After Olympic glory and immortality … financial services
By Rich Blake
The “Miracle on Ice” U.S. Olympic hockey team may never have beaten the Russians or won gold in 1980 had it not been for Bill Baker, a defenseman who in the tournament’s opening game scored a tying goal against the Swedes with 27 seconds left. Had the Americans lost the opener, well who really knows how history might have been altered? For all we know the Berlin Wall might still be up.
Baker isn’t remembered the way some players are, such as the captain, Mike Eruzione, or the star goalie Jim Craig. Baker played for the late Herb Brooks at the University of Minnesota. His roommate there was Phil Verchota, another lesser if not completely unknown Miracle on Ice team member. Verchota, a forward who also played on the U.S. hockey team in 1984 at the Sarajevo games, now resides in Bemidji, Minn., in the north central part of the state, lake and forest country. Baker lives in that area too, working as an oral surgeon. Verchota is the president of Deerwood Bank.
There are other members of 1980 Olympic hockey team who would go into finance.
Fellow Minnesotan Steve Janaszak, the backup goalie to Jim Craig and who played not a single second, came east after the Olympics as a member of the Colorado Rockies, which was then transmutating into the New Jersey Devils. While Janaszak played in two games with the Rockies before they moved (0-1-1 with a 5.63 GAA) he never appeared in an NHL game as a Devil. However, while with the organization and via some front office connections Janaszak was set up with an interview with none other than Goldman Sachs, according to newspaper interview Janaszak did in 1990. When the guy at Goldman found out Janaszak played for the ‘80 team he wanted to hire him on the spot, but in the mail room. Janaszak said he wanted to be a trader or broker or sales trader or salesmen, but the Goldman guy apparently said “you’ll never get a job there” which apparently did not sit will with Janaszak. To his credit he kept knocking on doors and ended up as a broker for LF Rothschild. He eventually became a bond salesman with Bear Stearns and at last check Robert W. Baird.
Another U of M alum, Rob McClanahan, is currently director of institutional trading in the Minneapolis office of ThinkEquity Partners, a money manager and investment bank. McClanhan started his career at Morgan Stanley in 1985 as a sales trader, moved to Bear Stearns in Chicago and then to U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray where he spent eight years in institutional equity sales and trading.
Dave Silk, who had one of the lengthier NHL careers, would join the asset management world, first at Putnam in Boston and then Cadence Capital.
Perhaps the most successful transition from Olympic hockey hero to bona-fide financial player was pulled off by Jack O’Callahan, who co-founded an institutional brokerage outside Chicago, Beanpot Financial Services, doing trades at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, now CME Group.
O’Callahan almost never made his date with destiny in 1980. Just before the Lake Placid games he injured his knee in a warm up exhibition game against the Soviets at Madison Square Garden, and he looked to be finished for the Olympics. But Brooks kept him on the team. Still sore and somewhat hobbled, O’Callahan got back on the ice in the Miracle game, and delivered a bone crushing mid-ice hit, knocking the puck free allowing Buzzy Schneider to score a goal which tied the game 1-1 and paving the way for the unlikely American victory.
