1972-1973 part 6:
Before we´ll finally move on with this to the next season, let me mention here a few last things and details from this season.
1) World Championship 1973.
Czechs failed to follow up their success from previous championships, gold medal in 1972 and close second to Soviets in 1971. It´s clear from contemporary accounts of coaches and writers published in
Gól magazine, as well as from game reports published in
Československý sport, that three main problems or obstacles arose:
First, the continuous progression towards tougher, more physical hockey in Europe. This seems to be direct result from the Summit Series ´72. The first encounter of elite European players versus NHL professionals led to yet another increasement in toleration of both “fair” and “unfair” physical hockey (practices that were within the rules but also outside the rules). CSSR team were deemed as the worst compared to Soviets, Swedes and Finns to adjust to these changes. And it´s no coincidence that the very same struggle happened at WHC 1970 – after the establishment of bodychecking all over the ice. Just like in 1973, CSSR in 1970 managed to earn the bronze medal only, while not posing any serious threat to Swedes and Soviets. In fact, Czechs surprisingly hard-fought Finns too (in both cases, 1970 and 1973). It didn´t come as a surprise to me, the Czech hockey history books usually paint the picture of “great skaters and technicians who struggle with more aggressive physical opponents” that Czechoslovak players tend to be. I don´t think this picture was always accurate but I´m sure it was a fact for these two championships. I also think that this problem affected the Czech forwards more than defensemen who, I think, adjusted better.
Second, huge amount of injuries that cost the team any serious chance to defend the title from previous year. Probably never before or since, the Czechoslovak team had so much bad luck in terms of untimely injuries. I´ve already mentioned Martinec who had suffered from torn ligament in the knee from the exhibition game against Poland right before the Championship and subsequently from concussion carried from the 1st game vs. USSR. Jaroslav Holik struggled with injuries during the whole season, but specifically I believe he had a chipped ankle several weeks before the championship and did not fully recover. Josef Horesovsky, Jiri Kochta and Milan Kuzela played through various injuries as well. Another one was Vaclav Nedomansky who did not have an injury per se, but went through a severe tonsillitis illness right before the championship started which obviously negatively affected primarily his conditioning.
Third, time for preparation. Championship started on March 31 and Czechoslovakia shut down the League and elite players gathered to training camp on March 9 – so the Czechs had roughly 3 weeks of preparation and it was already a lot in comparison to previous years. Up to 1970, National team basically got together for just a few days before the tournament, played one or two exhibition games with someone and that was it. But the Soviets in 1973 were able to shut down their League already on February 21 and their preparation time for the tournament lasted for 5 weeks! This was again seen as quite troubling for the Czechs in terms of how exactly are they supposed to beat USSR in competition if they won´t even match the amount of training devoted the best possible result at the following championship in the first place? As I´ve written at the end of Part 5, increasing need for more time for WHC preparation was the main reason why CSSR League´s playoffs did not continue after 1973.
Next, I´m going to mention NT coaches´ thought process of picking up the players for the team and their own post-WHC reflection of what mistakes they had done.
Vladimír Kostka published several articles on this topic in
Gól magazine. I will either summarize or directly translate the most interesting parts:
“Conception of the game of our team is always a representation of direction which prevails in the highest competition [= 1st CSSR League]
. Its creation is influenced by: previous development, contemporary external conditions, especially typical mentality of our people, a system of preparation of players from pupils up to National team, societal status of the sport, material conditions, at which it is executed on mass level and on the peak-performance level too.
Inner influence is given by conception of the game which is created by cooperation of coaches and chosen players, co-creating a collective of the National team. Currently, it plays hockey that has earned international recognition and essentially builds on the strictly organized defense which allows quick and relatively secured attacks from defense point of view.
