Father to son: legacy on ice
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What lay buried in U.S. hockey history is alive and inspiring every day for Seattle Thunderbird Aaron Bader.
"The Forgotten Team" they were called, that 1972 U.S. Olympic hockey contingent that won the silver medal in Sapporo, Japan. They were sandwiched between the legendary 1960 gold medalists from the Olympics in Squaw Valley, Calif., and the nearly mythical wunderkinds from the 1980 Lake Placid Games.
But Bader knew all about them. The silver medal and No. 21 USA sweater are enshrined in the den of his family's home in Minneapolis.
They're more than a testimony to the only U.S. Olympic hockey team to earn a medal on foreign soil. They're a bond between father and son.
Bader's father, Larry, was a member of that U.S. Olympic hockey team 30 years ago. And for the T-birds' 16-year-old rookie left wing, the display case in the den isn't about ghosts from three decades ago. It's living history, a catalyst for accomplishment, a legacy of love and lingering passion.
Larry Bader's hockey experience is wildly different from his son's. And his Olympic experience is like a peek inside a time capsule.
As the family celebrates this sentimental 30th anniversary in Seattle with Aaron this weekend as part of the T-birds' annual Parents Weekend, they'll recall a country at war, an Olympic flame fanned by political partisanship, an amateur innocence about the Games, revolutionary training tactics and mediocre media coverage.
Americans were polarized on the homefront and perishing in Vietnam in 1972 when Bader, who just had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, was the 20th and final player chosen for the Olympic team.
"Stu Irving literally was flying combat missions in Vietnam when he came back home to play for the team,'' Bader remembered. "Another was in the Air Force. Half the people on the team were from the armed services."
Backup goaltender Pete Sears was among the Vietnam veterans.
"My dad had hippie friends who didn't want to have anything to do with the government," Aaron Bader said, "and they wanted him to forget hockey and protest with them."
The Olympics always have provided a worldwide stage for protest, political statement and patriotism like no other, and the 1972 Czech-USSR hockey game was a prime example. Mark Howe, Larry Bader's teammate, called that contest the most brutal he'd ever seen. The indomitable Russians won 5-2 but not without a few editorial comments from the Czechs in this first meeting since Soviet tanks had rolled into Prague in the summer of 1968 to quash a democratic uprising.
Howe said later that the Czech goaltender "must have broken five sticks over Russian players." And he said he won't forget the third-period faceoff in which Czech star Vaclav Nedomansky won the faceoff in the USSR's zone and, instead of shooting it at the net, fired it with all his strength into the enemy bench.
U.S. Coach Murray Williamson endorsed a new sort of preparation, though, after watching the Soviets train. "They ate steak before every game,'' Aaron Bader said. "You don't see that anymore — now you see pasta. It was the first time they worked with weights. They would swim in the morning, take a nap, get something to eat, then work with weights. The team had never worked that hard before."
Television coverage in 1972 was decidedly lame. "My mom didn't even know we had won the silver medal until I came home," Larry Bader said. That's because the network ended its daily broadcast from Sapporo just minutes before the U.S. hockey team stepped to the podium for the medal ceremony.
Aaron Bader said his dad "isn't going to be complaining just because they didn't get the recognition the other teams did."
Larry Bader is getting the recognition from the most rewarding source: his son.
Aaron Bader played for Team USA in the Four Nations Under-17 Tournament in Slovakia last summer. He was the team's and the tournament's second-leading scorer.
His father had told him he would get goosebumps when he put on that USA sweater to represent his country and when he would hear the "Star-Spangled Banner" played. "Aw, c'mon now ... ," Aaron scoffed at the time. But when the Americans won the gold medal, Aaron Bader said he felt those goosebumps. And he felt what his father must have felt nearly 30 years before.