My understanding is that the final U.S. match vs. Finland wasn't a gold medal match per se, that there was a point system in place that wouldn't have guaranteed the U.S. any medal, depending on certain outcomes. I'm just curious if anyone knows what would've had to have happened for the Americans to miss out on a medal. They lose to Finland and Sweden beats the Soviets? Or was there something else in play?
Except the Fins didn't win the silver.
lomk - ( New Window )
USSR 1-0-0
US 0-0-1
Sweden 0-0-1
Finland 0-1-0
After the first medal round games (Sweden tied Finland):
US 1-0-1
USSR 1-1-0
Sweden 0-0-2
Finland 0-1-1
So.....Had the US lost to Finland and the Swedes beaten the Soviets, the US and Finland would have been tied for third place and I imagine the tiebreaker would have been total goals.
Pretty sure the tiebreaker was goal differential, and Finland was 3 behind us going into our game, so it would have taken a big win for them to pass us for a medal. But if we'd lost and the other game tied, it would've been a four-way tie (in points). Sweden would have had a zero differential, we would've been zero at best, and possibly worse, Finland would have been at worst -1, possibly better. Not sure how ties were broken after goal differential, probably total goals.
That's because, as Greg mentioned, in 1980, the Olympic men's hockey medal round was played in a round-robin, not single-elimination, format. Finland and the United States would have played regardless of the result two days earlier. But the U.S. still needed that 4-2 win over the Finns to win the gold medal, and they may not have won a medal at all with a loss.
Again, no matter the result of the Americans' game against the Soviets, they would have played Finland. Had they lost or tied, things would have gotten interesting. A Finland victory would have given each team three points. The Soviet Union beat Sweden 9-2 several hours later, giving it four points and the gold medal had Finland won. A U.S. tie would have given it four, but it would have been well behind the Red Army in goal differential.
Had Finland beat the U.S. by at least two goals and Sweden and the Soviet Union tied, the Americans would not have medaled at all.
Link - ( New Window )
When the US beat Russia, i think the game was over at like 5 or 5:30p and it was not televised live. I believe the Russians complained that the game would be seen at like 4am there and the US effort to move the game to 8p was denied.
But word quickly spread that our boys had done what seemed impossible. We ended up hearing about it thru phone calls and word of mouth because ABC refused to televise the result. Amazing.
If Rocky actually knocked out Drago in Moscow on Christmas Day, would that have been a bigger deal?