Happy 45th Anniversary To The Greatest Moment In American Sports History, The Miracle On Ice

It was fitting that there was a lot of buzz around international hockey this week with the 4 Nations Face-Off with many calling it the biggest international hockey game since the 1980 Miracle on Ice, which just so happened to have taken place 45 years ago Saturday.

It is — without question — the most important moment in American sports history. The impact that a team had on hockey, and our nation at large, continues to be seen to this very day.

I was born 15 years after the 1980 Olympics, so I don't have any kind of "I remember where I was…" story. I could probably ask my dad what he was up to while magic happened on an Olympic-sized sheet of ice in Lake Placid, New York, but that's about as close as we'd get.

But still, my entire childhood, I was very aware of what the 1980 Olympic team did and why it was so important.

I was a few months away from turning 7 when the team reunited to light the Olympic flame ahead of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games, and also remember hearing the tragic news that the team's legendary coach Herb Brooks had been killed in a car crash the following year.

But, it wasn't until 2004, when the movie Miracle (which was made by Disney; back before they went all woke on all of us) that I could fully comprehend how big that win over the Soviets on February 22, 1980, truly was.

I mean, that story is perfect for the Hollywood treatment. You've got the Rocky (or I guess, a little more accurately Rocky III)-like underdog story of this team of college hockey players going up against a team of Soviet players that, in another era, would have been full of NHL superstars.

You don't think Vladislav Tretiak would've won at least a couple of Vezinas? You'd be mistaken.

And while that alone would be enough