1979 Challenge Cup discussion thread

[Anderson9]

Since the Soviets could not play pros, they played against Senior A and Junior A amateurs when touring Canada. Sometimes the games were competitive, but when the Canadian team was not, the Soviets showed no mercy. This was another thing that was alien and frightening to Canadians. It was then, and still is, regarded as unsportsmanlike to run up the score against an inferior opponent. Canadian teams sometimes have to do it, in tournament play where goal differential is a tie-breaker, but Canadian players hate to do it. .

Makes little sense IMO. Excuse me, but this is disconnected reasoning.

Perhaps the Soviets did this also because they had trouble finding good competition and needed to keep their quick-strike offensive machine well-oiled for when the games counted more. All the same, it was alien to our way of thinking and of playing the game.

Makes much more sense. Totally agree!

Based on those points of comparison, the Soviet team was much to be feared. Whereas the NHL club had struggled to beat the junior team, say 4-1 or 4-2, the Soviets had beaten them 8-2 or 9-1. Watching them in action, I could see that if anything they were faster than most NHL teams and played a more unified team game.

Then here’s a little piece of my mind. Touring Team USSR was twice beaten by the Canadiens’ juniors, in 1965 and 1969 by the scores of 2-1 and 9-3, respectively.
I read in a Russian edition that amateur Team Canada played a best of 3 series agst the Toronto MLs on the eve of the WHC-1967, winning two! This being major proof to the fact that CAHA had a powerful NT at the time.

In Canada's return to the WC in 1977, the Soviets lambasted Canada (aka Team Ugly) 11-1 in the first round and 8-1 in the final round. Yet the Soviets only placed third. Canada beat every other team in the tournament. What this tells us is that the players on that team, not one of whom had been good enough to play for Canada in '72 or '76, had no answer yet for Tarasov-style hockey. The Swedes, who beat the Soviets twice 5-1 and 3-1, did, as did the Czechs who also beat them for gold.

In 1977 what thwarted Canada from medaling [and even winning GOLD] was Johnny Wilson’s poor gameplan against the vulnerable USSR and of course multiple calls that kept Canada in the penalty box almost throughout, including a 10 minute shorthanded play that cost them 3 goals early in the 2nd period.

My cousin had the honour of playing on 3 of these Canadian WC teams as well as captaining the 1978 WJC team with Gretzky et al. and it has been a blast to talk with him about the games with the Soviets over the years. He was responsible for creating and running all the hockey scenes in the movie Miracle, which basically take up the last hour of the movie, and I think did a great job re-enacting the Soviet style of play at the time in those scenes. I don't think any other North American could have done a better job because he had obviously studied their style of play and set playbook even more closely than I thought he had. He had certainly played them enough times during the relevant time period to qualify for the part.

Seriously, what a nice nice surprise!!!

 

[Yakushev72]

Yakushev 72

Uncle Rotter,

My apologies to you and Red Fisher! It was Dick Beddoes. Thanks for the link.

 

[Yakushev72]

Yakushev 72

McGuillicuddy,

I respectfully disagree! The World Champion is the team that wins the IIHF-sanctioned World Championship, just as the Olympic champion is the team that wins the Olympic Gold Medal. The Stanley Cup, regardless of how prestigious it truly is, is the trophy awarded for winning the National Hockey League Championship. You can't say that the Stanley Cup winner is the World Champion, but you can say that the winner of the World Championships is the World Champion.

 

[Yakushev72]

This more or less makes my point that the Soviets put much more focus on their national team than anyone else. Even though a team of Canada's top players could regularly defeat the USSR, obviously if Canada had put more effort into their national team development they could have been much much better than they were. The Soviet National teams were great teams, but primarily it is because they (and Czkslvk) were the only countries to put so much focus on their national program. On an individual player level I still feel the USSR were a considerable distance behind Canada, primarily because they had so many less people playing the sport.

I agree with you that Canada was much better than they showed in the early games of the '72 Series. Once they realized what they were up against, and rounded into better condition, they were able to beat the Soviets, although they never outclassed them or separated themselves from them in terms of hockey skill, talent and ability. There has been a suggestion by some posters that the best Soviet players were essentially hijacked and forced to play for CSKA and Dynamo in Moscow against their will, as if they were slaves. Two points to be made: (1) in Soviet times, most Russian citizens tried to make their way to Moscow if at all possible, and (2) all Soviet males were conscripted to six years of military duty, unless they had good connections or some lucky reason to get out of the army. For most, being in the Soviet army counted as time served in hell! If you are going to get drafted, would you rather serve time on a remote base in the Urals or Siberia, or would you rather live in a fancy apartment in Moscow as a "hockey Sergeant.?" The standard of living was much higher in Moscow than anywhere else, and Moscow residents in those days were issued internal passports, mainly to keep out everybody who was trying to find a way to take up residence in the city. In comparison to the average Soviet citizen, elite hockey players lived like Kings.

 

[Mr Kanadensisk]

I agree with you that Canada was much better than they showed in the early games of the '72 Series. Once they realized what they were up against, and rounded into better condition, they were able to beat the Soviets, although they never outclassed them or separated themselves from them in terms of hockey skill, talent and ability. There has been a suggestion by some posters that the best Soviet players were essentially hijacked and forced to play for CSKA and Dynamo in Moscow against their will, as if they were slaves. Two points to be made: (1) in Soviet times, most Russian citizens tried to make their way to Moscow if at all possible, and (2) all Soviet males were conscripted to six years of military duty, unless they had good connections or some lucky reason to get out of the army. For most, being in the Soviet army counted as time served in hell! If you are going to get drafted, would you rather serve time on a remote base in the Urals or Siberia, or would you rather live in a fancy apartment in Moscow as a "hockey Sergeant.?" The standard of living was much higher in Moscow than anywhere else, and Moscow residents in those days were issued internal passports, mainly to keep out everybody who was trying to find a way to take up residence in the city. In comparison to the average Soviet citizen, elite hockey players lived like Kings.

