11/23/2023 0 Comments Wanted dead or alive the pariahTremblay, who was a really good defenceman in those days.”Įagleson, the de-facto general manager, coach Sinden, and his assistant, John Ferguson, handpicked the Canadian roster for the eight-game series. “So we lost that one and I’ve always wondered how it would have been different if we had Hull and J.C. When we looked into the cost of that, we realized it was something we couldn’t do,” said Eagleson. “Campbell told me ‘You can take Hull, but if you do that, we’re not undertaking the cost of guaranteeing contracts.’ That was a big thing back then. It wasn’t the competition that bothered him as much as he was troubled that his players would lose their amateur eligibility by playing against professionals. On one of his meetings in Moscow, he met with famed coach Anatoly Tarasov, who was concerned about any kind of play against NHL players. But the more he talked to the Russians, the more he realized that a best-on-best series was the way to go. Originally, Eagleson was thinking about a World Cup, not a Canada-Russia showdown. I am head of the players’ union, the workers. Then they said they would meet with NHL president Clarence Campbell if that could be arranged. They didn’t want to meet with me because I wasn’t an official in any capacity. “The next thing that happened, I call the Russians. He used expletives in place of adjectives, a lot of it was the kind of false bravado that would later get him in professional difficulty. You couldn’t help notice him or be impressed or insulted. He spoke fast and loud and with confidence. In those days, Eagleson was a whirling dervish. He had earned enough favour with enough Canadian politicians that he was able to get official letters from the government introducing him as a representative of Canadian hockey. On his own, Eagleson began showing up uninvited to international hockey events, at world championships, and began wining and dining executives, and making himself known. The two sides didn’t really get along.”Įagleson had a position on the board of Hockey Canada until he realized they moved at a speed he wasn’t familiar with: And he was almost at his best acting as a lone wolf. “Hockey Canada had just been created to get Canada back at a high level in international hockey. The practicality of it was the challenge. Now as the 50th anniversary of the Summit Series is being celebrated across the country in books and newspaper and magazine articles and televised documentaries, he has been all but forgotten, almost left out of the narrative he was once so much a part of. He was the first director of the NHL Players’ Association and played a huge role in the establishment of that. He has lost so much over the years, all of it his own doing - his reputation, money, his status, his Order of Canada, his ability to practice law, his place in the Hockey Hall of Fame. “When I hear, someone did this or someone did that, I think ‘Give me a fucking break.’ I know what I did.” Before he lost his way and went to prison, he changed the sport forever.Įagleson is 89 years old now, long removed from his time incarcerated for fraud and embezzlement, but sounding as sharp as ever in our hour-long conversation. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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