Mark Wells, St. Clair Shores native on Miracle on Ice hockey team, dies

Mark Wells, the metro Detroit native who was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team best known for the Miracle on Ice, has died, according to the Bowling Green athletics department. He was 66.

Wells, hailing from St. Clair Shores, graduated from Lake Shores High School before playing for Bowling Green from 1975-79, and then joined the Olympic team for its gold medal run in Lake Placid, New York. He was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in 1977 and joined the organization after the Olympics.

A checking-line center for the U.S., Wells had a goal and two assists in the 1980 Olympic tournament in which the Americans beat the Soviet Union in the semifinal round for the famed victory and then followed it up with a gold-medal conquest over Finland. He bounced around in the minor leagues for a couple seasons, including for the Flint Generals, before retiring from pro hockey in 1982.

He went on to manage several restaurants in metro Detroit but suffered a back injury at work in the mid-1980s; that aggravated a genetic condition, leaving him to endure nearly two decades of surgeries and pain before eventually learning to walk again.

Wells was inducted into the Bowling Green Athletics Hall of Fame in 1992.

St. Clair Shores renamed its ice rink at the Civic Center after Wells in 2014, some three-plus decades after the city council originally voted to do so.