It´s not sufficient just to generally establish a system during this formation of conception of the National team game, but it [a system]
needs to be defined very concretely, such that address not only ideas of coaches but also capabilities of players from broader range. Unfortunately, options of this broader range of players are here the smallest from all the matured hockey countries. By the systematic management, we develop one or two 1st-league-caliber players from the basic number of 50 pupils, and approximately one tenth of them later gets into the National team. If we count the base of pupils in the Soviet Union in their ‘Golden Puck’ competition for millions, if we take into account Swedes calculating with their natural northern weather conditions and their almost a triple the amount of artificial ice rinks [than ours]
with tens of thousands of hockey players! We count the youth only for thousands! We maintain high level only due to well thought-out qualifications of coaches and style of play that corresponds to our conditions.
(…)
Quick penetration [into the offensive zone]
with creative situational solutions suits our players, while gradual attack with penetrating into the organized tough defense of an opponent remains a heavy problem for them. Goals, that National team allow, come mostly after gross errors, which unforeseeably occur in the plays of individuals. These mistakes can be limited by training but cannot be completely expelled. Number of goals allowed, which is a certain measure of success of defense game, reveals our competitiveness with USSR and Sweden (USSR allowed 18 goals, Sweden 23 and CSSR 20). Low count of goals scored (USSR 100, Sweden 53 and CSSR 48) points to not only our old weakness in finishing offensive actions, but also to the reality that Soviet and Swedish team distinctly improved defensive game compared to last year."
Now to the question of nominations and performances: Kostka says that there were no serious objections to the nomination for the Moscov ´73 at the council of coaches. Julius Haas won the league goal-scoring but was left off for “disciplinary reasons”. Jan Suchy did not play well enough during the League´s finish. Another quality borderline players, such as Rudolf Tajcnar and Vladimir Bednar, who were also members of the ‘golden team’ from last year, were injured or ill and unable to play. Otherwise, several younger players (d-men Kajkl and M. Dvorak, LWs Ebermann and Pouzar, Cs Brunclik and Novy, RW E. Novak) were on the borders of nomination but older experienced players were preferred instead, especially if these experienced players had already played previous year in Prague ´72. In hindsight, Kostka writes that mainly Bohuslav Ebermann and maybe even Bedrich Brunclik could be considered as an omission – player(s) that would have been picked up instead of some other skater. Kostka also writes that E. Novak as the best remaining RW would come in handy as a replacement for heavily disabled Martinec. However, coaches believed that if they choose more or less the same ‘golden team', the worst possible result will still be a solid 2nd place. They realized only after the championship ended, that a lot had changed and that many players apparently had hit their peak performance in 1972. Most of these players could not be compared to other top internationals in terms of speed, toughness or strength.
“It became most evident with the Jaroslav Holík´s unit where his brother Jiří remained the only dominant player.”
Chemistry between players was another key factor: whole 1st line of Pardubice and Jihlava (easily 2 contemporary best domestic teams) were chosen explicitly for this chemistry reason (that is Stastny-Novak-Martinec and Holik-Holik-Klapac lines). From other forwards, Nedomansky, Hlinka and Farda were chosen automatically based on their strength of individual performances. Forwards Kochta and Palecek were proven from their WHC ´72 play and both noted for their ability to up their game on the international scene relative to their league play – especially Kochta. Recall the Charouzd´s article from above the Part 1 of 1972-1973 season´ write-ups: “
Combinations in the National team. These problems of chemistry and integrity of a hockey unit are carrying into the National team too. It is composed from players from nine clubs and it´s based off only of the club team´s pairs, trios of forwards at maximum, while every one of defense partners dress different league jersey. Although we do have undeniably high-level balanced competition, we still miss a distinctive top team. Individuals excel in the teams – Holeček, Machač, Pospíšil, Farda, Hlinka, Kochta, Brunclík, but rarely the two like Holík brothers or Nedomanský-Haas, and exceptionally the whole forward line like the Pardubician Martinec-Novák-Šťastný, while there can´t even be a debate about the whole 5-man team unit suitable for the National team yet. Considering these conditions, the previous year´s success of the National team at the World Championship excels so much more.” The chemistry within the whole 5-man units, or precisely the lack thereof in the Czechoslovak team, was considered as one of the serious flaws compared to the Soviet National team that should be somehow mitigated. Issue was that Soviets were already much better prepared in terms of physical conditioning – a factor that could be hardly matched or surpassed by the Czechs – therefore a push against inner-unit or inner-line chemistry as a pro-Soviet playing factor, that can be realistically matched and solved.
