X
  • Culture
  • TV & Movies
  • Entertainment

Twitter sheds happy tears over Olympic gold-medal hockey game

Miracles on ice can come more than once in a lifetime.

Headshot of Gael Cooper
Headshot of Gael Cooper
Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper

Do you believe in miracles? If you remember the historic US Olympic hockey victory over the Russians at Lake Placid in 1980, you know the answer to that question is always a resounding yes. 

And if you stayed up late Wednesday night to watch the US women's Olympic hockey team claim the gold medal over Canada in a shootout in Pyeongchang, South Korea, then you know miracles aren't a once-in-a-lifetime event. The 3-2 victory ended Canada's streak of four straight Olympic gold medals.

Fans rejoiced in a way that no one could've imagined back in those Lake Placid days, sharing memes and joy on social media.

US goalie Maddie Rooney, who stopped shot after amazing shot in the shootout, was a favorite, and she even earned a few new titles in her Wikipedia entry.

And don't forget Jocelyne Lamoureux, who scored the winning shootout goal with some brilliant stickwork. (Her twin, Monique, scored the goal that sent the game into overtime.)

Fellow Olympians, including Olympic ice-dancing medalists Alex and Maia Shibutani and figure skater Adam Rippon, were rooting for their fellow Americans.

And even Jim Craig, the goaltender back in 1980 on another Feb. 22 when the US beat Russia in the "Miracle on Ice" game, weighed in. (It would be two days later, on Feb. 24, 1980, that the US claimed the gold medal.)

But no question, it was a hard way for Canada to take the silver, and loyal fans stuck by their team.