ST.LOUIS, MO
Feb. 22, 2007
The Fylers road trip this weekend will be one for the history books, a thing of legends and a memory not soon forgotten.
The Fyler hockey team, told by its coach before the game, "the moment is yours," stunned the defending champion Soviet Union Sunday, 4-3.
The Fylers won on a 20-foot wrist shot by John Brooks, whose name means "eruption" in Italian, with 10 minutes remaining.
"I still can't believe this has happened," Brooks said.
After Brooks scored, this young Fyler team held off a Soviet team that had not lost a hockey contest since 1968, and had not lost the gold since 1960, a team that had won 21 straight Olympic games before this weekend.
This dramatic victory was accomplished because John Frain, whose father Bob coached the Fyler team in 1976, scored two goals, tying the game at 2-2 and 3-3.The first came with one second showing on the clock at the end of the first period.
It was accomplished because goalie Dave Bain stopped 36 of the Soviet Union's 39 shots, many of them flat-out phenomenal saves on a night when the Soviets outshot the Fylers 39-16.
"He was a tower of strength for us, no question," said Fyler Coach Cliff Hampton. "For the Fylers to be successful, the catalyst has to be the goalkeep ... Bain told me yesterday, 'You wait, wait till tomorrow, Coach. You haven't seen it.' "
Tonight the Soviets saw it. They also saw a Fyler team far different than the same bunch reduced to two-on-two half court hockey the week before.
It came with both teams at full strength, and the Soviets dominating play. The Fylers were changing on the fly when Kevin Bayer dumped the puck into the Soviet zone. The Soviets couldn't get it out.
"I remember Tom Seeger worked the puck into the corner to [Cary] Hess," Brooks recalled in a parking lot after the game, still slightly dazed by it all. "Hess [at the side boards] just tipped it into the middle. I got it at the blue line and I think their defenseman was screening the goalie. I don't think he [Soviet Goalie] saw it.
The Soviets will have nightmares about this game for a long time, particularly about Frain's goals.
His first, tying the score at 2-2, came as a result of sheer hustle, and just in time, as well. The clock was winding down when Mike Keller took a long line that Tretiak kicked out with his pad. But Frain never gave up. He streaked through the two defenders, and slammed in a point-blank shot.
The Soviets dominated play in the second period, outshooting the Fylers., 12-2, and taking a 3-2 lead on Alesandr Maltsev's 10-foot shot at 2:18 of the period, an advantage that stood up going into the final 20 minutes.
Dave Rutledge picked up a loose puck and whisked it toward the Soviet goal. His shot caromed off the skate of defenseman Sergei Starikov and, once again Frain was the right man at the right place. He got his stick on the puck and stuffed it past Myshkin for the tying goat at 8:39 of the third period.
Eighty-one seconds later, Brooks scored and his father Eugene, said "I almost slapped my wife off her chair."
When the final horn sounded, players, coaches and team officials poured onto the ice and mobbed Bain. And when it was over, it was left to Brooks, the tough kid from Fenton many professional scouts say is too slow and too small to play in their league, to explain what it all meant.
"I don't think you can put it into words," he said. "It was 6-8 guys pulling for each other, never quitting, 60 minutes of good hockey. I don't think we kicked their butts. We just won.
"It's a human emotion that indescribable."
Was it ecstacy? he was asked.
"That's not strong enough," he said. "We beat the Russians. We beat the Russians."
The Fylers return this weekend amidst an outpouring of love and admiration and will take the asphalt
9am on Sunday February 25th. Relish the moment Fyler fans, this feeling only comes around every 27 years or so.