I think we are more or less agreeing here. I'm sure most top hockey players in the USSR wanted to play for CSKA. What irks me are the claims that the USSR caught up to Canada in hockey during this period. Canada never had a national team program for its best players, so to use international hockey results as a measuring stick is automatically going to favour the Soviets. Like it or not the Soviets had all of their top players concentrated on 3 or 4 club teams, all of which were based in Moscow. The Soviet national teams had tonnes of practice time and tournament experience behind them and the Canadian teams with NHLers never had either. The fact that the Canadians were able to beat a full time Soviet national team four out of five times (72, 76, 81, 84, 87) shows in the big picture how far ahead Canada actually was.
In the five NHL seasons following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when basically any Russian who could get a job in the NHL came over, the most Soviet trained players to finish in the top 30 scorers was 3. Not bad, but far from dominant.

 

[Uncle Rotter]

In 1982 Canada was coached by Marshall Johnstone. Luckily for them, the loser Dave King wasn't allowed to take the helm. Both games were very close and when in the second encounter Kevin Lowe tied the scoring at 4-4 off a Bob Gainey beauty feed Canada took over and looked like getting the GWG. Makarov thwarted them by burying a fluke wrister directly off a faceoff and in a matter of a minute Fetisov led the rush and scored an insurance goal.
Unlike numerous other occasions when the Canadians iced a listless squads for IIHF WHCs, this Gretzky-led Team Canada looked motivated and highly competitive and could have won the WC had it had better chemistry and time enough to acquire cohesiveness, cooperation, teamwork - something that Soviets had always in abundance.

Here's what the roster looked like:
30 Gregory Millen, 47 Gilles Meloche – 2 Curtis Giles, 3 Brad Maxwell, 4 Craig Hartsburg, 5 Richard Green, 6 John Van Boxmeer, 8 Paul Reinhart, 12 Kevin Lowe – 7 William Barber, 9 Ryan Walter, 11 Michael Gartner, 15 Robert Smith, 16 Robert Clarke, 17 Dino Ciccarelli, 18 Dale Hawerchuk, 22 Richard Vaive, 23 Robert Gainey, 26 Brian Propp, 27 Darryl Sittler, 31 Mark Napier, 99 Wayne Gretzky
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?t=9996

 

[YMB29]

In 1982 Canada was coached by Marshall Johnstone.

Was not Red Berenson the head coach?

Both games were very close and when in the second encounter Kevin Lowe tied the scoring at 4-4 off a Bob Gainey beauty feed Canada took over and looked like getting the GWG. Makarov thwarted them by burying a fluke wrister directly off a faceoff and in a matter of a minute Fetisov led the rush and scored an insurance goal.

I did not see the second game but in the first it did not look like it was very close.

Unlike numerous other occasions when the Canadians iced a listless squads for IIHF WHCs, this Gretzky-led Team Canada looked motivated and highly competitive and could have won the WC had it had better chemistry and time enough to acquire cohesiveness, cooperation, teamwork - something that Soviets had always in abundance.

Well of course they were motivated; this was the first major tournament since the 81 Canada Cup.

YMB27, I must hand it to you for nerve. You wanna have me searching for proof of what others know to be known facts, which extensive use of performance enhancers in the USSR is?

Well if this is a known fact there would be plenty of proof that is widely available...

Use of steroids, FYI has always been part and parcel of any totalitarian regime’s policy. Initially suffering from an inferiority complex the regime uses elite sports as a showcase of its (socialist) achievement.

So now you are an expert on "totalitarian" regimes and their complexes?

On to Tarasov. To be more precise, he was not exactly 'senile' at the time, just inept as NT coach, ineptitude finally finding proof in his consent to taking the job as CSKA soccer team’s coach 3 years on… What came next is universal knowledge.

And his ineptness at coaching the national team in hockey is evident by?

Partly so. He lost his spot on the NT. He only represented SU once since he quit CSKA. At WC-1983.

You were implying about repercussions that were far more serious than that... One would think that he would be chopping trees in Siberia...

"remind me of a moron working for Voice of America" Kindly tell me where did that 'moron' go wrong? What did that moron misdiagnose describing life and policies of the USSR?

By that logic the same can be said about the moron working for the Morning Star...

And poor poor East Germany - what historical injustice! A proud smaller country conquered and gobbled up by a bigger one! If it hadn’t been for a unified Germany we would all be lapping up tales of great and clean athletes of the Warsaw bloc.

Many athletes of East Germany = all the athletes of the Warsaw Pact countries?

Well US Olympians weren’t necessarily 'clean' but being # one at sports wasn’t part of their political doctrine.

You sure about that?

WHAT GAVE YOU THE IDEA THAT EAST GERMAN SPORTS PHARMACOLOGY was INFERIOR TO THAT OF THE USSR?

What gave you the idea that East German sports pharmacology was inferior to that of the US?

Die DDR ceased to exist, totalitarian CCCP didn't, that's the only difference.

