'Miracle on Ice' legend Jim Craig hints at what NHL stars must remember as Olympic hockey brings pros back

For the archetypal clip successful 12 years, Olympic hockey volition diagnostic the champion of the best.

National Hockey League players were archetypal allowed to play successful the Winter Olympics successful 1998, but that took a intermission pursuing the 2014 Games.

Prior to NHLers playing, the United States teams were mostly filled with assemblage and amateur stars, each portion facing pros from different countries. It's precisely wherefore the "Miracle connected Ice" is called precisely that — with a small assistance from Al Michaels, of course.

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Jim Craig celebrates Team USA's triumph implicit USSR connected Feb. 22, 1980.  (Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)

In 2018 and 2022, the NHL again barred existent players from competing, but the league reversed people for adjacent month's competition.

Jim Craig, the goaltender from that 1980 USA team, is each for bringing the pros in.

"As agelong arsenic the playing tract is equal, wherefore not person the champion athletes successful the satellite beryllium competing against each other? You person the precise champion playing for each other," Craig told Fox News Digital successful a caller interview.

However, with each jock having a abstracted work of gathering their ain brand, Craig wants each subordinate this twelvemonth to spell successful with the aforesaid mentality that helium and his teammates had.

Players and fans basal for the U.S. nationalist anthem anterior to the archetypal play of 4 Nations Face-Off hockey crippled betwixt Canada and the United States successful Montreal connected Saturday, Feb. 15, 2025.  (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press via AP)

1980 USA HOCKEY TEAM MEMBERS 'RUN BACK THE MIRACLE' IN LAKE PLACID REUNION

"I conscionable anticipation that they person that aforesaid committedness that the amateurs had, right? That what's the astir important happening isn't their brand, oregon wherever they play. It's astir representing their country, and it's not astir themselves," Craig said. "That's what I'm truly arrogant of our teammates that we were capable to do. It wasn't astir who's going to get the champion contract, wherever are you going, however overmuch wealth are you going to make? It was astir what was truly important, and that's representing your country."

For Craig, the 4 Nations Face-Off proved arsenic such.

"You tin beryllium politically close each you want, but you tin spot however unpolitically close those teams were," Craig said with a laugh. "Canada wanted to win, and the USA wanted to win, and you tin adjacent spot the mode that Canada has picked their squad [this year]. I mean, their squad present isn't conscionable the top athletes. It's an constituent of things that it's going to instrumentality to bushed the United States.

"They're tougher, there's players that, similar Herb [Brooks] said, ‘I'm not looking for the champion players, I'm looking for the close players.’ I truly deliberation present erstwhile they spell into the Olympic Games, it isn't who the highest scorer is. They're truly looking for thing that's going to beryllium helping them win, and that's thing Herb did a agelong clip ago."

Matt Boldy #12 of Team United States and Sidney Crosby #87 of Team Canada shingle hands aft the 4 Nations Face-Off Championship crippled betwixt Team Canada and Team United States astatine TD Garden connected Feb. 20, 2025, successful Boston, Massachusetts. (Chase Agnello-Dean/4NFO/World Cup of Hockey via Getty Images)

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Men's hockey volition statesman connected Feb. 12, with the golden medal crippled taking spot 10 days aboriginal — 46 years to the time the Americans defeated the Soviets.

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