“Within two days, I was a runner at the Merc and after eight weeks, I knew I had found something awesome.” “He said, ‘Can I make a phone call for ya?’ I said ‘Sure,’” O’Callahan said. Payton, an NFL Hall of Famer and Chicago Bear football legend, asked O’Callahan if he could help and then offered to make an introduction to a board member at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He was looking for an off-season internship of some sort when he and his wife went out to dinner with Walter Payton and his wife Connie. O’Callahan’s business career started in Chicago in the spring of 1984. He was dealt to the New Jersey Devils at the beginning of the 1987-88 season and finished the last two years of his NHL career in the Meadowlands. O’Callahan, who had been an All-American player and team captain at perennial college hockey powerhouse Boston University, signed with the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks and after two minor league seasons, joined the Blackhawks for the next five seasons. team to its miraculous 4-3 victory, giving the country a giant morale boost in 1980 during the Cold War. ![]() He was ready for the all-important game against the Soviet Union and helped lead the U.S. I missed the first two games against Sweden and Czechoslovakia, but played in the next five games.” “He put me on a very intense 5-time-a-day rehab and strength program and I recovered enough in those next two days to convince Herb to put me on the roster. Richard Steadman, America’s foremost orthopedic surgeon at that time, came in and said that I might have a chance to play, but it would be day-by-day and the decision would be made at the last minute,” O’Callahan remembers. He’d endure any pain not to miss out on a chance to go back up against the Russians and beat them in Lake Placid. Coach Brooks did not look optimistic. ![]() He had torn the ligaments in his left knee during an exhibition game against the Soviets, and in barely 48 hours the Olympic hockey rosters had to be submitted. ![]() The anguished look on O’Callahan’s face in the locker room at Madison Square Garden said it all. Olympic Hockey Coach Herb Brooks asks his superiors about Jack O’Callahan in the movie Miracle. He’s busted his ass for me for seven months and now I gotta send him home? Is that the deal?” U.S. team to its miraculous 4-3 victory over the Soviets, giving the country a morale boost at the height of the Cold War in 1980, is now a star in the trading business.
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