Power of the Dream
"No, Mac!" Herb Brooks heard his assistant coach, Craig Patrick, exclaim in exasperation, as he exited the main rink and stepped into the corridor that turned onto the hallway where Coach Patrick had taken Mac to practice a move he couldn't seem to get right. Today Mac seemed to have two left hands, neither of which could make his stick give the puck a good whack, Herb thought, shaking his head. "You just did, for about the tenth time, exactly what I told you not to do. Are you deaf?"
"If I were, your shouting the same thing at me over and over wouldn't help me very much!" Mac's voice snapped back, and it didn't take much effort, after years of coaching the young man, for Herb to imagine his chin lifted defensively and his dark eyes blazing defiantly.
"Since you can hear, please listen to me," Patrick said shortly.
"I am listening." Now, Herb could tell from Mac's tone that his lips had formed a petulant twist. Obviously, he found being yelled at by the coach who normally provided a welcome relief to Herb's overbearing approach about as pleasant as having a tooth yanked out. "You just aren't saying anything I can understand. Just show me what I'm supposed to do one more time, and I'm sure I'll get it, okay?"
"You put your hand halfway down the reverse side of your stick, then you twist your body to your left, and only then do you shoot the puck to the right," Patrick explained, beginning to regain his patience as Herb continued down the hallway to check Mac's clearly lagging progress.
There was the scrape of stick striking floor followed a second later by the puck slamming into the wall, and Patrick calling out in triumph, "I think you've got it, Mac. Now, how many repetitions do you suppose Coach Brooks would make you do to ensure you've learned the move properly?"
During the brief pause that ensued, Herb reached the end of the corridor that turned onto the hallway where Mac was practicing with Patrick's oversight. Here, he halted, hovering by the corner out of Mac and Patrick's vision, because some instinct inside him assured him that he would gain valuable information if he lurked for a moment. There would be another chance to spring out on them when it was most awkward for one or both of them.
"Which Coach Brooks?" asked Mac finally, and Herb could hear, simmering in his voice, all the resentment and betrayal the boys who had played for him at the University of Minnesota were experiencing now that the devil they knew had abruptly morphed into a fiend they didn't know who seemed to have been summoned from a personal hell just to torment them. "The Pre-Olympic Trials one, or the Post-Olympic Trials tyrant that could give Brezhnev a run for his red money?"
"Does it make a difference?" Patrick arched an eyebrow, and Herb could hear the barely unspoken question of whether he, Herb Brooks, always pushed his players to the brink of insanity and collapse, more loudly than a shout.
"You bet your bottom dollar it does." Mac snorted. "The Pre-Olympic Trials Coach Brooks would have made me do something hard but reasonable like a thousand repetitions. This new and improved model would make me do repetitions until my arm fell off. Then he'd have Doc sew it back on so I could do some more."
"You played for him here at the University, didn't you?" Patrick posed a question he already had to know the answer to.
"Yeah, and I got an NCAA Championship Ring to show for it last year." A trace of pride entered Mac's tone, and he grinned for the first time since practice started. "Not a bad piece of hockey memorabilia."
"No, not bad at all," Patrick agreed, chuckling. Then, making his true motives obvious, he pressed, "But he wasn't like this with you University boys, was he? He didn't drive you so much, did he?"
"As long as I've known him, he's pushed his players to the limit." Mac shrugged, and Herb wondered if he was going to confirm Patrick's suspicions that Herb was a sadistic coach who demanded more of his boys than they could possibly give. "In practice, he made us skate until our muscles were trembling, and we couldn't see how we could possibly move another step. He made us do drills and repetitions until we could do them in more sleep, and, believe me, the players who slept walked did just that, or so their roommates say. He came up with crazy mantras none of us even wanted to understand, and then he forced us to repeat them so that the lunacy of them stuck to our brains like glue. But then he'd let us stop before we collapsed, or right after if it was a particularly painful practice, and he'd tell us we were doing great, and he was proud of us. Now, no matter how hard we work or how well we think we do, we don't get any compliments. Just more corrections and orders. And he never smiles or cracks a joke that isn't supposed to hurt us anymore. When he used to let us stop, that's when he really starts to work now, and where he used to comfort us after we broke down, he now makes us get up to train again."
Mac flushed, as though he hadn't intended to say all this. Then, as if suddenly recalling school loyalties, he added with another shrug, "I understand him less than I ever did, but he's still the best coach I ever had, so I still believe that there is a method to his madness, because, if there isn't, we'll probably all be joining him in the loony bin soon."
"And we probably need to work on your method, Mac," Patrick commented, changing the subject back to the initial topic. "Give me five hundred repetitions."
"Five hundred repetitions?" Mac echoed, astonished that he was going to be let off this easily. "You're my favorite coach, or, at least you are until I find one who only makes me do a hundred repetitions."