As far as the best CSSR players go…
“Only goaltender Holeček fully satisfied, truly the best one at the championship, from forwards merely a very hardworking Jirka Holík and enterprising Kochta (in spite of his injury).”
To finish off this topic to its entirety, here are the coaches´ selections when
Československý sport asked them to name the temporarily best players at each position half-way through the 1973 championship (I´ve already mentioned this in Part 2):
J. Pitner (CSSR): Abrahamsson –
“I´m not going to name any one defenseman because I would harm many others.” – Söderström.
L. Lunde (FIN): Holeček – Pospíšil – Petrov.
V. Bobrov (USSR): Holeček – Pospíšil – Petrov.
K. Svensson (SWE): Holeček – Vasiliev – Petrov.
2) Ontario Cup 1973.
After the Izvestia Cup played out in late December, Czechoslovak players subsequently travelled to Canada to participate in Ontario Cup in January 1973. It was, I believe, the last encounter, “the swan song” of the Czechoslovak National Team vs. Canadian amateur teams match-ups. It is noted in many articles that the amateur hockey in Canada had found itself in serious crisis for obvious reasons of NHL expansions. The creation of WHA in 1972 almost seemed like a “nail in the coffin” at the time, indeed the tone of articles, where CSSR writers mixed their own view of things coupled together with citations coming from people from CAHA circles, is quite grim.
Professional leagues vacuumed all the quality players they could and subsequent results of the European teams at the Ontario Cup showed that the Euro National teams should really focus on playing professionals from now on exclusively. CSSR National team played under the name “Team Prague” but it was mostly all the best CSSR players, other European teams were Dynamo Moscow and Timra (Swedish hockey club). Zdeněk Andršt (head of the CSSR hockey association) concluded that best hockey games were played strictly between these three Euro teams and that Chernyshov´s Dynamo was the only team that forced Czechs to put out their best effort. I can´t find the full results of the tournament but it is mentioned in Ivan Ďurišin´s summary of the tournament (writer for the
Tip magazine) that at least Dynamo won all their games vs. Canadian teams too and finished 2nd. Not sure about Timra but I think they won most of their games vs. 'Canada' too…
One of the biggest factors of completely outplaying Canadian teams seemed to be simply a better conditioning. At least that´s what Jaroslav Pitner suggested when he talked that the 1st periods of these games were relatively even but huge differences in the scoresheet appeared in 3rd periods when Canadians could not withstand the pressure anymore.
Frantisek Pospisil was declared the best player of the tournament and carried home the MVP award.
It´s interesting that Andršt mentioned that Czechoslovak hockey authorities made close contacts with NHL franchises Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres during this trip. It is mentioned they tentatively agreed upon a common camp and exhibition games during off-season. Idea was that these teams would arrive approximately in May to Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovakia would arrive in September to either Toronto or Buffalo. Such a shame that it never materialized! Anyway, specifically Punch Imlach, at this point a Sabres GM, showed a lot of interest in the Czech team, as I´ve already mentioned in Part 4, Imlach tried to lure Vaclav Nedomansky into his team but failed to do so.
3) International games in 1972-73.
Československý sport listed all the games and results that top National teams played over the course of entire season. It´s noted that the reason why this season was so interested is that the volume of international games played was never so high any time before.
USSR:
Summit Series, 8 games vs. Canada (7:3, 1:4, 4:4, 5:3 and 5:4, 2:3, 3:4, 5:6).
