in the spring and summer, stations would want the hockey telecasts to create a year-round Monday night sports block; however, very few ABC stations chose to pick up the package. In , ABC was contracted to televise Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Since the Finals ended in five games, the contract was void. Had there been a seventh game, then Al Michaels would have called play-by-play alongside Bobby Clarke (color commentator). Jim McKay would host the seventh game in the studio, and Frank Gifford (reporter, who would have been in the winning team's dressing room to interview players and coaches as well as hand the phone to the winning team's coach that would have allowed him to talk to both President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau). This would give Michaels the honor of being the first to provide the play-by-play in four of the five major professional sports, having called the Super Bowl, the World Series, and NBA Finals. The game would have started at 5:10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on a Saturday, replacing Wide World of Sports and local news shows that typically followed it on ABC stations in the Eastern and Central time zones. It was also around this time that ABC offered the NHL a limited deal, splitting the network and show the NHL in the Northeast and Midwest and NASCAR in the South on Sunday afternoons, that NHL president John Ziegler Jr. quickly rejected. ABC's coverage of the Winter Olympics Even though ABC didn't yet televise National Hockey League games, they were the American network broadcast home of the Winter Olympic games beginning in 1964 and continuing through the 1988 Winter Games from Calgary. For the ice hockey events, employed Curt Gowdy for play-by-play duties in 1968 and 1976 (NBC had the broadcasting rights for the 1972 Games in the interim) Games. Gowdy worked with Brian Conacher for the 1976 ice hockey events. For years later at Lake Placid, ABC was on hand for a medal-round men's ice hockey game that would soon become known the "Miracle on Ice". On February 22, 1980, the United States team, made up of amateur and collegiate players and led by coach Herb Brooks, defeated the Soviet team, which consisted of veteran professional players with significant experience in international play. The rest of the United States (except those who watched the game live on Canadian television)