This just proves that you live in a world where the USSR and the Cold War still exist...
One can also say that the US and Canada still exist so we don't know their dirty secrets...

In 1977 what thwarted Canada from medaling [and even winning GOLD] was Johnny Wilson’s poor gameplan against the vulnerable USSR and of course multiple calls that kept Canada in the penalty box almost throughout, including a 10 minute shorthanded play that cost them 3 goals early in the 2nd period.

The Soviet team outscored Canada by 17 goals in the two games... You going to make excuses?

all Soviet males were conscripted to six years of military duty, unless they had good connections or some lucky reason to get out of the army.

No two years of military service, not six. There were also many exceptions, like if you were the only child in the family or you were attending a University or Institute that had a military course.

Canada never had a national team program for its best players, so to use international hockey results as a measuring stick is automatically going to favour the Soviets. Like it or not the Soviets had all of their top players concentrated on 3 or 4 club teams, all of which were based in Moscow. The Soviet national teams had tonnes of practice time and tournament experience behind them and the Canadian teams with NHLers never had either.

The fact that the Canadians were able to beat a full time Soviet national team four out of five times (72, 76, 81, 84, 87) shows in the big picture how far ahead Canada actually was.

You are still going to ignore 79 and include 76 when the Soviets did not have their full national team?
And barely winning tournaments (84, 87) when you got serious unfair advantages does not prove dominance...
This is like the third or fourth thread you started on this topic, so obviously this is troubling you even though you are trying to sound confident with such statements...

In the five NHL seasons following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when basically any Russian who could get a job in the NHL came over, the most Soviet trained players to finish in the top 30 scorers was 3. Not bad, but far from dominant.

Even if that is true, it does not prove your point.

Here's what the roster looked like:
30 Gregory Millen, 47 Gilles Meloche – 2 Curtis Giles, 3 Brad Maxwell, 4 Craig Hartsburg, 5 Richard Green, 6 John Van Boxmeer, 8 Paul Reinhart, 12 Kevin Lowe – 7 William Barber, 9 Ryan Walter, 11 Michael Gartner, 15 Robert Smith, 16 Robert Clarke, 17 Dino Ciccarelli, 18 Dale Hawerchuk, 22 Richard Vaive, 23 Robert Gainey, 26 Brian Propp, 27 Darryl Sittler, 31 Mark Napier, 99 Wayne Gretzky
http://forums.internationalhockey.net/showthread.php?t=9996

Yes I was going to post that if someone would say again that Canada's roster was weak.

 

[Mr Kanadensisk]

Even if that is true, it does not prove your point.

The disapearance of the Soviet hockey star after '89 was one of the best magic tricks of all time. Even Houdini would have been jealous. I'm sure Canada was to blame for it. Any theories? Maybe our government got to them some how....

 

[Jussi]

Well if this is a known fact there would be plenty of proof that is widely available...

So now you are an expert on "totalitarian" regimes and their complexes?

Are you seriously trying to deny that the Soviets used doping??!!! Even Larionov admitted that they didn't know what was injected into their bodies and they weren't supposed to ask either.

Not to mention that USA never had a state sponsored doping program unlike the Eastern bloc countries.

 

[Yakushev72]

Yakushev 72

I think we are more or less agreeing here. I'm sure most top hockey players in the USSR wanted to play for CSKA. What irks me are the claims that the USSR caught up to Canada in hockey during this period. Canada never had a national team program for its best players, so to use international hockey results as a measuring stick is automatically going to favour the Soviets. Like it or not the Soviets had all of their top players concentrated on 3 or 4 club teams, all of which were based in Moscow. The Soviet national teams had tonnes of practice time and tournament experience behind them and the Canadian teams with NHLers never had either. The fact that the Canadians were able to beat a full time Soviet national team four out of five times (72, 76, 81, 84, 87) shows in the big picture how far ahead Canada actually was.
In the five NHL seasons following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when basically any Russian who could get a job in the NHL came over, the most Soviet trained players to finish in the top 30 scorers was 3. Not bad, but far from dominant.

The Soviet hockey authorities (led by Anatoliy Tarasov) set a goal, from the date ice hockey was played in Russia for the first time in 1947, that they would beat the very best NHL pros within 20 years. It took them 25 to schedule a series, but they proved that they could play hockey as well, and at times, better than the very best NHL stars that Canada (or anywhere else) could produce. That was the significance of what the Soviets achieved on September 2, 1972, when they beat the NHL's best players 7-3. So whether all the Soviet stars were on one club team, how much practice time they had, and so on, isn't really relevant to the basic question: how well can you play hockey? There were no laws in Canada preventing formation of a national team that practiced 11 months a year - Canada just declined to form one. All limitations on the part of Canadians were self-imposed. There could be numerous reasons why Canada chose not to form a national team, some of which might have involved the risk of losing and the subsequent damage to prestige.

 

[Yakushev72]

Yakushev 72

The disapearance of the Soviet hockey star after '89 was one of the best magic tricks of all time. Even Houdini would have been jealous. I'm sure Canada was to blame for it. Any theories? Maybe our government got to them some how....

I'm not clear on what you mean by "the disappearance of the Soviet hockey star," but if you are talking about the decline of Soviet/Russian hockey going into the '90's, there were a number of political and economic factors that contributed to the collapse of the sports system, none of which had anything to do with Canada. In fact, it seems to me that Soviet/Russian hockey has had a far greater effect on Canada than the reverse. How many Government commissions have been formed in Ottawa over the years to study the declining skills of Canadian hockey players in comparison to the Soviets? I remember several of them. They studied why Canadians couldn't skate and handle the puck any more. There was never comparable alarm in Moscow.