Izvestia Cup, 4 games, all wins (10:2 vs. SWE, 8:4 vs. CSSR, 11:3 vs. FIN, 5:1 vs. POL).
USA and Canada tour in January, 6 games, all wins (12:3 vs. Canada juniors, 13:3 vs. USA, 6:3 vs. Dukla Jihlava + 5:4 vs. Phoenix Roadrunners, 8:2 vs. San Diego Gulls, 9:4 vs. “Nightwanks").
WHC preparation, 8 games, 1 loss (3:4 vs. SWE), 7 wins (14:3 vs. combination of EV Füssen and Bad Tölz, 13:2 vs. Düsseldorfer EG, 17:2 and 7:0 vs. EV Füssen + 5:1 and 5:2 vs. FIN, 9:4 vs. SWE).
26 games for USSR before the championship in total, 20 wins, 5 losses, 1 tie.
CSSR:
Before Summit Series, 3 games vs. Eastern Germany, 1 tie (2:2), 2 wins (3:1, 8:1).
Post Summit Series, 1 game vs. Canada (3:3 tie).
Autumn, 2 games vs. Sweden, 2 wins (10:4, 3:2).
Izvestia Cup, 4 games, 2 ties (2:2 vs. SWE, 1:1 vs. FIN), 1 win (3:0 vs. POL), 1 loss (4:8 vs. USSR).
Ontario Cup, 7 games, all wins (6:3 vs. Owen Sound Downtowners, 8:5 vs. Galt Hornets, 5:3 vs. Moscow Dynamo, 7:1 vs. Brantford Foresters, 14:1 vs. Windsor Spitfires, 6:1 vs. Timra, 9:1 vs. Ages Kingston).
Winter 1973, 6 games, 5 wins (6:1 and 6:2 vs. CSSR juniors, 3:2 and 2:1 vs. FIN, 6:1 vs. SWE), 1 loss (0:2 vs. SWE).
WHC preparation, 5 games, 4 wins (8:2 vs. POL, 6:0 vs. FIN, 3:1 and 8:4 vs. USSR B-team), 1 tie (2:2 vs. FIN).
28 games for CSSR before the championship in total, 21 wins, 2 losses, 5 ties.
Sweden:
Before Summit Series, 1 game vs. CSSR juniors (7:5 win).
During Summit Series, 2 games vs. Canada, 1 loss (1:4), 1 tie (4:4).
Autumn, 4 games, 3 losses (4:10 and 2:3 vs. CSSR, 1:5 vs. FIN), 1 win (4:2 vs. FIN).
Izvestia Cup, 4 games, 1 loss (2:10 vs. USSR), 2 ties (2:2 vs. CSSR, 2:2 vs. POL), 1 win (3:1 vs. FIN).
Games in winter 1973 + immediate WHC preparation (it´s not differentiated here…), 5 wins (2:0 vs. CSSR, 5:1 vs. FIN twice, 4:3 vs. USSR, 12:3 vs. West. Germany), 2 losses (1:6 vs. CSSR, 4:9 vs. USSR).
18 games for Sweden before the championship in total, 9 wins, 7 losses, 3 ties.
4) Frantisek Pospisil.
Pospisil had an interesting season. After his peak 1972, he regressed a bit but still showed flashes of brilliance over the season. He performed overall pretty good in the League, led d-men in scoring for third time straight with 24 points (7+17) and finishing 3rd best in +/-. Funny that 2nd most productive league d-man was Pospisil´s own D partner Bohumil Cermak (13+5). Pospisil had some injury issues in this season and in following one, which somewhat slowed him down. Kladno was at this point absolutely dependant on him, which was clear from game reports I´ve read and also from forementioned Charouzd´s article from Part 1, mentioning how Kladno
“took a deep swing during Pospíšil´s injury.”
