2018 ATD Finals! Pittsburgh Bankers (1) vs New York Americans (2)

Namba 17

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May 9, 2011
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Александр Гусев: легенда №2
A. Gusev:
- По словам Виталия Давыдова, самым противным из этих чехов был Недомански. Плюнуть мог.
- Да все они такие - Голонка, Недомански, братья Штясны… Другие братья…
- Холики?
- Ну да, Холики. Младший, Иржи, еще ничего. А Ярослав… Прозвище у него было Сопливый. Морда красная, под носом что-то хлюпает. Еле дотронешься до него - падает, будто зарезали. А сами били исподтишка, плевали. За чехов меня Сергей Павлов, председатель Спорткомитета, и дисквалифицировал. Знаете эту историю?
- Нет.
- Началось с того, что Мариан Штясны врезал мне на своем пятаке. Тогда "Приз "Известий" разъездной был, по три матча. И вот в гостях проигрываем, Серега Капустин дает пас. Я промахнулся мимо ворот, а Штясны - кулаком в лицо! Ах ты, гад, думаю. И в ответ!
Q: Vitaliy Davydov said, that the most nasty was Nedomasky. He could spit
Gusev: All of them are like this - Golonka, Nedomansky, Stastny brothers... other brothers...
Q: Holiks?
Gusev: Yes, Holiks. Younger, Jiri was more or less ok, but Jaroslav... Dive as soon you touch him. They spat, made dirty hits. I was disqualified by our sport minister because of them. Do you know this story?
Q: No.
Gusev: Marian Stastny punched me in the slot. There was Izvestia cup, Kapustin made a pass, I missed and Stastny punched me in my face with his fist. I thought - what a bastard - and punched him too!

КУМИРЫ: АЛЕКСАНДР МАЛЬЦЕВ - "К АНДРОПОВУ С СУХАРЯМИ"
A.Maltsev:
- Александр Якушев рассказывал: Недомански, мол, был просто негодяем.
- Гадкий утенок. Плюнул в меня как-то...
Q: Alexander Yakushed told that Nedomansky was just a scoundrel

Maltsev: He was. He spat at me once...
 
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Namba 17

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May 9, 2011
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Did Balderis stop playing the game as a result of that slash?
No, but it was just a fluke - Bubla broke his stick! Commentators were surprised, that Balderis was ok.

Did any Soviet player stop playing the game as a result of a dirty play by the Czechoslovak player?
I can't remember right now. Probably, not.

Shame that the video is not available for foreign countries.
I'll try to find it and report my opinion. If you find this episode available smthere - let me know.
 
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VMBM

And it didn't even bring me down
Sep 24, 2008
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Helsinki, Finland
Did Balderis stop playing the game as a result of that slash?

Did any Soviet player stop playing the game as a result of a dirty play by the Czechoslovak player?

Shame that the video is not available for foreign countries. You would see Tsygankov punching Martinec down like in a boxing match. Certainly not an "overly tough" play that would happen in the "heat of the game". Game lasted only 2 minutes when the attack happened. Martinec did not play a single shift after that.

I would say Finnish sources are actually more trustworthy of describing the Czech-Russian rivalry than either Czech or Russian sources themselves - way more chance of impartial view.

I checked that Finnish book source that I mentioned (Talviurheilun sankarit; I have it at home, but I didn't have it at hand the last time since I was at work).
So, the (hockey) author is Jyrki Laelma, and, like I pretty much said, he lists two more incidents in addition to the 1974 World Championship; Vasiliev hurting Martinec in 1973 "in Moscow" (I've assumed it's the 1973 WHC, but I guess it could be 1973 Izvestia), and Petrov hurting Martinec at the 1975 Izvestia tournament. Of course, we have only his word on those, and it's always possible that other people considered it just "normal tough play", but it's hard for me to detect any bias against USSR and towards Czechoslovakia anywhere in the book. Too bad we don't have footage (as far as I know).

Furthermore, if you look at all the available Canada vs USSR games online, apart from game 6 of the 1972 series, in how many of them does one see Kharlamov being "brutally treated" or "hunted" (whatever term you prefer) by the Canadians? Zero? One? Two?

