The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team

by Wayne Coffey

  So Wells could already feel his defiance building when Brooks asked him to meet him for an early-morning skate at the Met Center, the team’s training base in Bloomington, Minnesota, not long after the team returned to the States from Europe in late September. Wells left the apartment he was sharing with John Harrington and Mark Pavelich. The arena was cold and empty. Wells’s ankle hurt, but he laced up the skates and met Brooks on the ice, anyway. There were going to be six more cuts, taking the touring roster of twenty-six down to the twenty that would be allowed in Lake Placid. The selection process was anxiety provoking enough without giving people cause to doubt your durability. Brooks and Wells met near center ice. Brooks told Wells that he didn’t think he could make the team, and said he was going to send Wells down to the International Hockey League—effectively the coach’s taxi squad, a place to park players he may or may not ultimately want. Wells felt as though his heart were being sliced into pieces with every word Brooks spoke. He had dreamed of being in the Olympics ever since he watched Mark Spitz win seven gold medals in Munich in 1972. He had turned down the Canadiens after they drafted him in the twelfth round in 1977, so he could preserve his amateur status. He thought of the words his brother, John, had told him: “Don’t let one person destroy your dream.” When the coach was done, Wells circled around him. His mind was racing, his defiance deepening. He searched for the right words and looked at Brooks and skated a little more. Then Mark Wells stopped and spit at Brooks’s skates. “I don’t play games, Herb,” he said. “I am going to be back on this team. I am going to be back.” And then he skated off.

  Wells was indeed sent down, but he wasn’t wrong. He spent the rest of the fall playing for the Flint Generals in the IHL, living in Cronk’s basement, and then he went to Halifax of the American Hockey League. When the Olympians came to Flint to play the Generals, Wells was called back from Halifax, and Brooks gave him his Olympic sweater and put him on a line with Phil Verchota on his left and Dave Silk on his right. Wells scored several goals and had a couple of assists. The Olympians won, 15–0. After the game, Brooks dispatched Craig Patrick to talk to Wells. “Do you like it here?” Patrick asked him.

  “I’m doing good,” Wells replied.

  “OK, you’re staying here,” Patrick said. Wells was confused and angry, a state that Brooks left a lot of players in. What else did he have to do? Why did the coach always have to be so cryptic? Wells kept asking Brooks when he would rejoin the team. He got no answer. Before the team left town, Brooks took him out on the ice and drilled him, down and back, down and back, no pucks, just lots of hard work and intense skating. Near the end, bent over and beating back exhaustion, Wells said, “Herb, I’m going to puke.”

  “If you do, that will be good for you,” the coach said.

  Wells was beginning to think more and more of turning pro. His brother urged him not to be hasty. Wells’s agent, Art Kaminsky, told Brooks that Wells was getting close to signing with Montreal. In mid-January, Wells’s phone rang in Halifax. He was told to meet the Olympic team in Oklahoma City, and he did. A week later, the team was in Detroit. The Olympians played the Canadian Olympic team in newly opened Joe Louis Arena, then stayed in town for the NHL All-Star game. Wells was sitting in the upper level with his father, still unsure of his status. “If I don’t make this team, I’m done with hockey,” he told his father. Between periods Brooks came and found him.

  “You’re going to Lake Placid,” Brooks said. The team was leaving the following morning. Wells was the final player named to the roster. He didn’t even have a change of clothes, but his wardrobe was the last thing on this mind. He got some new things to wear from one of the Olympic sponsors in Lake Placid. Wells still gets goose bumps when he watches footage of the game against the Soviets, or the finale against Finland.

  He had no idea there wouldn’t be another highlight in his life for more than twenty years.

  “I’ve seen the best of life, and I’ve seen no life,” Wells said. “I like the best of life better.”

  Wells’s travails began not long after the Olympics, when the Canadiens wanted to trade his rights to the Red Wings. The Wings were his local team, except that Mark Wells always saw himself as a Canadien. He told them he wouldn’t go. It wasn’t about being a prima donna, just his stubbornness again. “To me I had won the biggest prize I could ever win,” Wells said. “It was above and beyond winning the Stanley Cup. I couldn’t do anything that could be better. I wanted to be with Montreal. I didn’t want to go play for just anyone.” Craig Patrick, who had gone on to be the general manager of the New York Rangers after the Olympics, signed him to a $23,000 minor-league contract. Wells played the 1980–1981 season for the Rangers’ American Hockey League affiliate in New Haven, but his heart wasn’t in it. Like Mike Eruzione, he wanted his enduring hockey memory to be from Lake Placid. Soon, the memory was about all he had to hold on to.

