Yakushev72
Registered User
- Dec 27, 2010
- 4,550
- 372
Keep in mind that those Canadian practitioners who dismissed Percival were likely the same guys who said the Soviets couldn't shoot, had terrible goaltending and would be swept in '72. In other words, about as open-minded as those in Russia who now believe they've got nothing to learn about hockey from foreigners. How's that working out?
I can't speak for Percival's hockey expertise but he was definitely ahead of his time in terms of conditioning.
As I mentioned, I haven't read Percival's book, and actually, this all started with the suggestion that the current Russian national team would be better off if they turned the program over to a Canadian coach like Mike Keenan. Scotty B moved from that line of discussion to his claim that Percival "invented" Russian hockey. That's a direct quote. There was certainly no components of Soviet hockey that resembled the hockey being played in Canada, and Tarasov, considered the "Father" of Soviet hockey, has repeatedly been quoted in the past as saying that he refused to allow anything that was not home grown to influence the nature of the program.
If in fact Percival outlined a formula for developing a hockey program through dry land simulation of on-ice execution, then clearly Tarasov was influenced by him. I don't know enough about Percival to know how much he outlined programs for dry land training. Yes, conditioning was certainly a key building block of Soviet hockey, but that is just common sense, and not necessary anything revolutionary.