"Five hundred should be enough to get the move into your muscle memory, don't you think?" Patrick smiled.
"Oh, yeah." Mac nodded. "My muscle memory is a genius, don't worry, so it learns really quickly."
"Indeed, Mac?" demanded Herb, stepping around the corner, and deriving a perverse pleasure from the shock that immediately flared on both Mac and Patrick's faces. Their expressions plainly revealed that they were each contemplating how much of their conversation he might have overheard. "Well, you can do double the repetitions you were just assigned. That might help you remember not to sass Coach Patrick or me."
An instant thunder of protest followed this lightning bolt declaration.
"You must be using the loosest definition of sass in the coaching dictionary," argued Mac, doing more to hinder than help his point by glaring daggers at Herb.
"Herb, I'm not sure that's necessary—" Patrick began.
"Oh, but it is, Coach Patrick," Herb stated tersely. "Mac, I'm afraid, is currently harboring under the delusion, which he has unfortunately had throughout his college career, that his rudeness is clever and charming, but it is not, nor is it acceptable on this team. Practice is not the place for talking back to coaches, or a forum for his jokes. It's where he's going to work harder than he ever has in his life. Right now, I think Mac needs a little reminder of the high degree of respect and discipline that I require of all my players, don't you, Mac?"
Truculently, Mac rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath in a tone that simply sagged with irony, "Yes, I need nothing more than a chance to do five hundred more repetitions, especially if they're guaranteed to increase my respect and discipline. Sounds like more of a morale booster than ten water breaks."
"The eye roll and the sarcasm just earned you five hundred more repetitions." Herb pointed a warning finger into Mac's mutinous face. "Since you've always proven skilled at digging holes you can't climb out of, I'll tell you now that I can much more easily assign you extra repetitions than you can complete them."
Mac hesitated, biting his lip over what probably was a scathing retort. Finally, the strain of each word evident on his features, he replied flatly, "Understood, Coach."
Aware that if a willful player like Mac surrendered an inch, he had to be forced to yield a mile, Herb rapped out, thrusting his face close enough to Mac's to disconcert him, "You'd better put an end to those eye rolls, Robert McClanahan, because, after all these years, I'm tired of seeing them. If, at your age, you can't act like you were taught manners, I'll send you home to learn them. You aren't going to the Olympics with your eye rolls and the disrespectful attitude they embody. That would be an insult to all of America."
"Yes, Coach." At last cowed, Mac ducked his head, his cheeks flaming. "I do know better than to roll my eyes at you, and I will stop. I swear."
"If you're smart, you'll keep that promise." Herb made himself remain adamant, defeating the abrupt urge to assure Mac that he belonged on this Olympic team, eye rolls and all. "If the Soviets catch you rolling your eyes at Coach Patrick or me, they'll correctly assume that this team is a bunch of undisciplined, untalented hacks."
Before Mac could stammer out a response through his agape mouth, Herb turned away from Mac's hurt expression and Patrick's startled look. As he walked back toward the rink, he tossed over his shoulder, "Coach Patrick, make sure Mac counts every repetition aloud, and if he messes up any of them, have him start again."
Just prior to drifting out of earshot, Herb heard Patrick, as if determined to remove as much sting as possible from the punishment, say to Mac, "All right. You take a water break whenever you need to, and you ask me if you need help remembering how to perform the skill. Let's not heap any more extra repetitions on your shoulder."
As he returned to training the other members of the team, Herb wondered when Patrick would decide to lance the boil that the question of what exactly constituted pushing players too hard for too long represented. Hours later, when practice had finally concluded for the day, he got his answer when Patrick slid into his office and seated himself in the chair opposite the desk where Herb was drawing a colorful diagram to teach his team strategy.
"About Mac," began Patrick, "he's a nice boy—"
"The Soviets can check any hundred nice American hockey players into next century without breaking a sweat with their hands tied behind their back," Herb remarked crisply. "We're not challenging the Soviets to a politeness competition, and, even if we were, Mac's eye rolls would definitely have to be left at the door. We're trying to beat them at their own sport, and any time I have to re-establish basic discipline, this team gets distracted from that goal. Every tick of the clock brings us closer to Lake Placid, and we don't have time for any nonsense."
"It's not fair to expect the boys to always operate at full throttle, and never give them an opportunity to let off steam," Patrick protested. "Just look away when Mac rolls his eyes if it bothers you so much. It happens at most once a day, so that shouldn't be too difficult to ignore."
"Do you think Tikhonov would just allow his players to roll their eyes whenever they needed to let off steam?" demanded Herb, arching an eyebrow.
