Calling Tarasov a romatic and Tikhnov a cynic is a huge pile of crap.
Of course they had different approches. What's more important, they stand for different ages in soviet hockey. Tarasov basically was one of the men who built it, while Tikhonov represents the pinnacle of the fine tuned soviet hockey system. Completely different environments they worked in. That defined their philosophies too as much as their personnal views and preferences.
Tarasov always gets overhyped, while he was a huge figure. But he wasn't that deity. And Chernyshov gets all forgotten behind the laudatio to Tarasov.
And Tikhonov only because of that defectors stories get the flak and is pictured a despotic monster much more than he actually was.
The truth is somewhere in between. Tarasov created a "new" kind of hockey that totally revolutionized the sport throughout the World. Tikhonov was in his own way equally a genius, and when he introduced and implemented his adaptation of the newly emerging science of muscle memory, the quality of Soviet hockey almost instantaneously sky-rocketed.
Tikhonov was correct to say that if there were any lapses in winning, he would be the only one held accountable. But in so doing, he seemed to lose the players, and he lacked the ability to convince his players to love him and run through walls for him, as Tarasov could seemingly do. The result of that, in my opinion, was the inability to sustain what he created for the 1979 Challenge Cup series - technically superior hockey combined with a fierce hunger and desire to win. His players were technically superior to their opponents for the most part, but failed to sustain the hunger and desire shown early in his tenure.
The 1987 Canada Cup team was the best Canadian team ever assembled, and yet I thought the Soviets should have, and would have won the series, if they had played with the same all-out hunger and desire that the Canadians showed. The Canadians weren't better, but they were hungrier. And so if Tarasov is judged to be better than Tikhonov, it would be because he created more personal loyalty and motivated his players to play harder than Tikhonov ultimately achieved.