Apart from a few injuries and thus missed games, Pospisil had somewhat slow start into the season finishing 7th in the 1st quarter of the Golden stick voting. His form though upgraded in January when he won that Ontario Cup MVP award… and some recognition from the side of Canadian observers, as mentioned in Part 4:
“Nedomanský, Pospíšil, Kužela, Ebermann would have been the stars of biggest magnitude in Canada.” (Tommy Wally, manager of Windsor Spitfires).
Then his performance at the WHC ´73 is quite ambivalent. He was explicitely critized in that Kostka´s several pages long WHC ´73 summary as one of many players who played badly and disappointed. But then we can see from the questionnaire of 4 coaches half-way through the championship that Pospisil – at least – had to have a very good 1st half of the tournament, being named by 2 coaches as a provisional best D. After that, Pospisil in subsequent League playoffs does not seem to play anything special, reports don´t write any positive or negative evaluations of his performance so we can gather that he likely played a bit below his average level. Kladno was swept 0:4 in semi by Dukla and then lost close series 2:3 to Slovan for the final 3rd place, so nothing special here.
Overall, I think Pospisil´s ultimate 3rd place in GS voting does reflect his season fairly – still a very good play but below the quality of his 3 previous seasons. He was 7th, 4th, 3rd, 4th and 5th in respective GS voting rounds, which was consistent enough to earn him that overall 3rd spot.
5) Jan Suchy.
How did Suchy play in 72-73 when he served his prison time and was released? This was the question I was interested in because Suchy in his autobiography writes quite highly about his own immediate post-custody or post-jail games, was it really the case?
GS voting in 1972 of his is relatively strong: 15th overall and 3rd best d-man despite not playing neither OG nor the ‘golden’ WHC. He was released from custody and allowed to play for just the remaining 16 games left to play during which he scored 19 points (7+12). If Suchy had played the whole season and maintained the pace, he would have likely ended up with approximately 42 points which would have been the same amount that 3rd and 4th best league scorers of that season registered (Jan Klapac and Frantisek Pospisil). I haven´t read the game reports from this season but I found the results of 4th round of GS voting, i.e. results from the only quarter of the League that Suchy played entirely, and the man was voted as 4th best player.
…Not bad, but how about the 1973? GS voting is significantly weaker: 32th overall with mere 3 points and 11th among d-men. He played 21 games during which he recorded 6 points (3+3). Nothing too impressive, it needs to be said that Suchy was allowed to play internationally at this point since his sentence was carried out and coaches absolutely considered him as a serious candidate, but Vladimir Kostka wrote about him that he simply didn´t play well enough by the end of the regular season. It is in spark contrast with the ´72 Prague´s WHC where coaches and players begged the Czechoslovak political authorities for permission for Suchy to play, I believe Pospisil and Nedomansky (captain and assistant) even went to visit the chairman of the communist party before the start of championship but their demands were simply declined.
I did found the report from Suchy´s first game after prison, it was Slovan Bratislava vs. Dukla Jihlava game, played on January 23. Dukla won 4:2. Stano Kšiňan, reporter of the game, wrote that Suchy was a
“big individual of the away team” and that the
“long pause wasn´t practically noticed on him”. Therefore Suchy certainly didn´t make things up when he wrote about high praise he received when he came back on ice.
However, following 1973 reports mention him very scarcely and only time Suchy again received more attention in game reports, happened during 1973 play-off finals vs. Pardubice where Suchy is described as undoubtedly still showing a lot of effort but overall does not match up well versus Pardubice´s top line of B. Stastny - J. Novak - V. Martinec, issue being the lack of speed vis-à-vis these forwards. So taking into consideration that, plus Kostka´s evaluation, plus lack of GS votes compared just to 1972, and we can judge his 1973 season as an eminent decline of Suchy´s play.
6) Milan Novy.
As I keep looking more deeply into 1970s hockey, absence of any, say, verbal affirmation of “star power” of Milan Novy, is becoming more and more frustrating but also understandable. Let´s quickly recapitulate:
1971 season (age 19), almost a ppg (30-32 points in 33-36 games) in RS, top 20 scorer, very good playoffs with either 9 or 10 points in 9 games.