  ____

  Crippled is not a nice-sounding word. It is jarring and indelicate, and Mark Wells uses it without hesitation. “Not too many of my teammates know what I went through—that I was crippled,” he said in a slightly nasal voice with a smoker’s rasp. Words come from Wells at full throttle, the way he used to skate, his mind tumbling from topic to topic, his pauses all but nonexistent. He has plans at last and can’t wait to tell you about them. Wells wants to quit cigarettes and knows he will. He wants to get his body down from the 210 pounds he has ballooned to. He is back in school, at Walsh Business College in Detroit, getting the degree that he never got twenty-five years ago. So what if he’s a 46-year-old undergrad? “The studies are great. School for me is rehab. I’m finishing something I never finished. Knowledge is my dream now—becoming as knowledgeable as possible. I will get back into the mainstream. To me where I am is a blessing, because I could be sitting in a group home in a wheelchair.”

  The tortuous trail that took Mark Wells from Olympic glory to near incapacitation began in a walk-in refrigerator, in 1989. He was in the restaurant business in Michigan, unloading forty-pound crates of cooked turkeys. As he bent down to lift one of the crates, he twisted to his right and heard a snap in his back, the knifing pain sending him to the floor. Wells had cracked a vertebra in his lower back. Even worse, the X-rays revealed he was also suffering from a degenerative disk disease that left bone rubbing against bone. Doctors told him that he was fortunate it hadn’t been a problem before, that his strength had delayed its onset.

  Wells was back at work after two weeks, but then he started having numbness in his foot. He was told it wouldn’t heal on its own. Wells underwent an eleven-hour back operation in which screws and brackets were attached to stabilize his spine. His expectation was that he’d walk out a day later and get on with his life.

  When his mother and brother came in to see him in post-op, his head was bloated with fluid, his body slumped. His mother began to cry, and doctors told them that he’d never have a day without pain. Wells couldn’t get out of bed for seven days. He needed to use a walker for nearly a year. In physical therapy, they asked him to get up and reach for the two bars a few feet away. He couldn’t do it. The room was spinning, his equilibrium a mess. His mind raced in all kinds of directions, all of them taking him straight into an emotional pileup. He thought, I’m like one of those United Way kids. How am I going to exist? Where do I go from here? How can I put this on my family?

  Unable to work, barely able to walk ten feet, Wells moved in with his mother. He required a bedpan. He fought a long, debilitating battle with the workers’ compensation board to get some benefits. He became addicted to Vicodin, his painkilling medication, and it didn’t even take away his pain. It was hard not to think about how he’d gone from an Olympic hero who was honored with parades and celebrations and invited to lunch by the governor to an invalid who couldn’t even get to the bathroom. He withdrew from everything. He moved up north to Hale, Michigan, where his family had a cabin by a lake. His closest friends were the geese. He fed them. The mother would make noise outside a
nd wake him up. “The geese were what got me to the back door,” Wells said.

  Wells had a second operation in 1993 but came out of it pretty much the way he came in—with limited mobility and lots of pain. His mood darkened. He wondered if he’d ever have a life again. Thoughts of suicide began to cross his mind. He tried returning to school but couldn’t sit in class very long before his back acted up. He finally got a workers’ compensation settlement and Social Security benefits but saw solvency end when a landscaping business he’d started folded, leaving him $40,000 in the hole. Soon he’d graduated to morphine for his pain, taking 80 milligrams every 12 hours before he got disgusted with his reliance on it and took himself off it, cold turkey.

  He heard about a new laser surgery technique being used for back pain and contacted a surgeon at Madison Hospital in Madison Heights, Michigan. They scheduled a meeting. It was short. Wells didn’t want to see his X-rays or discuss spinal anatomy or have an expansive conversation about his options. He was a desperate man in desperate pain, and the suicidal thoughts were getting to be less and less a novelty. “I can’t live this way anymore,” he told the doctor. In truth, maybe the only reason he’d made it this far was an IRS compliance officer named Tom Krozak.