 

[Mr Kanadensisk]

The Soviet hockey authorities (led by Anatoliy Tarasov) set a goal, from the date ice hockey was played in Russia for the first time in 1947, that they would beat the very best NHL pros within 20 years. It took them 25 to schedule a series, but they proved that they could play hockey as well, and at times, better than the very best NHL stars that Canada (or anywhere else) could produce. That was the significance of what the Soviets achieved on September 2, 1972, when they beat the NHL's best players 7-3. So whether all the Soviet stars were on one club team, how much practice time they had, and so on, isn't really relevant to the basic question: how well can you play hockey? There were no laws in Canada preventing formation of a national team that practiced 11 months a year - Canada just declined to form one. All limitations on the part of Canadians were self-imposed. There could be numerous reasons why Canada chose not to form a national team, some of which might have involved the risk of losing and the subsequent damage to prestige.

Most of Canada's best players were employed in the United States, so I'm not sure how you think Hockey Canada or the Canadian gov't for that matter had the ability to create a full time national team program. We could of course had prevented them from leaving the country, or taken a note from the Russians and launched an invasion and occupied our neighbours, how silly of us for not trying this.

 

[hammerwielder]

... they proved that they could play hockey as well, and at times, better than the very best NHL stars that Canada (or anywhere else) could produce. That was the significance of what the Soviets achieved on September 2, 1972, when they beat the NHL's best players 7-3. So whether all the Soviet stars were on one club team, how much practice time they had, and so on, isn't really relevant to the basic question: how well can you play hockey?

Not to denigrate from the significance of game 1 of the 72 series, but it is fair to note that by reason of their overconfidence the Canadian players were woefully out of shape at that time -- it was the off-season, some of them even had their pack-a-day offseason habits in full force -- and it wasn't until after the exhibition games in Sweden that the team developed anything approaching a level playing field with the Soviets in terms of conditioning, and even then it wasn't really close. After that, the teams played four thrilling nail-biters, with Canada eking out three on goals scored within the final four minutes. The four games in the USSR were much better indicators of the relative strengths of the teams than the first four games. Also, as I think has been mentioned previously, the Canadians were missing Bobby Orr and Bobby Hull, their best defenceman (not to mention probably the best player ever) and best forward at the time.

I respectfully disagree on the practice point. It's a team game, and the question is how well can you play hockey as a team. In this respect, the Soviets had a major advantage over teams from many other nations, but most significantly Canada, as Canada never had a national team -- apart from the Father Bauer amateur team -- and never could have one by reason of the NHL (and I guess the WHA as well during its existence in respect of players that may have been selected for a national team from that league).

The advantage of playing and practicing as a team for international competitions for a prolonged period is is illustrated by the performance of the Father Bauer team for Canada at the world level. This was always a group of collegiate amateurs, yet they did strikingly well against elite-level competition from the major hockey powers -- Sweden, the CSSR, the USSR, grabbing the bronze on several occasions.

It is sad that we never got to see a pro Canadian team modelled on the same basis as the Soviet national team or the Canadian amateur team for that matter. This always complicates the comparisons between Canada and the USSR in the relevant time frame -- and makes for interesting debates. I would view the "national team" factor on the same footing in terms of importance to the outcome as the factor of whether a team had its best players.

I am prepared to concede that the Soviets, for whatever reason, probably did not its best players to the 1976 Canada Cup. We can have raging debates as to why that was so -- and it seems reasonable to assume it did have something to do with dissatisfaction as to the performance of the regular roster in previous 1976 international competition, whether or not the roster was called "experimental" -- but even so it was still the national team that had a core of players who had played and practiced for a long time with the national team. Canada's team was, as it has always been, thrown together just for the tournament and as quickly disbanded. In my view, not having a national team was an equal disadvantage to any other factor relating to players left off the Soviet roster. This point has been proven time and again in the post-Soviet era when Russian teams with incredible star quality have performed poorly as a team. Team play is as crucial to success as the quality of the individual players on the roster. Canadian teams have shown great flexibility in being able to play pretty well as a team within a half-dozen games or so, which is in turn a reflection of the fact that players in Canada have had to get used to that kind of issue, whereas in the Soviet era players were bound together for their entire useful careers on a full-time national team that played about 40 games per season -- the Mikhailov line, the Yakushev line, the KLM line, no, make that the KLM 5-man unit with Fetisov and Kasatonov, and on and on.

This additional factor of practice and national team play helps make the building of consensus so elusive. But I agree with Yakushev72 that it is idle to talk of dominance one way or the other, as the best Canadian team and the best Soviet national team were so equal at any relevant point in time that there was very little to choose from between them. Very equal but also so different. It really was the clash of two solitudes, two distinct hockey systems, an era we will sadly never see again. An era in which seemingly emotionless Soviet players simply skated back to centre ice after scoring a goal, after maybe a congratulatory tap or two on a shin pad; an era in which Soviet players routinely executed three or more drop passes in succession to the same vacant spot which would almost instantly be occupied by a new onrushing player for whom the drop pass was intended, and could keep the puck on a string with an intuitive positional sense that you might still be able to replicate today if you only had 9 pairs of Sedin twins; an era in which trapping was something you did to fur-skinned animals; an era in which Soviet and Canadian players couldn't curse each other out in any language that the other could understand, and hence developed such gentlemanly modes of discourse as throat-slitting gestures; an era when an IIHF official would call a penalty whenever a player left his skates for any reason and an NHL official would call a penalty only when a player was decapitated; an era in which the executives overlooking the proceedings would not be GMs but heads of state and in which the ushers were heavily armed soldiers; an era in which hockey between Canada and the Soviet Union was not sport but the Cold War on ice.