1972 season (age 20), less points (22-27 in 35-36 games) but with historically low scoring levels this was again more than enough for Novy to place in top 20 league scoring. This was the season where he dressed the national team jersey for the first time in some exhibition games, though he still did not make it to either Olympics or Worlds ´72.
1973 season (age 21), gets drafted to Dukla Jihlava, team simultaneously led by National team coach too! Novy finished 3rd in scoring (41-44 points in 35-36 games) in RS, again very productive in playoffs (12-15 points in 10 games). Novy leads his team (and very strong team with other star forwards around him) in scoring all throughout the season + play-off and not only that, I noticed there were instances were Novy appeared on the top of provisional League scoring table in the newspapers. Martinec, Novy, Haas were leading and surpassing one another in the scoring pretty much all season long. And with all that, Novy did not play in single one of those 28 international games that Czechs played before the subsequent 10 games played at the Championship where Novy did not appear again (despite having played the season in front of the eyes of National team coach in his club team). You can see from what I´ve written above that he was at least considered, but the n. 1 replacement forwards for the CSSR team were B. Ebermann (W from Plzen) and B. Brunclik (C from Kosice) anyway.. Novy played as Jihlava´s 2nd line C all season long, even in instances where Jar. Holik (1st line C) was injured, Novy did not get “promoted” into the top line. Jaroslav Holik, who was 30 y/o at this point and in his last season as a member of NT, was still considered as superior player and much more valuable to his team than Novy. For example, in game report from
Československý sport 28. 2. 1973, a new absence of Jar. Holik in the lineup due to chipped ankle is described as:
“…Definitely bigger handicap for soldiers was the absence of the engine and brain of the team, injured Jaroslav Holík…”. And again, re-read one of those Charouzd´s article above from the Part 1 and see what he has to say about Holik and Novy, difference is clear. It´s just suspicious that Novy received so little remarks in newspapers over the season despite his numbers, especially true in the league playoffs.
1974 season, Novy finally became more-or-less a constant member of NT but got injured at the end of League season and missed the WHC ´74.
1975-1977 seasons, Novy´s peak years, no new info about them with one exception: I found an anecdote at the OG 1976 game reports that it was Novy who was prepared as an emergency back-up goalie in case Holecek wouldn´t be able to continue to play due to flu and eye injury. Crha was injured and Olympic official authorities refused to allow the Czechs to add a third goalie during the tournament. Novy was the only player in the team who allegedly had some experience with playing goalie when he was a kid, but this decision was not directive from coaches… he volunteered.
1978 season, I´ve re-read Karel Gut´s conclusive post-WHC 1978 interview for
Gól magazine and found one thing. Writer asked Gut why Novy played so little at the championship as he expected to see him on the ice more often. Gut answered that he expected that too, Novy looked in good form before the tournament and the plan was to use the successful “Vienna formation” (Ebermann-Novy-Martinec) from previous championship again. But the coaches eventually bet on club chemistry once more, creating Ebermann-J. Novak-Martinec line (Pardubice connection, Novak had a strong pre-WHC camp too). Second line was dependent on Slovan Bratislava connection and chemistry (Marian and Peter Stastny) and third line was led by I. Hlinka, freshly appointed captain having his single-peak season. So Novy remained stucked in the lineup as a luxury substitute. Literally same thing happened to him at WHC 1979 too. Gut adds an important caveat to his answer: he intended to play him as a winger but Novy simply can´t use his shooting qualities at any other position than center properly.
I still remember the “Brett Hull” description of Novy from the Top Non-NHL Europeans project and now I think even more that it really is a very appropriate illustration.
He was a bit like Brett Hull, you often hardly noticed him in games, but then when you looked at the scoresheet he had two goals. As you wrote DN28, Nový had a really accurate shot and he had a sneaky fast release that surprised a lot of goaltenders over the years.