Herbert Paul Brooks (August 5, 1937 – August 11, 2003) was an American ice hockey player and coach. His most notable achievement came in 1980 as head coach of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team at Lake Placid. At the Games, Brooks' American team upset the heavily favored Soviet team in a match that came to be known as the "Miracle on Ice".

Brooks also coached multiple National Hockey League (NHL) teams, as well as the French team at the 1998 Winter Olympics. He ultimately returned to coach the U.S. men's team to a silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. When Brooks died in a car accident in 2003, he was the director of player personnel for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Brooks was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990 and the IIHF Hall of Fame in 1999. He was honored posthumously with the Wayne Gretzky International Award in 2004 and inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2006.

Brooks was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Pauline and Herbert David Brooks. He attended Johnson High School, where his team won the 1955 state ice hockey championship.

Brooks continued his ice hockey career with the University of Minnesota Gophers from 1955 to 1959. He was a member of the 1960 Olympic team, only to become the last cut the week before the Games started. Three weeks later, Brooks sat at home with his father and watched the team he almost made win gold in Squaw Valley. Afterwards, Brooks went up to the coach, Jack Riley, and said, "Well, you must have made the right decision—you won". This humbling moment served as further motivation for Brooks, an already self-driven person.

From 1960 to 1970, Brooks set a record by playing for the U.S. national team eight times, including the 1964 and 1968 Olympic teams. While playing for the Rochester Mustangs in the United States Hockey League in the 1961–62 season, he formed part of the highest-scoring forward line in USHL history at the time, along with Bill Reichart and Ken Johannson.

After retiring as a player, Brooks first tried his hand at selling insurance. Lou Nanne, who played with Brooks on the 1968 team for the United States, helped recruit Brooks to become a coach. He was brought on to coach the freshmen at his alma mater, the Minnesota Golden Gophers in 1970. He coached the Minnesota Junior Stars from 1971 to 1972. Brooks was hired as head coach of Minnesota in 1972. He would lead them to three NCAA championship titles in 1974, 1976, and 1979. Nine members of the 1979 team that won the championship in March would be recruited for the 1980 Olympic team, which Brooks was already recruited to coach.

Brooks had been hired due to lobbying from Nanne and USA Hockey executive Walter Bush (after Jack Parker declined the position). Hand-picking his team, he named several of his Minnesota players to the team, as well as several from their rivals, Boston University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To compete with the Soviet Union team specifically, Brooks stressed peak conditioning, believing that one of the reasons the Soviet team had dominated international competition was that many of their opponents were exhausted by the third period. Brooks got Jack Blatherwick to work with him on testing the team in conditioning, as he had done for Brooks with testing the 1978–79 Minnesota Golden Gophers team on the ice and in a laboratory setting. The two worked on developing practice plans and drills to get the team in the best condition possible. Then, working with team doctor George Nagobads, shifts would be timed on the bench to make sure no one would be on the ice longer than 40 seconds to keep them ready to endure the Soviets in crunch time. The schedule for the team would be 63 games long, considerably longer than previous US Olympic teams. One particular game inspired a famed exercise when the team had a 3–3 tie with Norway. Brooks had his team do a sprint from the goal line to the first blue line and then back before then getting them to go to the red line and back, then making them go from the goal line to the second blue line before finally having them go from the goal line to the other goal line, which was called a "Herbie". It lasted for over an hour, even after the rink lights were turned off. The practice of doing a "Herbie" was not new to Minnesota players, as the team would do the practice at least once every two weeks, usually on the Monday after playing games on the weekend. The schedule saw them play the Soviet team two weeks before the Olympics, which saw the U.S. lose 10–3. The Soviet team went into the February 22 game for the Olympics having not lost once (with a tie to Sweden). They were tied 2–2 after one period and trailing 3-2 entering the third period before rallying with two unanswered goals to win 4–3. The victory was labeled by Sports Illustrated in 1999 as the greatest moment in 20th century sports. Two days later, the U.S. beat Finland to formally clinch the gold medal.