 

[Anderson9]

I did not see the second game but in the first it did not look like it was very close. .

The game in Tampere was very close, even despite Canada’s lousy power play. The game in Helsinki was closer still. Basically, here there’s no arguing the fact that the slightly better team won.

Well of course they were motivated; this was the first major tournament since the 81 Canada Cup.
Originally Posted by Uncle Rotter
Here's what the roster looked like:
30 Gregory Millen, 47 Gilles Meloche – 2 Curtis Giles, 3 Brad Maxwell, 4 Craig Hartsburg, 5 Richard Green, 6 John Van Boxmeer, 8 Paul Reinhart, 12 Kevin Lowe – 7 William Barber, 9 Ryan Walter, 11 Michael Gartner, 15 Robert Smith, 16 Robert Clarke, 17 Dino Ciccarelli, 18 Dale Hawerchuk, 22 Richard Vaive, 23 Robert Gainey, 26 Brian Propp, 27 Darryl Sittler, 31 Mark Napier, 99 Wayne Gretzky
http://forums.internationalhockey.ne...ead.php?t=9996

Yes I was going to post that if someone would say again that Canada's roster was weak.

I am not trying to say it was a weak team. But, if it hadn’t been for #99’s charisma they wouldn’t have fared any better than the way they always did at IIHF WCs at that time. Eg, 1979 saw an blatantly drowsy Marcel Dionne, 1981 both Robinson and Lafleur sucked, especially the latter, whose indifference looked downright cynical. A nice team of 1983 had what it takes to beat USSR and even played a couple of cute games in the round robin, only to prove tactically incompetent in the first medal round game vs. Czechoslovakia (Dave King says hi)

Well if this is a known fact there would be plenty of proof that is widely available...

Files declassified in post Soviet Russia? Wish you could hear yourself…

So now you are an expert on "totalitarian" regimes and their complexes?

Doesn’t require being an expert. Totalitarian regimes and their adherents are commonly known to suffer from complexes.

And his ineptness at coaching the national team in hockey is evident by?

The very fact that he took up coaching a Top division soccer team was symptomatic of some delusion-like fantasies even in 1975. As I was saying, I know the subject inside out, do contact me if you’re interested.

By that logic the same can be said about the moron working for the Morning Star... .

He was Kremlin-paid. He was either a left wing ****wit enamoured with the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat, or a cynic whose money "has no smell".

Many athletes of East Germany = all the athletes of the Warsaw Pact countries?
"Well US Olympians weren’t necessarily 'clean' but being # one at sports wasn’t part of their political doctrine"
You sure about that?

Yes I am. Americans were occasionally caught cheating, failing several drugs tests, which only goes to show mismanaged USA Olympic teams were basically dwarves compared to colossi. By contrast, not a single DDR/CCCP athlete was ever caught using drugs, less experienced one-aloners from other teams were.

What gave you the idea that East German sports pharmacology was inferior to that of the US?

Oh come on, don’t play dumb. Their overall medal count in 1972 – 1988 is what gave me the idea. Go check. W. Germany, for instance, used to win a meager quarter of the amount of East German medals. In a similar way, the US, stood no chance against both sporting empires. Except for working several miracles, not on ice alone.

The Soviet team outscored Canada by 17 goals in the two games... You going to make excuses?

The TV announcer at Vienna-87 (the late Evgeny Mayorov) made an unexpected admission that Canada had been represented by their strongest-ever lineup ten years before in that same Vienna. As for those lopsided scores, those were known to be simply blowouts, disasters. The fact that they crapped the bed in both USSR games takes nothing away from their classy game vs. Sweden and in both times against Czechoslovakia.

 

[Anderson9]

And one necessary addition.

YMB27, you basically nitpick, you niggle in order to throw your opponent off balance. You get petty in an attempt to run your opposition ragged and bleed them white. All you basically do is Kris Draper it up to take the opponent's focus off their larger goal. In hockey and other team sports, it pays often. In discussion forums, it only pleases your fellow homers.

 

[McGuillicuddy]

McGuillicuddy,

I respectfully disagree! The World Champion is the team that wins the IIHF-sanctioned World Championship, just as the Olympic champion is the team that wins the Olympic Gold Medal. The Stanley Cup, regardless of how prestigious it truly is, is the trophy awarded for winning the National Hockey League Championship. You can't say that the Stanley Cup winner is the World Champion, but you can say that the winner of the World Championships is the World Champion.

I'm certainly not so North America-centric to claim that the Stanley Cup winner represents the best team in the world. I have always thought the 'World Series' in baseball is very poorly named since only a small fraction of the world is allowed to participate. However, I don't believe the WHC really proves much. Currently the winner of the IIHF World Championship can reasonably lay claim to the title "Nation with the best team of players not in the Stanley Cup playoffs" but little else. I put the WHC slightly ahead of the Spengler Cup in my list of annual hockey priorities. I have no issue with WHC tournament in principle, only with which players tend to show up (e.g. Chad Johnson and Chris Mason were our goalies last year. Seriously). If it was held over the winter holidays every year and all the best players showed up I'd be totally on board!

