"If you don't want to be here, then leave. Because there are thousands who would like to be in your shoes," Eruzione recalled Brooks telling the newly formed team.

2. Don't be intimidated by change. Olympic rinks are 15 feet wider than National Hockey League rinks; the zone sizes are also different. That meant trying to teach veteran players a new style of hockey, Eruzione said.

"People said to Herb, 'You can't change what these guys have done their whole life,'" he recalled.

3. Respect the competition. The team had been doing well and gaining confidence during a series of exhibition games before the Olympics. Then a 4-4 tie with Norway came along, Eruzione said.

After the game, the rink managers started shutting the lights off thinking everything was done, Eruzione recalled, but an unhappy Coach Brooks kept the team on the ice and made everyone do exhausting drills for an hour and 15 minutes. "We named them Herbies because we loved them so much," he joked.

They did the drills because they lost sight of an important value, he said: "If you don't respect yourself, you will not be successful; if you don't respect the competition, you will not be successful." The next day, the team beat Norway 8-0 "to avoid doing [Herbies] again," he said.

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4. Focus on wins rather than losses. "When you're in front, it's easy. But a true test of a team, a true test of leadership – of character – is how you respond when you're behind," Eruzione said.

Right before the Olympics, the team lost its last exhibition game against the Soviets 10-3. Brooks didn't berate everyone after the game, Eruzione said. Instead, he told the team to forget how it played in the first period, when the score was 7-0, and remember that it played even with the Soviets for two periods.

"If he'd screamed at us, we'd have had our tails between our legs," Eruzione said. "Don't dwell on the negative; find something that's positive and, small as it might be, build off of that."

5. If you understand the value of work, at some point you'll be successful. "I've never met a company that's successful because they're lucky," Eruzione said. "Believe in old-fashioned values: Pride, respect, commitment. We had some talent, but we also had those values."

At the Games, the U.S. battled Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Romania and Germany, setting the stage for one of the most memorable hockey games of all time. With the media saying the team had no chance of winning, the moments before the game were full of pressure and nerves.

In the locker room, the team waited for Brooks to give a long, moving speech; instead, Eruzione recalled, all he said was, "You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours." The rest is history.