  “He was a gift sent from somewhere,” Wells said.

  Wells and Krozak met by chance one night in Chesterfield Township, in a roadside diner called C.J.’s. Krozak was stopping off on his way home from work. Wells was stopping off after another bleak day inside the four walls of his mother’s house. Krozak saw this stocky man by the counter digging for enough change to buy a cup of coffee. Krozak had seen Wells in C.J.’s a few times before and asked him if he could buy him the cup. Wells thanked him and said sure. Over coffee and an act of charity, friendship took hold. “He’d have tears in his eyes, he was in so much pain, but you never heard him let on,” Krozak said. When Wells’s brother and father, Ron, a retired chemical-company executive, would ask how he was, they’d get the same dodge: “I’m okay.” There was no reason to elaborate, on anything. For two years Wells didn’t even tell Krozak about his involvement in the 1980 Olympics. Krozak found out by accident as he absently leafed through an Olympic magazine that Wells had brought with him for a talk at a local middle school.

  “Look, here’s a guy with your name in this magazine,” Krozak said. “He even looks a little like you.”

  “It is me,” Wells replied.

  The friendship deepened. Wells and Krozak met regularly for coffee and pizza and conversation. The more Krozak got to know Wells, the more he could see how beaten up by life he’d been. Once Wells lent his Jeep to a fellow he met from Detroit. The guy turned out to be a drug dealer, who not only didn’t return the car but sold it. When Wells lived in Hale, he met a woman who was behind on her mobile-home payments. Wells loaned her money and never got it back. “Mark’s problem is that he’s too nice a guy,” Krozak said.

  When the 1980 team was selected to light the cauldron to open the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, every player was allowed to bring a guest. Wells’s guest was Tom Krozak. The IRS man had four of the best days of his life, and even had an impromptu meeting in their hotel with one of his heroes, former Polish president Lech Walesa. Krozak keeps telling Wells that he doesn’t owe him anything, but Wells, unyielding as ever, will never forget that Tom Krozak bought him a cup of coffee and offered him friendship when he had nothing.

  In August 2001 Wells had his third surgery, this one a laser procedure that aimed to lessen the pain by burning the nerves in the lower back. The results were immediate. Even in post-op he could feel relief. When he said to his mother, “Mom, let’s go get a pizza,” she started to cry. His back is still stiff and Wells walks with a cautious, erect gait, but the acute pain is gone. For the first time in years he began to make plans, set goals. Early in 2002, the 1980 team met for a reunion game that was part of the NHL All-Star weekend in Los Angeles. Mark told his brother, “I’m going to go buy a pair of skates. I’ve got the itch. I want to get out on the ice, even if it’s for one shift.” Wells hadn’t skated for fifteen years. John Wells tried to talk his brother out of it. Mark refused to listen. He wasn’t going to talk to his doctors, get their opinion. He was going to get back on the ice with his teammates, and that was the end of it. He had felt separate and different for so long, a soloist in the grip of pain, out of harmony with the guys, with the world. “He led a very lonely life for ten years,” Krozak said. Even in the Olympics there were times he felt apart, underappreciated for the good work he’d done as Brooks’s designated checking center. Maybe it was that he played only fourteen games of the pre-Olympic tour. Maybe it was that the acclaim always went to the goal scorers, the marquee names. Wells knew he’d never be a Mike Eruzione, a less skilled player than he but a guy with man-in-the-street magnetism and volubility to spare. Wells never expected that sort of visibility or recognition. He just wanted to matter, to belong. To be on the ice. “I could skate better than I could walk my whole life,” Wells said. “This was going to be my lift. In my mind if I could get back out there I could get back in school, get my degree, get back in the mainstream.”

  With Herb Brooks standing behind him, Mark Wells sat on the bench in the Forum that night, in his new skates and his old No. 15 USA jersey and with a heart that raced with excitement. He skated one shift, had a shot on goal, and skated back to the bench. That was it. He had done it. It felt good to have the cold wind in his face and the warmth of old teammates all around him. He thought, This is the last time I’m going to put on skates. I can retire. This is how I want my hockey life to end.

  Mark Wells is scheduled to have one more operation. He’s on the dean’s list at Walsh, and his plan is to graduate in 2006. He’s thinking of getting into financial planning, helping people prepare for the future. There are so many options, and now he does want to think about them, get excited by them. Mark Wells is out of hiding and full of optimism.

