Trivia / Miracle

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• California Doubling: Many American street scenes were filmed in south central British Columbia.
• Cast the Expert: From the beginning, the film crew looked for hockey players they could teach how to act, because trying to do the opposite and still remain authentic would've been flat-out impossible. As a result, nearly all of those cast as hockey players had at least played at the major college level. A special example as mentioned below, Billy Schneider plays his own father, Buzz.
• Direct to Video: Unsurprisingly met this fate in some territories like the UK.
• Enforced Method Acting: To make the scene where coach Herb Brooks drills the team all night (after their 3-3 tie with Norway) as realistic as possible, the director filmed the real actors skating the drills for three 12-hour days. Their reactions, including collapsing from exhaustion and experiencing dry heaves, were completely genuine.
• Fake American: Of the main leads, Sean McCann (Walter Bush), Kenneth Welsh (George "Doc" Nagobads) and Eric Peter-Kaiser (Mark Johnson) are Canadians.
• Fake Russian:
  • Sarajevo-born Zinaid Memišević portrays the Soviet team coach Viktor Tikhonov.
  • The late Canadian hockey player Sasha Lakovic plays the Russian-born Boris Mikhailov.
• In Memoriam: The real Herb Brooks served as a consultant for the film's production before he died in a car crash six months prior to the film's release. There is a dedication for Brooks during the film's ending credits:
  "He never saw it. He lived it."
• No Stunt Double: In part due to having Cast the Expert, every hockey player did many (if not all) of their own stunts while filming, as mentioned on the making-of extras.
  "Hockey is a very physical sport; you can't fake those hits, and none of our guys shied away from them."
• Posthumous Credit: Though Herb Brooks was killed in a fatal car crash six months before the film's premiere, he's still credited as a consultant for the film.
• Promoted Fanboy: Many of the American hockey players had grown up hearing about/being inspired by the original game - particularly Billy Schneider, as his dad Buzz had literally been a part of it - and so were quite enthusiastic to partake in this film's recreation.
• Real-Life Relative: Buzz Schneider was portrayed by his son Billy.

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