Book Review: The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey
I have a confession to make. I enjoy watching sports. I probably can’t tell you about the hottest new streaming show because if I’m sitting around the house looking for something to watch I’m perfectly happy watching whatever sport is on. Of course I’m happier if that sport is baseball and even happier still if it’s hockey. It works out well for me that my two favorite sports seasons line up so one is beginning when the other one is ending. I’ve grew up a Cardinals fan, watching baseball with my dad. The highlight of the summer was when we got to make that trip to St. Louis to see the Cards in person, which we did at least once every summer. I can’t remember ever not being a baseball fan, but I do remember where my love for hockey began. There were two events that happened around the same time and honestly I don’t remember which came first but they were my dad taking our family to our first Blues game and the 1980 Winter Olympics.
The Boys of Winter by Wayne Coffey is the story of the 1980 USA Men’s Hockey Team. If you weren’t alive in 1980 unfortunately you missed witnessing one of the greatest sporting events that will ever take place. The Olympics were different back then. At that time only amateur athletes were allowed to participate in the Olympics, the problem with that was that some of the European countries trained their athletes like professionals but because they weren’t “paid” athletes they could play in the Olympics. Our players were either still in college or just out of college, some of them delaying their NHL careers just so that they could participate in the Olympics. I can remember the sentiment of a lot of Olympics back then being that we could never beat the Russians, at anything but especially at hockey.
This book does a great job of taking you back to that time and explaining what was happening not only with the Olympics but in the world in general. The book begins with Coach Herb Brooks and how he lobbied to get the head coaching job. Then it progresses through how the players were chosen and trained, beating the Russians, then finally winning gold. What a lot of people forget or don’t realize is that we didn’t win the gold when we beat the Russians. Hockey used a point system in that Olympics and even after beating the Russians it was possible that we could have not won a medal at all. Spoiler alert, but we went on to beat Finland for the gold. As the book progresses Coffey inserts the back stories of all of the players on the team, which adds a lot of interest to the book. One thing that I found especially interesting was that he was also able to include the stories of some of the Russian players and coaches. This is an insight that we don’t get from some of the other sources of this story.
If you have seen the movie “Miracle” staring Kurt Russell which came out in 2004, this is the book that movie was based on. The book includes a lot more hockey strategy than the movie. When you come to the game against the Russians, the book is almost a play by play account of the game. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book but I could see where this might be a little tedious if you are more interested in just the story of what happened. If you like hockey or really any sport I would recommend this book. Even if you aren’t into the sports aspect of the book, I would recommend it just as a look back on how things were in the world back then and why this win was so important. You could also just watch the movie, especially if you haven’t ever seen it, but just remember the book is always better than the movie.
I intentionally read this book leading up to this year’s Olympics. I also rewatched Miracle and I watched the new Netflix documentary about the 1980’s team, which I highly recommend. It was the perfect trifecta to get me ready to watch this years Olympics, where the USA mens hockey team won gold for the first time since 1980, on the 46th anniversary of the “miracle on ice”. I couldn’t have asked for a better ending.