 

[Yakushev72]

Most of Canada's best players were employed in the United States, so I'm not sure how you think Hockey Canada or the Canadian gov't for that matter had the ability to create a full time national team program. We could of course had prevented them from leaving the country, or taken a note from the Russians and launched an invasion and occupied our neighbours, how silly of us for not trying this.

This is starting to get away from a discussion of hockey and into the arena of name-calling! I do understand the basic premise of your argument - the Soviet style of dictatorial Government confers an unfair advantage in developing better skilled and conditioned hockey players. To level the playing field for international competition, the Canada Cup and the Challenge Cup were instituted so that all games could be played in Canada/US rinks, in front of highly partisan Canadian/US fans, with Canadian/US referees and linesmen presiding over the "competitions." By allowing overwhelming advantages to the Canadian/NHL side, it had the effect of evening things up. I get that! Why was there only one Challenge Cup? Because in the aftermath, the consensus post-series article read "how did they (Soviets) get so much better than us?" If you are a pro sports league that charges big money for tickets, how can you present "Brand X" and expect to survive?

 

[Yakushev72]

I'm certainly not so North America-centric to claim that the Stanley Cup winner represents the best team in the world. I have always thought the 'World Series' in baseball is very poorly named since only a small fraction of the world is allowed to participate. However, I don't believe the WHC really proves much. Currently the winner of the IIHF World Championship can reasonably lay claim to the title "Nation with the best team of players not in the Stanley Cup playoffs" but little else. I put the WHC slightly ahead of the Spengler Cup in my list of annual hockey priorities. I have no issue with WHC tournament in principle, only with which players tend to show up (e.g. Chad Johnson and Chris Mason were our goalies last year. Seriously). If it was held over the winter holidays every year and all the best players showed up I'd be totally on board!

You are obviously correct when you say that a large percentage of the best hockey players in the World are still playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs at the time the WC's take place. The IIHF has done well over the last few decades to push the WC's back further from their original dates in early April so that most NHL teams have been eliminated by the time the drop-dead date for playing arrives. You are right in saying that Chad Johnson and Chris Mason are not international-class players, but there were a number of Canadians, Sidney Crosby included, who could have been available, but declined to play! I understand that most North American players consider the World Championships an afterthought, but Europeans see it entirely differently. Canada could have fielded a much more competitive team in 2010 if some star players like Crosby hadn't decided to stay home.

 

[Zine]

Back to the topic of thread - Challenge Cup!


The issue of prep time is a simple excuse used to discredit the Soviet victories.

Like I posted before, even if we assume prep time/chemistry was a factor, it wouldn't have made a difference. Scotty Bowman (team NHL coach) said it was not an issue as did Bobby Orr who verified that a lot of NHL lines were intact. (Bossy-Trottier-Gillies, Lafleur-Shutt, Barber-Clarke, McDonald-Sittler).
In addition, because of injuries, the Soviets were forced to significantly patch up and juggle lines which would significantly hinder any existing supposed chemistry.
And lets not forget that Soviets were playing in NA, under NHL rules, scheduled on NHL terms, with a NA crowd AND without Kharlamov, Tretiak, Fetisov, Yakushev, Maltsev and Golikov for the deciding game....quite a testiment to the depth of the national team at this time.

When the series was over, Bowman was awestruck. He didn't even bother to single out specific players who might have helped or hurt the NHL . "I don't think two or three men could have made a difference," he said. He shook his head in admiration of the Soviets. "They're beautiful skaters, eh? Beautiful skaters, whew!" Asked if that was not the difference between his own team, the Montreal Canadiens , and the NHL 's norm. Bowman thought for a moment and said, "I suppose on some nights we can get going like that. On our level."

http://www.russianhockey.us/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005773;p=#000000

 

[Yakushev72]

Not to denigrate from the significance of game 1 of the 72 series, but it is fair to note that by reason of their overconfidence the Canadian players were woefully out of shape at that time -- it was the off-season, some of them even had their pack-a-day offseason habits in full force -- and it wasn't until after the exhibition games in Sweden that the team developed anything approaching a level playing field with the Soviets in terms of conditioning, and even then it wasn't really close. After that, the teams played four thrilling nail-biters, with Canada eking out three on goals scored within the final four minutes. The four games in the USSR were much better indicators of the relative strengths of the teams than the first four games. Also, as I think has been mentioned previously, the Canadians were missing Bobby Orr and Bobby Hull, their best defenceman (not to mention probably the best player ever) and best forward at the time.

I respectfully disagree on the practice point. It's a team game, and the question is how well can you play hockey as a team. In this respect, the Soviets had a major advantage over teams from many other nations, but most significantly Canada, as Canada never had a national team -- apart from the Father Bauer amateur team -- and never could have one by reason of the NHL (and I guess the WHA as well during its existence in respect of players that may have been selected for a national team from that league).

The advantage of playing and practicing as a team for international competitions for a prolonged period is is illustrated by the performance of the Father Bauer team for Canada at the world level. This was always a group of collegiate amateurs, yet they did strikingly well against elite-level competition from the major hockey powers -- Sweden, the CSSR, the USSR, grabbing the bronze on several occasions.

It is sad that we never got to see a pro Canadian team modelled on the same basis as the Soviet national team or the Canadian amateur team for that matter. This always complicates the comparisons between Canada and the USSR in the relevant time frame -- and makes for interesting debates. I would view the "national team" factor on the same footing in terms of importance to the outcome as the factor of whether a team had its best players.

