During a Trump rally in Las Vegas on Friday, the daughter of legendary hockey Coach Herb Brooks said she believes her father would have been a fan of President Donald Trump.
“He would be proud to be here with you all,” said Kelly Brooks-Paradise of her father to the massive Vegas crowd, wearing a “Keep America Great” hat.
“And, my personal opinion,” she added, “he would have been a Trump fan.”
Brooks was the coach of the gold-medal winning U.S. Olympic Hockey team in 1980, famously coaching the upset win in a politically-charged game against the Soviet Union dubbed the “Miracle on Ice.”
“Trump has 14 members of the 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’ gold-medal Olympic hockey team at his Vegas rally, [including] captain Mike Eruzione,” tweeted Washington Post reporter David Nakamura. “They apparently were in town to celebrate the 40th anniversary.”
Trump has 14 members of the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' gold-medal Olympic hockey team at his Vegas rally, incl captain Mike Eruzione. They apparently were in town to celebrate the 40th anniversary. pic.twitter.com/rHVbLFoeHA
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) February 21, 2020
“With the team members on stage wearing Keep America Great hats, Trump is now instructing Eruzione to look at the ‘fake news,’ and complaining again about South Korea’s ‘Parasite’ winning best picture,” Nakamura reported.
“Team invited late coach Herb Brooks’ adult daughter to the mic,” he added. “She tears up and then says of her father: ‘In my personal opinion, he would have been a Trump fan.'”
Team invited late coach Herb Brooks' adult daughter to the mic. She tears up and then says of her father: "In my personal opinion, he would have been a Trump fan."
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) February 21, 2020
“I can still hear the arena, I felt like it was vibrating,” Brooks-Paradise recalled of the game, reported by KARE 11 News earlier this week. “It’s kind of hard, but exciting.”
As highlighted in a recent ESPN report on the “miracle” Olympics, Coach Brooks trusted his young players.
“Brooks trusted his players, even if they were a bit younger. (The average age of the American roster was 22.1 years old, while the Soviets averaged 25.9 years of age. The U.S. had 19-year-old Mike Ramsey, while the Soviets had 35-year-old Boris Mikhailov playing in his third and final Olympics.)” the report noted. “The Americans were the best-conditioned team in any game they played and used their depth to their advantage.”
“You know, you watch hockey games today and they shorten their bench, but Herb never shortened our bench,” Eruzione recently said, according to ESPN. “We’re playing the Soviets and we’re playing [line] one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. [Mark] Wells centered [Phil] Verchota and [Eric] Strobel as a fourth line, and trust me, that was an awfully good fourth line.”
“In that Soviet game, we would — in a minute and a half to two minutes — play all four lines. I mean, you’d be out there for 30 seconds max, 15 seconds sometimes,” he added.
The U.S. team had the odds against them versus the Soviets. For example, as noted by ESPN, the Soviets “had won each of the previous four Olympic gold medals in hockey and 12 gold medals in the 16 world championships they played in between 1961 and 1979” and “The USSR also won all 12 matchups with the United States between the 1960 and 1980 Olympics, outscoring the Americans 117-26.”
“Even when the U.S. had NHL players playing for it in the 1976 Canada Cup, it lost to the Soviets twice (outscored 9-2),” the report added. “Oh, and that doesn’t even include the Soviets’ infamous 10-3 blowout exhibition win to close out the 1980 U.S. team’s pre-Olympic tour at Madison Square Garden, just one week before the Olympic Games began.”
Still, the Americans were victorious.
WATCH:
Miracle on Ice coach Herb Brooks’ daughter says he would have been a Donald Trump fan.
Tomorrow is the 40-year anniversary of beating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics. pic.twitter.com/WTt1iUawKG
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) February 21, 2020