Best stickhandlers of the 1970s and 80s

[Overrated]

I believe I have one Soviet League game somewhere...a Russian gentleman who I struck up a conversation with at a bar by chance, had one and dropbox'd it to me...I gotta see where that was.

You should upload it if it is an actual 1970s or early 1980s Soviet league game. Would be a very rare find.

If today's league and the junior league are any indication (along with the champions of it), it was a woefully unbalanced league...

Well of course it was. That is normal for all sports outside of North America. That is due to having no draft and no salary cap.

How many of those top 10 scorers aren't CSKA or Spartak players? Balderis...anyone else? Belousov?

Maltsev played for Dynamo.

 

[VanIslander]

Shame on you.

Bernie Federko.

 

[Michael Farkas]

You should upload it if it is an actual 1970s or early 1980s Soviet league game. Would be a very rare find.

It was definitely later in the 80's unfortunately. I've asked around for this film though...it seems like no one has it.

When I say this, I'm not making any assumption about your country of origin, this isn't directed at you...but do we think that Russian libraries or TV stations have any archival footage of this league? Have we ever even seen highlights from a championship game prior to '89? It's always international competition or goofball exhibition games against the Oshkosh Garden Gnomes or whatever fly-by-night WHA team was new that week...

I will search my computers to see if I can turn that up. I can't imagine not having it still...

 

[Overrated]

It was definitely later in the 80's unfortunately. I've asked around for this film though...it seems like no one has it.

When I say this, I'm not making any assumption about your country of origin, this isn't directed at you...but do we think that Russian libraries or TV stations have any archival footage of this league? Have we ever even seen highlights from a championship game prior to '89? It's always international competition or goofball exhibition games against the Oshkosh Garden Gnomes or whatever fly-by-night WHA team was new that week...

I will search my computers to see if I can turn that up. I can't imagine not having it still...

I have no idea but some of the matches were definitely televised. Here is a clip from a game that took place back in 1977 and some of the guys in the comment section wrote that they watched it live on TV:


That would very much be a gem to find. It's Tikhonov's Riga upsetting CSKA 5-4 with Balderis scoring 4 goals.

 

[Overrated]

This reminded me of maybe the quickest Soviet stickhandler Balderis and his incredible goal against the CSSR.

 

[Michael Farkas]

I've never seen that clip before, that's quite a tease. And yeah, the gentleman that I was talking to mentioned that these matches were regularly or fairly regularly televised.

I wonder if they fell victim to the same nonsense as CBC's HNIC broadcasts - recorded over to save money/storage space.

 

[meangene]

I've never seen that clip before, that's quite a tease. And yeah, the gentleman that I was talking to mentioned that these matches were regularly or fairly regularly televised.

I wonder if they fell victim to the same nonsense as CBC's HNIC broadcasts - recorded over to save money/storage space.

I've always wondered why old hockey highlights are relatively harder to come by. Obviously NFL films was visionary and way ahead of its time, but MLB seems to publish much more old content than hockey does, and even basketball seems to have had a lot of people documenting the game, even if it was from a fan/independent standpoint. I can find wayyy more clips of Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robertson than I can Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, for example.

 

[57special]

Orr, Savard, Balderis, Frank Mahovlich...

I wouldn't name Savard or Frank M. Maybe his little brother. Perreault, certainly.

 

[Crosby2010]

Lafleur, Perreault, Orr, Middleton, Kharlamov come to mind.............

 

[Boxscore]

In addition to all of the great names mentioned above, I'll throw out an underrated one... Rick MacLeish. Dude had the hands of a magician. Salming was also a great stickhandler.

 

[wetcoast]

Ivan Boldirev is usually the go-to answer for questions like this.

Kent "Magic Man"Nilsson was my gut reaction to the thread title.

Ivan was pretty good too and a decent fighter for a non fighter type of guy.

 

[BenchBrawl]

The most beautiful was Perreault.

 

[Boxscore]

The most beautiful was Perreault.

Agreed.