No, the 1995 Stanley Cup Final was not the Miracle on Ice all over again. With that said, it brought back the defining event of the 1980 Winter Olympics better than any other NHL moment.
For the clincher, you had an underdog team in white playing to its home crowd in an upper Mid-Atlantic state. That team’s roster was laden with exceptional American talent.
A total of 11 U.S.-born New Jersey Devils dressed for at least one 1995 playoff game. They represented such hometowns as Flint, Mich., Madison, Wisc., Minneapolis, Minn., and Roseau, Minn.
The man from the last of those towns: Neal Broten, who sandwiched two college seasons as a Minnesota Gopher around a journey to gold in 1979-80.
On the other side, you had a red machine that entered the matchup as a heavy favorite. That Detroit roster had its share of North Americans, including a former 1980 U.S. Olympian. But it was arguably best known for its four prominent, crafty Russians.
One of those Russian Red Wings: Slava Fetisov, who had joined the Soviets in scrambling to salvage silver after losing to the Amerks at Lake Placid. Although, Fetisov would join his countrymen in a 1984 bounce-back and a 1988 gold-medal repeat. Likewise, after the Devils swept Detroit, he hung around long enough to cap his career with two Cups in 1997 and 1998.
Given the Soviets’ stature in international hockey at the time, it was little surprise Fetisov fared so well when Eastern bloc talent got an easy pathway to the NHL. Conversely, the Miracle on Ice stood as the last declaration of American skaters’ belonging in Canada’s game.
On that note, for this 38th anniversary of the ultimate upset, here are the top 10 NHL careers among 1980 Olympic gold medalists. All statistics were found and verified on the Internet Hockey Database.
10. Rob McClanahan
Much like clutch goaltender Jim Craig, the second-leading scorer from the Olympic team’s tune-up and tournament could not translate in the pros. His best year out of four was a 48-point run with the New York Rangers in 1982-83.
Olympic-turned-NHL teammate Mark Pavelich eclipsed McClanahan with 75 points under Olympic-turned-NHL coach Herb Brooks that year. Those Rangers also happened to harbor Bill Baker, a 1980 U.S. blueliner who was savoring his only full season in The Show.
9. Steve Christoff
Christoff hit his home ice sprinting after Lake Placid, charging up an 8-7-15 scoring log for the Minnesota North Stars in 20 games. Over the subsequent 1980 postseason, he mustered 12 points in 14 outings.
As his encore, he managed back-to-back 26-goal seasons for the North Stars, plus 16 playoff points on the road to the 1981 Stanley Cup Final. But he would only play portions of the next two seasons for Calgary and Los Angeles.
8. Dave Silk
Although he had little longevity in the NHL, Silk turned in multiple solid seasons as a depth contributor. Despite missing 21 games in his first full year, he tied for eighth on the Rangers with 14 goals.
The next season, Brooks stepped behind the Blueshirts bench, and Silk gave him 35 points in 64 appearances. The Scituate, Mass., native and Boston University alum later cracked the 30-point plateau for his hometown Bruins in 1983-84.
In all, Silk mustered a 54-59-113 scoring log over 249 career games with four NHL teams. But he punctuated his career with five seasons overseas and a brief AHL stint in between.
7. Jack O’Callahan
After famously battling an untimely knee ailment just to see Olympic action, O’Callahan spent the next two years replenishing his game in the minors. He finally cracked the Blackhawks roster during his third pro season, splitting 1982-83 between Chicago and Springfield.
Once he cemented his spot for the 1983 playoffs, O’Callahan never needed any more AHL conditioning. But he would retire by the end of the decade after mustering 36 appearances with New Jersey in his seventh NHL campaign.
6. Mark Pavelich
On Brooks’ national team, Pavelich had tied McClanahan and Silk for second with 36 assists. That included the primary helper on Mike Eruzione’s decider against the Soviets.
The undrafted Pavelich missed all of the following season, but promptly revived his playmaking prowess when he got his break. Under Brooks in each man’s first NHL campaign, he tied for second on the Rangers with 76 points, including 43 assists.