  “Every day I wake up now and find out what’s on the agenda,” Wells said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

  ____

  Wells had effectively tied up Petrov, but with about five minutes gone, the Americans had a more acute problem. With his back turned, Rob McClanahan tried to shoot the puck down ice from near the U.S. blue line, but the puck caromed off the boards right to Zhluktov. The Soviet picked it off and backhanded the puck to a surging Sergei Makarov, who ramped up to full speed in a hurry. Makarov blew around Mike Ramsey, then knifed inside Ken Morrow, and swept in front. He was alone on Craig, ready to fire, when the puck rolled off his stick as he skidded toward the corner. It was frightening how fast the threat had developed, and how easily the score could’ve been 4–2.

  The 21-year-old Makarov had been creating mayhem from the beginning of the game, and indeed, from the beginning of the Olympics. If his teammates weren’t playing with urgency, he sure was. On the Soviets’ next rush, he came bursting through the defense again, splitting Ramsey and Morrow and heading toward goal before the puck spilled ahead and he lost his balance and went sliding into Craig by the right post, the two of them in a pile that was soon joined by Ramsey. Craig and Makarov, Centipede competitors the night before, were both slow to get to their feet. From his knees, Craig patted Makarov on his backside with his stick, a goalie’s salute to a forward on the rise. Makarov reciprocated with a stick tap on Craig’s right pad, then skated off to the bench. The game was three-quarters over, the score stuck at 3–2. A “U-S-A, U-S-A” chant went up. Time was getting short.

  Chapter Eight

  LEADING MEN

  There were just over 13 minutes to play, and the Americans had been able to mount almost no sustained offense. Myshkin had been in the net 27 minutes and seen just two shots—and none in the third period. From the left point, Krutov shot the puck diagonally across the ice, and Neal Broten chased it down along the boards and veered behind the U.S. net, building speed, ready to carry out and try to create something. Krutov bumped with Morrow and then slid over and took a swipe
at Broten with his stick. Kaisla blew his whistle, raised his arm. Krutov was sent off for high-sticking. He sat down in the penalty box, his youthful face a study in bemused annoyance. The United States had its first power play since the opening minutes of the game. It was a borderline call, and the crowd fired up immediately. Broten won the draw and got the puck to Christian, who hit Christoff, who carried it in the U.S. zone. The Soviets cleared, but Ramsey carried down the right side and shot it in around the boards, and Christian controlled and fired cross-ice to Broten. Broten steered the puck to Ramsey, who fired from the point, a low blistering drive that Myshkin stopped. In front, Eruzione tried to stuff the rebound in traffic but got sandwiched by Bilyaletdinov and Pervukhin, the Russian defensemen, and the puck bounced wide. Bilyaletdinov shot it out along the left boards and Vladimir Golikov raced across the U.S. blue line and wound up, a typically swift Soviet counterattack. Ramsey fell to the ice and got a piece of Golikov’s shot, deflecting it wide. The U.S. defensemen had been blocking shots effectively for six games, at no small cost. “You should’ve seen what they looked like—black and blue all over, especially Kenny Morrow,” Nagobads said.

  Broten carried the puck inside the Russian blue line and couldn’t find anyone to pass to, so he backed into the corner and backhanded a pass to Baker along the boards. Baker threaded the puck back to Broten, near the left of the crease, but the Soviet defense converged and knocked it away, and then Christian lost the puck to Petrov. The power play was disjointed, the positioning out of sync, the two minutes almost over. Baker, behind his own net, passed to Silk on the left side. Silk carried along the flank and edged toward center as he crossed into the Soviet zone. Valery Vasiliev, the man whose clean, hard check had injured Jack O’Callahan’s knee in Madison Square Garden, moved with Silk and went low to body him off the puck, and it worked. Silk started to sprawl to the ice but didn’t give up the play, sliding the puck toward the goal as he fell, toward Mark Johnson, who was stationed in front. Silk was one of those guys who had been on Brooks’s bubble for months, a player who heard constantly that he wasn’t skilled enough, wasn’t fast enough. He worked the door at a Boston rock club called the Paradise when he wasn’t beating goaltenders, but nothing prepared him for the drumbeat of criticism he got from Brooks.