"I can't imagine any of the Soviets showing any sort of emotion." Patrick shook his head. "They like to make their faces part of the ice as much as possible, but you can't ask our boys to be as focused as the Soviets are. The Soviet National Hockey Team is a branch of their military, for heaven's sake, Herb. That means a mouthy Soviet player could probably be court martialed and executed. What terror could we wield that's comparable to a firing squad—sprint drills?"
"If we don't expect the same excellent discipline from our boys as we do from the Soviets we'll be facing in a few months' time, we should just not embarrass all of America by showing up with a hockey team to try to play against them." Herb pressed his lips together, and then concluded tightly, "If we want to play against the Soviets, we have to play at their level, which includes being as disciplined and as well-conditioned as they are."
"At what price would there be even a chance of that happening?" Patrick countered. "Even if we could achieve in a matter of months what the Soviets spent years working on with their team, would we really want to rip our training program from the most oppressive government in the world? America is supposed to symbolize freedom, not abusive Olympic training rooted in a dangerous win at all costs mentality."
"No player is trapped here against his will," pointed out Herb, his tone as crisp as a smooth sheet of ice. "Look around you. You'll see no bars on the windows or locks on the doors to prevent our boys from leaving, because this is a university campus, not a prison. Every one of them is free to go any time they like for any reason at all—because they think I'm an abusive ass or because they got a shiny NHL contract they can't refuse or because they just don't want to play hockey any longer and wish to take up baseball instead- or for no reason whatsoever. If one of them wants to go, that's fine, since it means that I won't have to cut someone from the team who actually wants to be here, but, the truth is, none of these boys are quitters. They'll stick around here, because they are driven by the power of the dream for gold, even if they haven't admitted to themselves yet that a burning desire for Olympic gold is the reason they're here. They grew up watching the Soviet Union hockey team forcing every other nation to settle for silver, so they can't imagine themselves on the top of the podium, but they've still got a spark inside of them that wants to win and prove the world wrong about who they are and what they can achieve. That's the spark I'm going to fan to a forest fire, and that forest fire will represent what's greatest about America—the right to choose what you want and to work hard to attain it."
"You really want to fire them up for gold?" Patrick asked, astonished. "Herb, the general consensus is that this team has about the same odds of beating the Soviets as a snowball does of surviving a solar flare."
"Statistics can be manipulated to say anything." Herb's uncompromising gaze pierced into Patrick's dubious expression. "I don't care about probabilities. Just realities, and the reality is that if we don't plan on winning, we've already failed before we set foot on the Olympic arena. If we hope to settle for silver, we'll have to be content with bronze at best, and if we set our goal as just medaling at all, we'll embarrass ourselves just like the last American Olympic team did. Telling our boys to expect anything less than the best of themselves is nothing more than a particularly insidious way of encouraging them to fail. We become what we believe. If our boys believe that they are destined to be losers, that's what they'll become, but if they believe that they can be winners if they work hard enough, then they will be winners. Defeat is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and our fate as a team is all our own creation."
"I'd love to see gold medals hanging from the boys' necks, but I think we have to consider the large possibility that we might never get to witness that." Patrick sighed, and shook his head. "What if we don't win gold? What will that do to them if we've been telling them all along to expect nothing but the best from themselves, and they have to learn that their hardest work just isn't good enough for gold?"
"You will continue to ask the wrong questions," commented Herb wryly. "The question you should be asking is what will it do to the boys if we don't push them to go for gold? This time next year, will they be wondering what might have happened had they given everything? Will they be haunted by a million what-ifs? Will that be how they learn that the most crushing defeat isn't trying your best and failing but being beaten before you even start because you refuse to give everything?"
"You can't accuse this team of laziness," Patrick said, voice sharp as skate blades. "They work past exhaustion every practice. After every practice, you could fill buckets with their sweat, and their muscles are so sore they can hardly move."
"Sweat and sore muscles aren't everything." Herb drummed his fingers on his desk. "Boys today need to be pushed to give everything to their coach and their team. It's not in their natures to do that, although it is in their natures to think that they have and to feel hard done by if what they think to be their grand sacrifice isn't noticed. For example, you can ask any of the boys who played on my team last season if they gave me everything, and they'll say they did, but the truth is more complicated than that. They worked hard for me, because I would never have allowed a lazy boy to remain on my team for more time than it took him to remove his bag from the locker room, but on a subconscious level they always held something back. That way, if we lost, they wouldn't be left with nothing. Winning an NCAA Championship with a team that gives almost everything is possible, especially if the other team plays with the same subconscious limitations, but winning an Olympic gold is not possible with a team that won't make the commitment of believing in victory. At the Olympic level, belief—in oneself and one's team—is everything. This is not a generation of believers, but if our boys are to achieve greatness, they must first believe in it and in their ability to attain it. People don't just stumble upon greatness. They seek it with body and soul."
