Miracle on Ice alum John Harrington to highlight team mindset to farmers at MN Ag Expo

The grit, determination and passion for putting in work – there’s a lot of similarities between what makes a successful hockey player and a farmer.  

Olympic gold medalist and longtime hockey coach John Harrington hopes to connect the two when he addresses attendees as a MN Ag Expo keynote speaker Jan. 20, 2026, at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center in Mankato.  

“Farmers have a blue-collar approach; they put in long hours and have to work hard, and they understand that’s what they have to do to have any type of success, and I saw that same mentality with my teammates on the Olympic team,” Harrington said. “And in hockey and farming there’s things you can’t control, and it’s how you handle those situations and take the next step.” 

Harrington, a native of the Iron Range community of Virginia, Minn., credits his high school and University of Minnesota Duluth hockey coaches for developing him into a great hockey player, which led him to the ultimate opportunity to play under Herb Brooks on the 1980 Olympic hockey team and cement his name in history as part of the “Miracle on Ice” team that shocked the world by winning the gold medal. Harrington’s grit and selfless play led to him tallying the assist on Mike Eruzione’s game-winning goal against the Soviet Union. He notes that the lessons learned from the Miracle team and the legendary Coach Brooks will be what he will stress to farmers during his keynote. 

“We found out that we can be stronger as a group than we could be as individuals, and that’s not just sports – that’s businesses, that’s jobs, that’s everything in life is the ability to work together and be stronger as a whole than trying to do everything by yourself,” Harrington said. “What I learned as a player and as a coach later in life, it’s that you have to be able to count on other people around you and they have to know as well that if we do this together, we can be greater as a group.” 

Beating the odds 

While farmers won’t see a gold medal presentation at the end of their harvest, they can probably relate to the sense of pride and accomplishment a hockey player feels after a hard-earned win. However, it might hard to match the feeling Harrington and the rest of the U.S. team felt after what they accomplished that miraculous day in Lake Placid, New York: a group of scrappy amateurs defeating the heavily favored Soviets.  

“There was this feeling of self-satisfaction that you set out to do something; you trained to give yourself the best opportunity to do that and sometimes things work out for you,” Harrington said. “At the moment there was this sense of accomplishment; this was what I dreamt would happen, this is what I trained like crazy to make it happen and it did.” 

Following his time with the U.S. National Team and a brief time playing professionally abroad, Harrington went on to a long career in coaching. He was an assistant coach at the University of Denver and then notched his first head coaching gig with a successful run at St. John’s University, where over 15 seasons he amassed a handful of conference titles and NCAA tournament appearances. He then returned to coaching Division I with the Minnesota State Mankato women’s hockey team, where he coached for nine seasons before retiring in 2024.  

“I really enjoy my time coaching in Mankato because I had a great group of players of who worked hard and wanted to get better,” said Harrington, who now lives in Maple Grove where he’s taken over a new career as a “professional grandkid watcher.” “I also really enjoyed being a part of the Mankato community and a great university.” 

Harrington’s return to Mankato for the MN Ag Expo is fitting because the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council booths are taking on a hockey theme this year. Also, for the first time in history, the MN Ag Expo floor has been extended to include the main hockey arena of the Mayo Clinic Health Systems Event Center.  

Let’s play hockey!   

“We’re really excited to have a hockey icon such as John Harrington join us at MN Ag Expo because hockey, like farming, is such a big part of our culture in our state,” said MSGA Secretary Kyle Jore, who resides in the hockey hotbed of Thief River Falls. “In the summer we grow soybeans and in the winter we play hockey. It’s what we do.”