He fell one point shy of the team lead in 1982-83, then finally topped the chart with 82 points (53 helpers) in his third year. Unfortunately for Pavelich, Brooks’ dismissal and a change in philosophy cut his next two seasons and his Manhattan tenure short. Still, he racked up 318 points in 341 appearances with the Blueshirts
5. Mark Johnson
The offensive pilot for the 1978-79 Wisconsin Badgers and 1979-80 national team later earned the same distinction in Hartford. After two-plus relatively uneventful seasons in Pittsburgh and Minnesota, Johnson regained his groove with the Whalers. He joined the organization in the summer of 1982 and placed third on their leaderboard the subsequent season.
The next year, he topped the sheet with 87 points (four more than runner-up Ron Francis). This despite not leading Hartford in goals or assists, a testament to his versatility as a playmaker and finisher.
Johnson later tallied a solid 62 points for New Jersey in a non-playoff 1985-86 season. Two years later, he tied John MacLean for second among the Devils with 18 playoff points when they went to the 1988 Wales Conference final.
That was Johnson’s only Stanley Cup tournament out of six to last more than one round. But he capitalized with more of the big-game mojo that spearheaded Team USA’s offense at Lake Placid.
4. Ken Morrow
Much like his fellow gold-medal blueliner O’Callahan, Morrow pushed through in defiance of nagging knee ailments. The chief differences are his NHL-only professional transcript, his slightly longer stay (nine seasons) and his four Cup rings.
Three of his nine campaigns with the New York Islanders were significantly shortened by injury. But Morrow dressed for but three of 99 playoff games between 1980 and 1984. In that time, the team put in five consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances, winning the first four.
With the 1980 title, Morrow became the first man to win Olympic gold and Stanley silver in the same year. And besides his on-ice intangibles as a stay-at-home defenseman, he was a catalyst in spawning the playoff beard. The noted exception to Brooks’ ban on facial hair with the Olympic team subsequently catalyzed the Islanders’ revolutionary razor layoff.
3. Dave Christian
With his last appearance in the 1992-93 Blackhawks regular season, Christian secured his distinction as one of three Miracle on Ice alums with 1,000 NHL career games. He added nine more the next year, then finished his career in the International League.
But before that minor-league wind-down, Christian flexed straightforward consistency through 13 full NHL seasons. The Jets’ reigning second-round draftee entered Winnipeg’s roster on the heels of the Olympics and scored 18 points in a 15-game homestretch. Representing a youth movement for a non-playoff team, he led the Jets with 71 points the following campaign. He followed up with 76 while captaining the club in 1981-82.
During his time with Winnipeg and Washington, Christian tallied at least 65 points in six of the seven years he logged 80 games played. He later chipped in 32 regular-season goals and 12 playoff points for Boston in 1990-91. The next year, he turned in his 10th 20-goal run, along with 24 assists, for St. Louis.
2. Mike Ramsey
Ramsey’s Legends of Hockey profile crisply summed up his legacy in Buffalo from the ’80s and early ’90s. “He was the foundation of the team with his consistent play,” the bio assesses. “He was rarely flashy but almost always effective.”
Indeed, Ramsey finished but one of his pro seasons with a negative rating (minus-four with the Penguins in 1993-94). He was otherwise invariably efficient through 15 full NHL seasons, then a pair of abbreviated campaigns with Detroit in 1995-96 and 1996-97.
In all that time, Ramsey logged 1,070 regular-season and 115 playoff appearances in The Show, and none in the minors.
1. Neal Broten
After placing fourth on the national team’s scoring chart, Broten returned to “The U” for his sophomore season. With nothing left to prove by the end, he shuffled to Bloomington for the North Stars’ 1981 playoff run.
Broten was an instant regular with the local NHL team, dressing in 19 games that postseason. He placed third on the Stars with 98 points as a rookie, then led them in 1982-83, 1983-84 and 1985-86. With 105 points in the latter year, he became the first U.S.-born skater to break the triple-digit plateau.
For Minnesota’s second appearance in a Cup final, Broten submitted 22 playoff points and briefly wore the “C” in 1991. Four years later, he finished second in postseason scoring for the 1995 champion Devils.
Through 16 NHL seasons, Broten logged 923 points in 1,099 regular-season games. He added 98 playoff points, including the 1995 Cup-clinching goal, in 135 outings. And within a year of his finale, the Dallas Stars retired his jersey.
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