the ice. When the final buzzer sounds, instead of going back to the locker room, Brooks forces the team to skate sprints until they piss, shit, and puke red, white, and blue. He berates them for not understanding that the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back. The rink manager goes home because this is Scanadivia and it’s a union job. Finally, team captain Mike Eruzione gets Herb to chill out by shouting his name and where he’s from and that he plays for the United States of America–which is not exactly the name on the front of the jersey (it just says USA) but he gets points for trying, and drives Herb’s point home for the rest of the team.
The greatness of this scene cannot be understated. It’s undoubtedly the most jingoistic moment ever put to film, but it also crystallizes the theme of the movie: The most important thing in the world is for you to understand that you are not the most important person in the world, that you represent something greater than yourself, that you are but one part of a greater whole. Karl Marx put it best: “only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions.”
Having fully embraced communist precepts without realizing it, Team USA improves–only to be shoved into their lockers during an exhibition against the much more ideologically pure Team USSR, who beats the shit out of them to the tune of 10 to why bother.
In the aftermath of this thorough pantsing, Herb, Team USA, and the audience can’t help but begin to question whether you can win a gold medal with the power of friendship alone, that maybe there’s really no way a plucky bunch of college kids can go toe-to-toe with the Soviets, what with their unmatched mastery of hockey, Vodka, and the virtues of a centrally planned economy.
Then Coach Herb remembers that of the four major sports (hockey, baseball, basketball, and the football that televises well), hockey is the one where you don’t actually have to be all that great. You can win with luck alone. During the big rousing speech he gives the team before they play the Soviets in the semifinals, he says, and I am definitely giving you real dialogue here–
These guys might beat you nine times out of ten. I mean, nine times outta ten they’re gonna kick the shit outta you. Nine times out of ten they’ll rip your guts out and use your entrails as dental floss, but not tonight. Tonight we’re gonna win in the flukiest way imaginable. We’re gonna win on bullshit alone, gentlemen!
The game is undeniably the biggest upset of all time, but it was undoubtedly a one-in-ten-times occurrence. Team USA scores their first goal from an improbable distance and then, later, scores a goal off an improbable rebound that goes in, improbably again, with no time remaining in the first period. They go down 2 to 3 in the second period, but tie it back up on a power play goal, then take a 4 to 3 lead when Mike “I play for the United States of America” Eruzione comes off the bench to take a slap shot just as a Soviet is standing right in front of his own goalie. This is all to say that they win in the most American fashion possible: by having all the breaks go their way and pretending they earned it.
The clock hits triple zeroes and Al Michaels, now a crotchity old man known for longing for death during every game he broadcasts but back then is an upstart, just-happy-to-be-here kinda guy, gives his famous playcall:
“Do you believe in miracles? YES!”
The orchestral score swells, blasting patriotic strings so bombastic that Beethoven would tell it to chill the fuck out. Everybody hugs. Herb Brooks goes back to the locker room to cry, fist pump, and mumble “yes” to himself over and over again while his wife gives him a meaningful nod.
It might sound like I’m making fun of Miracle, but I’m not. I fucking LOVE everything about this movie. The writing, the direction, the thematic contradictions, the sense of hockey realism captured by the impeccable cinematography and editing. I love the almost-but-not-quite there acting by the real-life hockey players cast as Team USA, and there’s still a part of me that thinks Kurt Russell should’ve won an Oscar for his portrayal of Herb Brooks. I admit that none of it is perfect. But all of it is incredible. And nobody in their right mind should want to change a thing about it. It’s enough to make you believe in miracles.