Suter's memories of Miracle on Ice extend beyond game against Soviets

Ryan Suter still has never watched the miracle come true.

The Minnesota Wild defenseman, whose father, Bob, played on the 1980 gold-medal winning Miracle on Ice United States men's Olympic team, can't come up with a reason for why he's never seen the most improbable upset in sports history in its entirety.
"I don't know, actually," Suter said. "I never really thought about it."
He thinks about it some more and realizes that maybe it's because Bob Suter also never watched his team's 4-3 win against the Soviet Union in Lake Placid, New York on Feb. 22, 1980, before he died from a heart attack on Sept. 10, 2014 at the age of 57.
He would always say he lived it, why does he need to watch it?
Approaching the 40th anniversary of the miracle coming true, Ryan Suter said he has the same mindset.
"Like, that happened and it's great, but he played in it, they won, you already know the result, so why watch it?" he said.
So he doesn't need to.
The stories of his father's role on the team, even with no points in seven games, the way the game against the Soviets unfolded, then defeating Finland for the gold medal, and how he spent the rest of his life treating being part of such a pivotal moment in sports history in the most humble of ways, all have served as motivation for Suter as a hockey player, teammate, son and father.
"Most of the stories I hear are of him being not the prankster but the guy that would try to bring everyone together," Suter said. "He was the grinder, the hard worker that tried to make things fun and light. He was a good teammate and he played a little reckless, a little crazy, had no fear in him. Those are pretty cool things to be said about you."
So are the other words about Bob Suter that make his son swell with pride more than any Olympic story could.

These are the stories he remembers, that he lived. They are of Bob Suter's life in Madison, Wisconsin as a sporting goods store owner, and rink operator, Zamboni driver and pro shop owner at Capitol Ice Arena in Middleton, which now is named after the Olympian himself.
"For me and people in Madison and Middleton, his legacy is he was just a great person, a humble guy, blue collar, hard-working," Suter said of his father. "I'll still run into people and they'll be like, 'Oh, I remember your dad, what a great softball player he was.' Or they'll say, 'I remember when I came into the store and tried to get skates and didn't have enough money, he told me just come back whenever I could pay him back.' They would take the skates and pay $20 or $50 a week, whenever they had it. For me, that's how I remember him. I think that was the cool part about him, it wasn't about the 1980 team, being on one of the greatest teams ever, maybe the greatest team ever. It was about being a hard-working, blue-collar, good person. That's how I remember him and the people back home remember him."
They also remember him for allowing his gold medal to be used by Ryan for show-and-tell in second grade -- at the request of the teachers, by the way -- because the future NHL star had no idea then what it was or why it was a big deal since his father never talked about it unless someone else brought it up to him, and even then he'd try to change the conversation.
"Teachers would ask me about it and I really had no idea what it was, what it meant, until I got a little older," Suter said. "It all makes total sense now, but at the time I had no idea, totally clueless to it."

Suter grew appreciative of his father's glory moment while watching his uncle, Gary Suter, play in the Olympics in 1998 and 2002.
"That made me want to be an Olympian," said Suter, a two-time U.S. Olympian who won a silver medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. "It was never about playing in the NHL, it was about playing college hockey at Wisconsin like my dad and my uncle did and then playing in the Olympics like they both did.
"To have your dad on that team that everyone was talking about, as I grew older it really just got more and more special."
It's to the point that now Bob Suter's gold medal is one of his son's most cherished items.
"My dad would probably just have it laying on the counter still, but we have it in a safe place," Suter said, adding the medal is in his home. "It's something we're very proud of and we keep it so our kids can show it off and be proud of their grandpa."
He admits to sneaking a peak at it every now and then too.
"The memories," Suter said. "It just brings back good memories for me, memories from when I was a kid. Now that he's gone it means that much more to us."