Here are the only cases worth a mention that I could come up with:

- Rick Ley beat him up after game 6 of the 1974 WHA series; did he try to deliberately injure him so that he couldn't play anymore, or was it - as I believe - just a frustrated player targeting his anger on the opponent's star player who happened to be there? Well, if it was the former, then Ley failed miserably, as Kharlamov played in the remaining two games (on the other hand, e.g. his linemates Petrov and Mikhailov were rested in game 8).

- The Flyers in the 1975-76 Super Series game vs CSKA, not even a Canada vs USSR game per se; did they hunt/target Kharlamov, or was it just a case of the Flyers playing "Flyer hockey" against the whole Russian team and its players? In any case, Kharlamov finished the game, and CSKA was beaten tactically rather than beaten because of violence imo.

- Game 1 of the 1979 Challenge Cup; Kharlamov was injured in the 3rd period of the game, and never returned to play in the series. In their preview of game 2, Dick Irvin and Bobby Orr say that Kharlamov was hurt after a check by Larry Robinson, but don't mention at least directly that the check was illegal. Unfortunately, the play in question seemed to have happened off-camera, or at least I have always missed it, so it is tough to say.

So, that's it, and even those are not something you could use as evidence of Kharlamov being systematically hunted down by the Canadians. I do believe that 'he got more attention' from the Canadians than the other Russians, as I do believe that it was similar with Martinec vis-à-vis the Russians.
 
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Namba 17

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May 9, 2011
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the (hockey) author is Jyrki Laelma, and, like I pretty much said, he lists two more incidents in addition to the 1974 World Championship; Vasiliev hurting Martinec in 1973 "in Moscow" (I've assumed it's the 1973 WHC, but I guess it could be 1973 Izvestia), and Petrov hurting Martinec at the 1975 Izvestia tournament. Of course, we have only his word on those, and it's always possible that other people considered it just "normal tough play", but it's hard for me to detect any bias against USSR and towards Czechoslovakia anywhere in the book. Too bad we don't have footage (as far as I know).
Thanks. It's pretty common knowledge to "students" of historical European hockey. I don't understand the denialism from some quarters.
Finally, I have some time to answer. I didn't find a 1974 WC video, but I trust @DN28 opinion on it. What I would like to say about it.
As we can see from Holy Finnish book, there were 3 incidents "Soviet - Martinec":
WC - 1974
Izvestia cup or WC - 1973
Izvestia cup - 1975.
So, Soviets didn't do anything to Martinec neither on WC-1972 (CSSR won the tournament), nor on OG-1972 (the main tournament for Soviets).
Soviets didn't do anything to Martinec on 1976 and 1977 WC (CSSR won the tournaments)
Soviets didn't do anything to Martinec on 1976 OG, when Soviets were 2 goals down and everything for them were at stake.
Soviets didn't do anything to Martinec on 1978 WC, when Soviets lost the first game and played the key second one with CSSR.
But yeah, definitely, Soviets decided to kill Martinec at such an important tournament as Izvestia cup-1975...
There is an unknown situation with 1973 incident - was it at WC or Izvestia. If it was Izvestia, I guess, we may close this case. As for WC - there were two games Soviet-CSSR on that WC. After the second one Martinec participated in the next game (the day in a day of the CSSR - USSR game and scored 2 points, so I don't think there were something wrong with him in this game). After the first one he missed two next games though, so, if anything happened to him on WC-73 it was at this game. But that game was absolutely crazy and dirty itself. They remember, that referees lost a control and players from both countries cared about hitting more, than about playing and scoring. There were a mass fight seven minutes before the end of the game, Kharlamov got 15 min of penalty time etc. So, Martinec could be injured, but not because of hunting from one side, but because of a character of the game itself.
So, if we look at this situation more carefully, add here what we know about CSSR-USSR rivalry, add here player's evidences (see above), add here video about games (see above) we'll see, that my statement about "two teams played hard and sometimes both played over the edge" is much more correct than "pretty common knowledge" about one-sided hunting.
 

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