Miracle hits a melancholy milestone at its 15-year mark

One turning-point scene in Miracle is harder to watch, for half of its participants have left this world too soon.

After Tim Harrer (Adam Knight), a belated addition to Team USA’s tune-up tour roster, leaves the locker room, those who legitimately made the initial cut commiserate.

“This is ridiculous,” says defenseman Mike Ramsey (Joseph Cure).

Although his roster spot is implicitly the most threatened, Mike Eruzione (Patrick O’Brien Demsey) insists “it’ll be all right.” But when he turns to fellow Boston University product Jack O’Callahan (Michael Mantenuto), the temperamental Terrier takes a cynical viewpoint.

“He’s just messing with our minds,” O’Callahan says, assessing coach Herb Brooks’ (Kurt Russell) rationale.

At that point, a third BU alum, goaltender Jim Craig (Eddie Cahill), enlightens the other three men. He explains Brooks’ backstory as the last player cut from the previous gold-medalist U.S. Olympic team.

Upon absorbing Craig’s conclusion that Brooks will “do whatever it takes” to ensure the next American champion, the players formulate an effective case against Harrer’s inclusion. Four scenes later, another quartet — including Eruzione and O’Callahan — persuades Brooks to restore the process they had signed up for.

In one of the 2004 film’s few Hollywood liberties, Mark Johnson (Eric Peter-Kaiser) argues, “We’re a family.” With that, the on-ice clutch artist clinches the case, and Brooks admits he is closer to cementing his team. Both within the literal 20-player maximum limit and in a moral sense.

And as many cast and crew members have repeated, because it does bear repeating, the movie’s squad of skaters-turned-actors gelled in its own right. To that point, in a DVD special feature, director Gavin O’Connor predicted a succession of cast reunions.

Naturally, the conventional approach to that would be any anniversary divisible by five. As Wednesday marks 15 years since Miracle’s release, it will be the third opportunity for a commemoration of that kind.

But regardless of anyone’s formal or informal plans to observe that occasion, it comes under sorrowful circumstances. In the time since Miracle celebrated 10 years in the cinema archives, both Cure and Mantenuto have died.

Fellow player/actor Sasha Lukovic, who portrayed Soviet Union captain Boris Mikhailov, has passed on as well. Among real-life figures who made the story possible, we have lost former U.S. depth defenseman Bob Suter and USA Hockey executive Walter Bush.

Bush lived to be 86, and was three days shy of his 87th birthday. But his September 2016 passing was no less painful for that.

In a world of perfect moral comprehensibility, fellow participants in the occurrence or retelling of the story who have joined Bush in the next life would have stayed here long enough to watch at least one more generation grow up.

Wisconsin’s Suter was on the job at the rink he managed in Madison when he suffered a fatal heart attack. His September 2014 death was the first among the 20 players who generated the screenplay at Lake Placid in 1980.

 

At its completion and release, Miracle already had a bittersweet aura hovering over it. The narrative’s catalyst, Brooks, had perished in an automobile accident in August 2003. Six months before the film’s grand premiere, the coach’s funeral marked a players’ reunion everyone wished could have waited.

When paying viewers saw the movie, they were left with the best message they could receive under those circumstances. A note dedicating the project to Brooks’ memory concluded, “He never saw it. He lived it.”

With that, Miracle acknowledged its instant importance as a tribute to the extraordinary event Brooks made possible. In depicting the investment before the payoff, the movie itself made a point of replicating that rigors-reward pattern.

As such, for its 15th anniversary and beyond, it must also stand as a tribute to the likes of Cure, Mantenuto and Lakovic. Ditto Suter and Bush, whose own work ethic beget the opportunity for the cast and crew to show theirs.

Among those in the movie, it should also elicit memories of how they lived beyond their moment of fame. They each had their way of exemplifying the selfless off-ice, postgame conduct their sport tirelessly espouses.

Cure was a month away from turning 32 when he died in a November 2015 auto accident. The former Junior A player had scrapped his plans to pursue collegiate hockey when he learned of the movie’s tryouts/auditions.

Ramsey, his fellow Minnesotan, would be Cure’s lone film role, and he carried on with his studies afterward. Per LinkedIn, Cure had served as an EMT for the Global Athlete Village before enrolling in medical school. He was on pace to graduate from Montana State University in Bozeman with a degree in neuroscience in 2017.

Cure was the first Miracle movie Team USA player to lose his life. Within another year-and-a-half, the collective family mourned Mantenuto, whose death on April 24, 2017, was ruled a suicide.

Mantenuto, a one-time forward at the University of Maine, dabbled in acting for two more films. The man whose triumphant scream in character as O’Callahan graces the Miracle poster subsequently entered a more consequential patriotic endeavor. He would log seven years in the Army, rising to the rank of staff sergeant.

“Those of you that knew Mike will remember him for his passionate love for his family and his commitment to the health of the force,” wrote group commander Will Beaurpre in a Facebook statement two days after Mantenuto’s death.

 

In a long-form People obituary, one of Mantenuto’s former Army colleagues, identifying as Teena, told the magazine, “He was so much more than just a Miracle actor.”

Highlighting his side work in hockey clinics and programs for those combating substance abuse, she added, “He is such an amazing person…He has touched a lot of people’s lives.”

At 35, Mantenuto was survived by his wife and two children. The first of his offspring had been born during the filming of Miracle. To that point, according to the DVD’s feature commentary, Russell brought up the subject to help Mantenuto smile as O’Callahan in the scene where the blueliner learns his pre-tournament injury will not end his Olympic dream.

The day after Mantenuto’s passing, Lakovic died in his native Vancouver, six months after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The veteran of 12 professional seasons, 37 NHL games and two movies (Miracle, Afghan Guards) was 45.

Like Cure with his medical studies and Mantenuto with his substance-abuse assistance, Lakovic made moves to improve people’s health and safety. In November 2015, he joined 23 fellow NHL retirees in a snowballing concussion-injury ligitation suit.

At that point, the man fans called “Pit Bull” spoke up invidually, telling CBC News, “If your kid ever hits the boards or tells you ‘dad, I’m not feeling so well,’ that’s a real message. I know a lot of parents want to see their kid make the NHL, but this is something you don’t want your kid to have.”

Lakovic’s passing prompted an outpouring of tributes, including from former teammates and fellow Vancouverite and fellow NHL scrapper of Serbian lineage Milan Lucic. In addition, the cruel coincidence of his death immediately following Mantenuto’s was hardly lost on Miracle viewers.

At the same time, there was some fond remembrance of his role in the movie. One user, Jon D. Allred, shared an on-set photo of Lakovic and Russell. That shot, among many other testaments, signified the unity of the cast even as they realistically recreated the competitive ferocity of the historic rivalry game.

Like the 1980 roster itself, the 2004 movie team scattered afterward. And while some members of the story’s grown family had their individual narratives cut short, they each genuinely represented that family while they could.

One can hope Brooks, Bush, Cure, Lakovic, Mantenuto and Suter will be able to share a Miracle anniversary screening in the Ultimate Skybox. They earned it.