john bacon
Note: We all read The USA Today article minutes before going on air, or were still reading it. It will be discussed on the site later today.
Things discussed:
- John U. Bacon (or John F. Bacon to his friends) joins for hockeytalk.
- Hockeytalk: We all make our cases to JUB for why Naurato is a good hire. You know: Duh, duh, duh, and Duh.
- Hockeytalk: Scare me about Quinnipiac: They're a get-ahead and suffocate team.
- Hockeytalk: If they get past Quinnipiac, who do we want? Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, and B.U., obviously, because Minnesota is a better hockey team.
- Break: More hockeytalk: Quinnipiac's first line and one great defenseman.
- Spring game: O'Leary good or Amorion bad? Saw Zeke Berry, some defensive ends—Jaylen Harrell in particular cleaned up some gaping holes in his game.
- Basketball: They have a defense, but they need to get a real scorer to have any hope of being a Tourney team. Crucible moment for Juwan.
[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]
Ed- The following is an excerpt from John U. Bacon’s latest book, The Greatest Comeback, How Team Canada Fought Back, Took the Summit Series, and Reinvented Hockey. 
If you’re familiar with the 1972 Summit Series, according to its principles and participants this is the best and most comprehensive accounting of that incredible sports moment of many written.
If this is new to you, this book is the best introduction to one of the consequential moments in sports history, when East met West, when the hubris of liberal capitalism crashed into the cheap hypocrisy of totalitarian communism. It was the battle that inspired Rocky vs Drago, and introduced North America to the beautiful game played by the Soviets.
And all these guys talked. The executives, coaches, players, and superstars of the next generation who were inspired by what they saw all agreed to let Bacon craft the definitive version of one of the great sports stories of all time. Well, most of it—Mark Messier wrote the foreword. And in case the last sentence wasn’t a clue, this book is also, for my (U.S.) money, the most Canadian thing ever written.
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In September of 1972 Team Canada opened the newly created Summit Series as one of the most heavily favored teams not merely in the history of hockey, but in the history of sports.
Just about every Canadian fan, journalist, player, and coach expected the greatest hockey team ever assembled to crush its untested opponents eight games to zero. Team Canada’s leaders were so certain of victory that they traded away every advantage the Soviets could conjure, including the referees. They’ve also invited 35 players, two full teams’ worth—including Red Berenson—to their training camp in Toronto, and promised all of them that they would get into at least one game. Anticipating little competition from the Soviets, they figured they could use the older players for the first four games in Canada, then let the younger players mop up the last four games in Moscow.
But that is not, of course, how it worked out.
As we join the story Team Canada is now down 1-2-1 in the eight-game series, needing to win three of four in Soviet Russia to avoid a nation-shattering collapse. Three of their teammates are flying home, angry. The 300 Canadian steaks and pallets of Labatt's they had sent over have disappeared, now circulating through Moscow’s black market. Their wives are suffering every indignity the communist officials can come up with. The press is calling them thugs. The commissioner of the NHL is calling them entitled. And 85 percent of their countrymen—more than saw the moon landing—are watching.
[After the jump: Coach Red is born]
The Book
John U. Bacon is coming on to talk about this, ie "The Greatest Comeback: How Team Canada Fought Back, Took the Summit Series, and Reinvented Hockey."
Like you need more than a link to buy a Bacon book, core audience. He could have called it Hockey Canada's Lasting Lessons and you'd buy it. It's a Bacon book.
The Sponsors
Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. UGP makes custom apparel such as t-shirts and sweatshirts and was founded by 2 Michigan alums over 20 years ago. They have 3 retail locations in Ann Arbor and offer thousands of University of Michigan athletic products for sale, ranging from clothing to accessories and memorabilia. Check them out at ugpmichiganapparel.com or check out our selection of shirts on the MGoBlogStore.com!
And let’s not forget our associate sponsors: Peak Wealth Management, HomeSure Lending, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, Venue by 4M, and we are recording this on SignalWire.
Featured Musician: Craig Brown Band
Video is Here:
[After THE JUMP: What's to be said]
...something John writes would “have been funnier if he was kidding.”
We DO still have tickets available (we expanded it) so please get on that—the more MGoBlog readers in the audience, the more people will get my jokes.
Look, I wanted to save the club. Could you come up with a better idea?
So I called in, wormed my way past Miz, and issued a challenge. Somehow Sam Webb got blamed for it (16:30).
"M.A.C.'s defeat is nothing for her to be ashamed of. It simply was a case of a better-conditioned and smarter eleven overpowering another that, though it lacked nothing in the way of fight that its enemy possessed, failed to cope with the superior knowledge of the game that was Michigan's by right of judgment and the attending conditions."
Nails Vito, need more Michael.
Look at his beard; he spends all his time on that thing, and honestly, that’s the move.
on the radio uh oh, on the bradio uh oh, on the bradio uh oh, on the bradio ooooooh. Da dadum dadum: this is how it works...
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