I am prepared to concede that the Soviets, for whatever reason, probably did not its best players to the 1976 Canada Cup. We can have raging debates as to why that was so -- and it seems reasonable to assume it did have something to do with dissatisfaction as to the performance of the regular roster in previous 1976 international competition, whether or not the roster was called "experimental" -- but even so it was still the national team that had a core of players who had played and practiced for a long time with the national team. Canada's team was, as it has always been, thrown together just for the tournament and as quickly disbanded. In my view, not having a national team was an equal disadvantage to any other factor relating to players left off the Soviet roster. This point has been proven time and again in the post-Soviet era when Russian teams with incredible star quality have performed poorly as a team. Team play is as crucial to success as the quality of the individual players on the roster. Canadian teams have shown great flexibility in being able to play pretty well as a team within a half-dozen games or so, which is in turn a reflection of the fact that players in Canada have had to get used to that kind of issue, whereas in the Soviet era players were bound together for their entire useful careers on a full-time national team that played about 40 games per season -- the Mikhailov line, the Yakushev line, the KLM line, no, make that the KLM 5-man unit with Fetisov and Kasatonov, and on and on.

This additional factor of practice and national team play helps make the building of consensus so elusive. But I agree with Yakushev72 that it is idle to talk of dominance one way or the other, as the best Canadian team and the best Soviet national team were so equal at any relevant point in time that there was very little to choose from between them. Very equal but also so different. It really was the clash of two solitudes, two distinct hockey systems, an era we will sadly never see again. An era in which seemingly emotionless Soviet players simply skated back to centre ice after scoring a goal, after maybe a congratulatory tap or two on a shin pad; an era in which Soviet players routinely executed three or more drop passes in succession to the same vacant spot which would almost instantly be occupied by a new onrushing player for whom the drop pass was intended, and could keep the puck on a string with an intuitive positional sense that you might still be able to replicate today if you only had 9 pairs of Sedin twins; an era in which trapping was something you did to fur-skinned animals; an era in which Soviet and Canadian players couldn't curse each other out in any language that the other could understand, and hence developed such gentlemanly modes of discourse as throat-slitting gestures; an era when an IIHF official would call a penalty whenever a player left his skates for any reason and an NHL official would call a penalty only when a player was decapitated; an era in which the executives overlooking the proceedings would not be GMs but heads of state and in which the ushers were heavily armed soldiers; an era in which hockey between Canada and the Soviet Union was not sport but the Cold War on ice.

This may sound contradictory, but while I agree that the Soviet's cohesive teamwork was a huge advantage for them because it emphasized puck possession and control, I don't agree that the Canadians were in any way disadvantaged by not having been a national team. By 1972, the NHL had abandoned the puck possession game and gone exclusively to the dump, chase and forecheck strategy that still reigns today (the Montreal Canadiens of the '70's were somewhat of an exception to the dump and chase philosophy). The NHL travel schedule, even with 12 teams in 1972, offered less opportunity to have intensive practices during the regular season. The Soviet system was dependent on 3 to 4 hours of practice for every hour of game time, and the NHL travel schedule didn't permit that.

I believe that the Canadians could have developed a national team alongside the NHL if they wanted to, but they elected not to do it. Because there were only 12 teams in 1972, the Stanley Cup playoffs were over by the end of April for the most part. Even a national team that practiced 8 to 10 weeks could accomplish a lot of cohesion. The question is: would the Canadians focus on developing a Soviet-style passing game, or would they stick with their own system of hard forechecking? My opinion is the latter.

 

[Zine]

I think most Canadians at the time thought the NHL All Stars should be able to win without any preparation time. In order to win without any prep time you have to be much much more talented than the team you are playing. The NHLers were quite a bit more talented than the Soviets, but they obviously under estimated them.

Prep time? Canadians more talented?


Found a great analysis written by Harry Sinden in the aftermath of the Challenge Cup.
To your credit, he says prep time favored the Soviets. However, what does he say is the largest reason that Soviet hockey caught up to Canada? - or in his words "real story of why the Soviets beat us at our own game. Beat us handily. Embarrassed us." That's right, a lack of skill due to a neglected development system as well as the negative effects of hooliganism in the North American game.
http://www.1972summitseries.com/1979ChallengeCup/1979HarrySindenArticle.html


Although there is a degree of truth to your argument, the above analysis as well as previously quoted comments from Bowman, Orr, Gainey, Irvin prove that "NHL lost because of prep time" and "soviets were inferior talents" is pure revisionism by individuals who can't accept that Soviet hockey had surpassed Canada (at the highest level) during this time period.


Edit: Sinden's column verifies Yakushev72's comments about Canadian worry regarding the lack of skill production in relation to Soviet talent.

 

[hammerwielder]

Prep time? Canadians more talented?


Found a great analysis written by Harry Sinden in the aftermath of the Challenge Cup.
To your credit, he says prep time favored the Soviets. However, what does he say is the largest reason that Soviet hockey caught up to Canada? - or in his words "real story of why the Soviets beat us at our own game. Beat us handily. Embarrassed us." That's right, a lack of skill due to a neglected development system as well as the negative effects of hooliganism in the North American game.
http://www.1972summitseries.com/1979ChallengeCup/1979HarrySindenArticle.html


Although there is a degree of truth to your argument, the above analysis as well as previously quoted comments from Bowman, Orr, Gainey, Irvin prove that "NHL lost because of prep time" and "soviets were inferior talents" is pure revisionism by individuals who can't accept that Soviet hockey had surpassed Canada (at the highest level) during this time period.


