{"id":2498,"date":"2005-02-22T16:23:27","date_gmt":"2005-02-22T21:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2498"},"modified":"2024-10-27T18:37:21","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T22:37:21","slug":"the-russian-side-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2498","title":{"rendered":"The Russian Side of the Story:  Benching Tretiak"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;[<i>Benching Tretiak was<\/i>] the biggest mistake of my career,&#8221; Tikhonov told Coffey through an interpreter. &#8220;Tretiak always played better after he gave up a goal. The decision was a result of getting caught up in emotions. After Tretiak gave up the rebound and let in the soft goal by Johnson, my blood was boiling. It was my worst mistake, my biggest regret.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Also:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We were already celebrating,&#8221; defenseman Valery Vasiliev said. &#8220;Nobody can skate with us in the third period.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I mean, a lot went into the why we won, and why they lost, but I would say that that quote (&#8220;we were already celebrating&#8221;) did more to contribute to the United States winning than anything else.   I don&#8217;t want to take away from the Americans accomplishments. Yes, the Russians were over-confident and so they made some terrible mental errors.  They didn&#8217;t respect the American team, thought they could breeze through the night.  The Americans were so much of a team, and so hungry for success, that they jumped on those crucial errors and turned the situation around &#8211; (Mark Johnson&#8217;s goal with one second to go is the perfect example).<\/p>\n<p>So yeah.  The Russians messed up.  But only a true team could cohere enough to fully take advantage of the situation, and the US team, led by Herb Brooks, did.<\/p>\n<p>More interesting quotes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/22\/sports\/hockey\/22anderson.html\">from a new book out <\/a>&#8211; telling the Russian side of the miracle on ice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;[Benching Tretiak was] the biggest mistake of my career,&#8221; Tikhonov told Coffey through an interpreter. &#8220;Tretiak always played better after he gave up a goal. The decision was a result of getting caught up in emotions. After Tretiak gave up &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=2498\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[2570,1540],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2498"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178283,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498\/revisions\/178283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}