"If you are determined to make this about belief, you should know that your locker room is losing faith in you," stated Patrick, meeting Herb's eyes boldly. "Even the boys from Minnesota you coached for four years are running out of affection for you and doubting that you ever actually cared about them. If you find Mac's eye rolling offensive, you probably shouldn't imagine the nasty names that your team is calling you when we're both out of earshot. Everything your team does is to spite you, not because of you."
Here, Patrick paused long enough to take a deep breath, and then he plunged on, "I realize that I haven't been a coach as long as you have, Herb, but my experience with hockey has taught me that a coach who loses his locker room tends to lose games. I don't mean to argue with success, but you have admitted that what you're doing is your typical coaching style on steroids, so maybe it wouldn't hurt you to consider the fact that your boys might shatter completely if you keep pushing them to the breaking point and beyond."
"I have thought about that," Herb declared dispassionately. "When picking this team, I chose toughness over talent. Only players with nerves of steel could face the Soviets head-on without buckling in the knees, but coaching headstrong players is always difficult, and there isn't a player on this team who isn't stubborn as mildew in his own fashion. Coaching strong-willed players is like cutting diamonds."
Seeing Patrick's bafflement at this simile, he added by way of explanation, "Imagine a diamond: a mineral with an interlocking crystalline structure that makes it harder than iron. You can strike it with a five pound hammer, and do no more than dent the hammer's surface. Yet, the same crystalline structure that gives the diamond strength also gives it shatterpoints: spots where a precise application of a carefully controlled force—sometimes no more than a gentle tap—will break it into pieces. But to find these shatterpoints, to use them to shape the diamond into a gem of beauty and utility, requires years of study, an intimate understanding of crystal structure, and rigorous practice to train the hand in the perfect combination of strength and precision to produce the desired cut. That's why I've watched hundreds of recordings of these boys playing, and spoke, at length, to the coaches of the boys who didn't play for me at the University of Minnesota. I have to know where to strike, where not to touch, and how hard to hit when I do pick up the mallet."
"But what if you don't cut our diamonds right, Herb?" Patrick asked, his forehead furrowing. "Some of our boys could end up permanently damaged."
"I believe I know how to handle each boy properly, but if I'm wrong—well, hockey is a dangerous sport, and no great deeds are accomplished without some risk." Herb sighed. "I can't definitively state how far is too far with these boys, not only because every one of them is different and must be treated uniquely, but also since I've never attempted anything like this before. However, I firmly believe that I would do more harm to the boys and their futures by being too soft on them than too hard. I don't have an issue with you bonding with the team, since they need a coach they aren't convinced is a tyrant, but it would be a mistake for me to act like their friend. More than any generation before them, these boys need to be pushed into giving everything and going for their goals without holding anything back."
"I don't see the same crisis in motivation that you do," Patrick said, the frown etched in his forehead deepening. "Certainly, there aren't any slouches on this team."
"Their problem isn't that they're lazy, or that they're unmotivated. It's that they don't truly believe in anyone or anything, and that isn't their fault. They're just products of their particular moment in history." Herb rubbed his chin wearily, and then continued, "My first memories are of the deprivation of the Depression and the sacrifice of the home front during World War II, but my friends and I were always more innocent and optimistic than the young men on this team are. Sometimes I think being raised during the Cold War is like being weaned on poisoned milk. Even after Pearl Harbor, we still believed that there wasn't immediate threat to our safety on home soil, but the boys on this team grew up ducking under desks at school that would not provide any more than an illusion of protection against weapons capable of destroying this world several times over. Their science fair projects were all about bomb shelters that might allow them to survive a nuclear fallout. They have a deep-seated conviction, however unstated, that everything and everyone good—JFK and Martin Luther King Jr.—will be killed by evil, or that what we believe to be good—like the Presidency before Nixon disgraced it, and the people our government helped put into power in the Middle East, who revealed themselves to be as bad as the regimes they overthrew—will turn out to be a sham. That's why I want to give them something gold they can cling onto and bite into so that they'll have proof that it isn't fool's gold, but first I need to inspire them: to make them believe that they are not powerless creatures on a world that could blow up whenever some suited man behind a desk in Washington or Moscow presses a big red button, and that, if they work hard, they really can change the world for the better. Then, maybe they'll be able to bring that faith and purpose to wherever life takes them next. Sport is supposed to be about teaching respect, hard work, discipline, and sacrifice, and, when it comes down to it, those are the only lessons I know how to give this new generation to help them cope with all the challenges they'll have to find the strength to overcome."
"You really do care about our boys, then?" Patrick's frown finally fled from his face. "Sometimes, when you yell at them or drive them to the brink, I wonder."
"I don't do sentimentality, Craig." Herb offered a half moon smile. "But I want what is best for these boys, including a chance at achieving what I couldn't. I believe that's as good a definition of caring as anything in Webster's."