Neal Broten was one of the few that had NHL careers and one of only two to win a Stanley Cup. He is the only 1980 player to score a game winning, let alone Stanley Cup series winning, goal in the NHL. Ken Morrow won 4 Stanley Cups with the Islanders. His first was in the same year he won the Gold medal. He went straight from the Olympics onto the Islanders roster in mid-season. I absolutely HATED the Islanders as a kid (I was a massive Flyers fan in the 70's and early 80's), but they were a GREAT team and Morrow was a GREAT defenseman. He hands down turned out to be the best player on the 1980 team and had to retire after 10 season due to injuries.
There are exactly ZERO players from the 1980 team in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
There are FOUR former Soviet players from the 1980 team in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
For me, this is why it is the greatest upset in sports history. Especially when you factor in that it is a team sport and a 60 minute game... there is no Hail Mary, there is no "one big punch," there was no "one guy waking up that morning and shocking everyone in a one-on-one sport. This was a quickly formed team of AMATEUR kids, losing 2-0 in the 2nd Period, that took down a team of professional men, that had played all day every day together for years, that were absolutely dominant and had just beaten Team USA 10-3 two weeks prior. The year before, in 1979 Challenge Cup, that same Soviet team played a 3 game series vs. an NHL All Star team that had TWENTY future Hall of Fame players on it... TWENTY. The Soviet team won 2 out of 3 games... the score of game 3 was 6-0... against TWENTY future Hall of Famers. For those of you who are hockey fans, scroll down to the NHL All Star roster (which was all Canadian and two Swedes... there just weren't many American players that were THAT good in the NHL yet) and look at that list of names... it's a stunning list of hockey titans.
1979 Challenge Cup (ice hockey) - Wikipedia
It truly was a miracle and the best part of the movie Miracle is probably the first few minutes of the movie lead in that try to recapture the state, and feeling, of our nation going into those Winter Olympics. It was an incredible win for the Team, and the nation.
