The Greatest Comeback: How Team Canada Fought Back, Took the Summit Series, and Reinvented Hockey

The series you thought you knew: the first book written with the complete co-operation of the whole team

 “They’d stolen our beer and our steaks, and then to make it worse . . . they give us this Russian beer—the warm, skunky sh*t, and not the good, cold Labatts our sponsor sent. I remember thinking, ‘These pricks will never beat us again! They are not going to win another f*cking game.’”

—Rod Gilbert

When the Summit Series began on September 2, 1972, Cold War tensions could not have been higher. But that was the whole point of setting up this unprecedented hockey series. Team Canada, featuring the country’s best players—all NHL stars, half of them future Hall of Famers—would play an eight-game series, with four games played across Canada followed by four in Moscow. Almost everyone expected Team Canada to crush their untried opponents eight games to zero, with backups playing the last four games.

But five games into the series, Team Canada had mustered only one win against a tie and three stunning losses. With just three games left, Team Canada had to win them all, and on Moscow’s wider, unfamiliar rink. They would also have to overcome incompetent referees who sparked stick-swinging fights; surmount every obstacle the Soviets and even the KGB could throw at the players and their wives; invent a hybrid style of play combining the best of East and West, one that would change the sport more than any other factor before or since; and break down old rivalries to become a real team.

And they did it all.

With John U. Bacon’s unparalleled access to the players through dozens of interviews, The Greatest Comeback presents the incredible story of how this series inspired amazing heroics against long odds and under almost inhuman pressure—an experience so unforgettable that the players still consider the series to be the highlight of their storied careers.