Edit: Sinden's column verifies Yakushev72's comments about Canadian worry regarding the lack of skill production in relation to Soviet talent.

I don't accept that the Soviets had "inferior talent", but this is a somewhat selective reading of Sinden's points. Sinden's book "Hockey Showdown" written during the 72 series is mandatory reading for followers of international hockey during this period and greatly expands upon his views of the relative strengths of Soviet and Canadian players.

Sinden's principal point in the article was that Canada's team was unlikely to defeat the Soviet team as long as the hockey system in each country stayed the same because:

(i) Canada was in a no-win position concerning these so-called battles for world supremacy because of the "clash of societies" described by him, i.e. that in the Soviet Union, hockey was an outgrowth of the political system, whereas in North America, hockey was a business.

(ii) NHL players were brought up to compete against one another on a team and league level, while Soviet players were brought up to compete against the world.

(iii) The NHL All Stars played scheduled league games almost to the eve of the Challenge Cup series and as a result had only two practices together. The Soviets, on the other hand, prepared for the series by training for several weeks in the Netherlands, where they lived on New York time and practiced on a surface that was tailored to the specifications of the rink at Madison Square Garden.

(iv) The NHL had spent the previous seven years trying to survive economically (due to the WHA challenge) and consequently had paid almost no attention to the future of its game.

(v) The growth of Soviet hockey had roughly coincided with the NHL's expansion from six teams to as many as 18 and also with the emergence of the WHA. Whereas in 1967 there were only six major league hockey teams competing for amateur talent in North America, by 1979 there were 17 in the NHL and six more in the WHA, so that a small vase of talent had been spread particularly thin. On the other hand, the great majority of players on the Soviet National Team also played for the Central Army club team, which had won the Soviet league championship 16 of the previous 17 years so that the Soviet major league was nothing more than a 36 game training schedule for the Soviet National Team. He asks the rhetorical question of what if Canada took all its best young players - the the Mike Bossys, the Bryan Trottiers - and simply assigned them to the Montreal Canadiens. It wasn't going to happen.

His assessment of skills was that the Soviets were better skaters whereas Canadians had come to emphasize shooting and hitting as a result of the emphasis on goal scoring.

The historical record shows that there were three separate "eras" from the time Canadian pros first played the Soviets to the collapse of the Soviet Union and disbanding of the CIS team: 1972 to 1976, where Canada had a slight edge; 1977 to 1982, when the Soviets had a distinct edge; and 1984 to 1991, where Canada again had the edge.

What Sinden's article should remind us all is that there were so many differences between the two systems that it was very hard to draw hard conclusions as to which system was intrinsically superior at any given time. My own view is that the Soviet team had a period of dominance between about 1977 and 1983 at the highest level, though the Soviet programme was never as deep as that of Canada, while Canada managed to win the competitions at the highest level during the other years even though the competition was very close and the difference between the teams was small. What makes the debate interesting is that there were a number of "what ifs" in play at all times that could have arguably swung the pendulum in either direction and defied the drawing of hard conclusions.

 

[Mr Kanadensisk]

Prep time? Canadians more talented?


Found a great analysis written by Harry Sinden in the aftermath of the Challenge Cup.
To your credit, he says prep time favored the Soviets. However, what does he say is the largest reason that Soviet hockey caught up to Canada? - or in his words "real story of why the Soviets beat us at our own game. Beat us handily. Embarrassed us." That's right, a lack of skill due to a neglected development system as well as the negative effects of hooliganism in the North American game.
http://www.1972summitseries.com/1979ChallengeCup/1979HarrySindenArticle.html


Although there is a degree of truth to your argument, the above analysis as well as previously quoted comments from Bowman, Orr, Gainey, Irvin prove that "NHL lost because of prep time" and "soviets were inferior talents" is pure revisionism by individuals who can't accept that Soviet hockey had surpassed Canada (at the highest level) during this time period.


Edit: Sinden's column verifies Yakushev72's comments about Canadian worry regarding the lack of skill production in relation to Soviet talent.

How would you rate the Challenge Cup vs the 1967 and 1968 All Star games? Do you feel it is more or less impressive for a club team to beat an NHL All Star team?

 

[Zine]

What Sinden's article should remind us all is that there were so many differences between the two systems that it was very hard to draw hard conclusions as to which system was intrinsically superior at any given time. My own view is that the Soviet team had a period of dominance between about 1977 and 1983 at the highest level, though the Soviet programme was never as deep as that of Canada, while Canada managed to win the competitions at the highest level during the other years even though the competition was very close and the difference between the teams was small. What makes the debate interesting is that there were a number of "what ifs" in play at all times that could have arguably swung the pendulum in either direction and defied the drawing of hard conclusions.

Very well put.

 

[Zine]

How would you rate the Challenge Cup vs the 1967 and 1968 All Star games? Do you feel it is more or less impressive for a club team to beat an NHL All Star team?

More info (video, news articles, quotes) is needed from 1967-1968 all-star games to make any logical comparison. It's too simplistic and unscientific to base any in-depth comparison on results only (particularly that of an all-star game)....and particularly if the comparison is made between two unrelated teams from different eras.


Were 1967-68 games played with the same intensity as the Challenge Cup?
Did they they have political overtones surrounding them?
Was there an intrinsic "East-West" level of hatred between both sides?
Did an all-star team member call the 1967-68 games more important than the Stanley Cup?

Regardless, those teams weren't even true NHL-all star teams as they were missing numerous all-stars from the Leafs and Habs.