I just finished "The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team" by Wayne Coffey. It's available in hardcopy or digital form on Amazon. The last couple of minutes of the game are above.
Coffey's book was a pretty good read, especially given the dearth of quality books on ice hockey. My only quibble was Coffey's choice to intersperse the narrative of the game against the Russians with vignettes about the players on the team -- I would have preferred a chronological approach.
The book has some nice bits about strategy which I think are applicable to more than just the 1980 Olympic game. To wit:
•On one coach's coaching philosophy: "In coaching players, he treid to find the positive things they could do. The sign on the wall of Johnson's coaching office said, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
•On Herb Brooks' trying to beat the Soviets: "To compete with them, Brooks knew his team couldn't merely move fast. It had to think fast. The way he wanted to play the Russians put tremendous demands on players to read plays, anticipate, move without the puck. One of Tarasov's favorite sayings was "speed of hand, speed of foot, speed of mind. The most important of these is speed of mind. Teach it."
•Because of the Soviets' speed, Brooks kept his players' shifts to 35 to 40 seconds and had an assistant coach time it. The Russians realized the Americans had shortened their shifts, but were surprised by the tactic and continued to take their usual long shifts.
