Talking about 1972 here. Good one. Not having Anatoli Firsov the equivalent prejudice to not having Bobby Orr and Bobby Hull. That's funny.
In any case. Firsov wasn't used because he was too old and too slow. Just like Rags Ragulin, who did play and was benched after his impression of a pylon was deemed too realistic. Who are you going to put next on the list, Starshinov?
I think Starshinov played one game.
Firsov did not play because he was upset that Tarasov was not the coach. Funny how you said he is too old but then mentioned Hull, who is 2 years older...
Davydov is also another player who could have played but did not, for the same reason as Firsov.
Talking about 1976 here. I'm also kind of sick of hearing this excuse so I am going to set the facts out and let people judge for themselves. First, the Soviets would never ice a team with a hammer and sickle and "CCCP" on the sweater that they didn't think represented their best chance of winning. If anyone was the Vince Lombardis of hockey, it was the Soviets. It was the height of the cold war and the mission was to win every time they stepped onto the ice in international play to show that communism was superior to the West. Neither the Olympics nor the WC was held in the enemy heartland, North America. This tournament was. It was important, make no mistake.
It was important, but third or fourth on the list...
They left some of their veterans at home (e.g. Mikhailov, Petrov and Yakushev -- Kharlamov was badly injured in a car accident, breaking up his unit anyway) and went instead with a group of speedy youngsters, including Balderis, Kapustin, Skvortsov, Aleksander Golikov and Alexandrov as well as young Bilyaletdinov on defence. They still had a strong core of '72 veterans including Tretiak, Lebedev, Lutchenko, Vasiliev, Gusev, Maltsev, Shalimov, Vikulov and Zhluktov to mentor the kids.
It is therefore true is that the team the Soviets iced represented a slightly different style of team, but they did so consciously; they did so only because they thought it would give them the best chance of winning at the time. There are of course rumours of a power struggle between Kulagin and Tikhonov and a revolt against the latter by the players of Mikhailov's generation but until one of the players steps forward and verifies that there was and that it was a factor in player selection they must be treated as unsubstantiated. The Soviet brass also made the usual pre-tournament disclaimers just in case the team lost, such as calling the squad "experimental" and saying the Olympics and WC were their priorities. I don't believe those for a minute... Canada also had its strongest line-up ever, so the possibility of defeat was real, whatever squad the Soviets fielded. The change in roster was in my view a move to counter the quality of the Canadian, Czech and, also relevant, Swedish squads which would now include pros playing in North America such as Salming.
Nice theory there but it just fails to make sense...
Why leave out the best players?
And why did Tikhonov use these players later, when he was the #1 national team coach?
Tikhonov confirmed in an interview that he was not allowed to use some players. He also said that he realistically expected third place with that roster.
Now listen up, Russophiles, and listen good: Canada handled the Czechs at that tournament relatively easily, winning in the final 2 games to 0, and the Czechs had just handled the Soviet team with a line-up that you could not dispute included all the best players. It therefore doesn't cut it to suggest the tournament doesn't count, especially when the national team didn't even make it to the final. It is pretty arrogant to ignore the Czechs altogether, which your line of reasoning does.
Well Canada beating Czechoslovakia at home on NHL-sized ice does not mean they could have beaten them in Europe.
Not saying the tournament does not count, every tournament does, but when talking about Soviet best vs. Canada's best it can't. If you count it then you would have to count all those World Championships where Canada sent strong but not its best teams, and where the Soviets also beat Czechoslovakia. I don't think you want to do that...
One other thing deserves mention which you never seem to remember. In alleging you didn't have your best players at this or that tournament, well that argument cuts both ways because the Soviet Union wasn't Russia. As Russia, you would not have had a bunch of players who played significant roles on those teams. Guys like Balderis for example, one the pillars of the late 70's, early 80's Soviet dynasty.
We are talking about the USSR not Russia.
Talking about 1981 now. Yes, I think what he was referring to was that Lafleur, and also Perreault by the way, were injured for much of the season and hadn't played basically all year to date.
Perreault was injured for the final, but Lafleur was not. I think he was saying both were injured.
What?? If you want specifics, go read Sinden's book on the '72 series. There's a book full of specifics. I mean, Parise had Lady Byng penalty numbers all career and he was provoked so badly he almost took the guy's head off.
That is just frustration. The games were very tense and no one wanted to get called for a penalty.
I went to several games in Canada that Dombrowski officiated. He couldn't skate, for one, being rather portly and elderly, and I often wondered how he could the play from back in other team's zone. He also looked like he was supremely indifferent to the fact there was a hockey game going on, and his calls reflected that, being more like random tweets in the space-time continuum than anything having to do with a game.
That is just your biased opinion on him. How many USSR-Canada games did he actually referee?
Baader, Kompalla were in another universe altogether in terms of incompetence, a class by themselves, a league of their own, a -- well, you get the picture. Remember that there were only two officials, period, in international play. Two. Think about how that would work today, where four competent officials still get a lot of things wrong. These two buffoons belonged to the no-contact school of hockey, whistling as an infraction anything that caused a body to fall down onto the ice. The Soviets learned fast. They had tremendous upper body strength and could take a dive whenever they needed a call. The fact that Dumb and Dumber never cottoned on to something so blatant drove the Canadians wild.
Well again this is your view of it. They did not call the game like NHL referees, but that does not make them incompetent.
Most of the complaining seems to be just whining out of frustration (like
here).
If when we were watching a game with the Soviets we saw a Canadian player suddenly and seemingly without provocation go nuts on a Soviet, we knew what had just happened. The unpunished spearing and butt-ending by his Soviet check all the way down the ice had just driven the Canadian over the edge.
And you are not going to mention that a Canadian player usually did something to get that kind of a response...
I am surprised that those of you who are not beneath attacking NHL officials as corrupt would when the shoe is on the other foot defend officials such as these bozos who were so demonstrably incompetent even apart from any question of whether they were corrupt.
So it is better to be corrupt than incompetent?
I have to disagree with your premise here. The Soviet teams that played NHL teams were club teams in name only. As a matter of substance, they were various iterations of the national team. CSKA was basically the national team with some deletions (e.g., Yakushev, Maltsev), and Wings of the Soviet was comprised of those national team members that had been so split off and the other elements of the national team or players that were rotated onto and off the national team: think Soviet Union A and Soviet Union B.
In 76 some players from other Soviet teams played for CSKA and Soviet Wings for the series, like Yakushev and Vasiliev, but you can't call them national team A and B.
For that reason alone, results in games against these Soviet "club" teams must be taken with a large grain of salt. Another factor that must be considered is that the NHL club teams of that era were heavily diluted both by rapid expansion and by the WHA. The caliber of play below the top teams like Montreal and Philadelphia fell off steeply. Several of the Soviets' opponents were expansion teams that still hadn't fought their way out of the league basement. Any notion of parity among NHL club teams was at that time wishful thinking.
These games were not only played in the late 70's.
And again it is not like the Soviet teams were winning only against the lower ranked NHL teams.
As far as I know this is the only time a North American club team ever defeated the Soviet Union national team, as this was virtually the only series in which the Soviets put the Soviet Union national team so named against club competition in North America.
In 1983 the Soviet national team played against NHL clubs.
In 1979, the WHA adopted an All-Star game format whereby it pit its All-Stars against Moscow Dynamo. In a much-hyped three-game series, the WHA All-Stars swept all three All-Star games against Dynamo. The games were really fast-paced and skilled affairs. WHA club teams also won 2 of 3 exhibition games against Dynamo for a total of 5 wins and 1 loss in favour of the WHA.
It was Dynamo Moscow without its best players plus some secondary CSKA players, so more like Dynamo-B.
These games were cash cows for a cash-starved Soviet program.
Cash starved??
In 1973 I went to a game between CSKA and the Toronto Marlboros, the Maple Leafs' junior team, at a packed Maple Leaf Gardens. Again, this was no club team: everybody, and I mean everybody, was on that Soviet side -- it was essentially the Summit Series roster.
I would like to see the Soviet roster.
The games against WHA club teams set above demonstrate the relative parity between Soviet and WHA club teams in meaningful (i.e. points producing) competition, which in my view represents a much better barometer for comparison than the pure exhibition games against NHL club teams.
...
As it was, they only held their own against the WHA teams and lost convincingly to the All-Stars, just as WHA club teams -- except for the Jets -- lost convincingly to the Soviet national team aka Big Red Machine.
Dynamo Moscow is the only Soviet club team to play WHA teams and it was missing its best players, so I don't know if you can make that conclusion...