Do you think Canada were 'Bad Boys' in Canada vs USSR Summit Series during 1970's?

[User9992]

Do you think Canada were 'Bad Boys' in Canada vs USSR Summit Series during 1970's?

Canada played very physical, dirty & often tried to injury players like Kharlamov, while Soviets just tried to win while playing more finesse & possession based hockey.


1972 Canada vs USSR Series (Bobby Clarke admits he intentionally injured Kharlamov & calls it 'part of the game'


1974 Canada vs USSR Series


Philadelphia Flyers vs CSKA Moscow

Click to read more...

 

[User9992]

Bobby Clarke intentionally slashes Valeri Kharlamov's ankle during 1972 Summit Series


Ed Van Impe's high steak vs Kharlamov


Ed Van Impe destroyes Kharlamov from behind

 

[User9992]

Extra

 

[Overrated]

And the best one:



With modern rules the USSR would win the majority of best on best matches against Canada and not just around half.

 

[hacksaw7]

Soviets were plenty dirty themselves with their stickwork. Physicality and intimidation are a part of the game. The Canadian players were elite skill players but many of them had an edge to their game and there is nothing wrong with using every tool in your toolbox to defeat the opposition. That 72 team pulled out all the stops to win. That's the entire purpose of the game, to win, not win and be perfect angels doing it

 

[User9992]

And the best one:



With modern rules the USSR would win the majority of best on best matches against Canada and not just around half.

I can not believe Canadians give this dirty player a pass but criticize modern players like Wilson who is an angel compared to Clarke.

 

[hacksaw7]

I can not believe Canadians give this dirty player a pass but criticize modern players like Wilson who is an angel compared to Clarke.

He was a great hockey player, and Tom Wilson is a good hockey player. Yes both have thrown cheap shot, but that doesn't change the fact that they are good hockey players

What do you mean give pass? People acknowledge that he could be dirty, a pest at times. Well ok fine, and Clarke has been condemned for his actions on the ice at times...but big picture he's a legendary player

 

[Overrated]

I can not believe Canadians give this dirty player a pass but criticize modern players like Wilson who is an angel compared to Clarke.

A Canadian attacking Kharlamov after he laughed at him for losing the match (1974):

 

[User9992]

He was a great hockey player, and Tom Wilson is a good hockey player. Yes both have thrown cheap shot, but that doesn't change the fact that they are good hockey players

But fans act like Wilson is some murderer while giving players like Clarke & Messier a pass.

 

[hacksaw7]

But fans act like Wilson is some murderer while giving players like Clarke & Messier a pass.

Well I don't know about that. The fans that remember Clarke and Messier certainly know what these guys could do on the ice. It's just that Wilson's behavior is more recent and a lot of the Clarke/Messier stuff happened in a pre social media world when there weren't 20,000 cameras recording the game from every angle

 

[habsrule4eva3089]

Filthy barbaric Hockey was what that was. The world was a different place.

Ironically 42 years later a Canadian team walked into Russia and showed the most elegant clean Hockey ever played on its way to becoming the Greatest Hockey Team ever assembled.

 

[WarriorofTime]

It was more of a product of the time and how NHL games were officiated. You can't just try to superimpose modern NHL rules.

 

[JackSlater]

Clarke was the "bad boy" of the Summit Series. Wouldn't really say that about anyone else on either team. Also to suggest that Clarke is "given a pass" in general for how he played is very inaccurate, both for his career in general and the Summit Series in particular.

 

[67 others]

But fans act like Wilson is some murderer while giving players like Clarke & Messier a pass.

The rules of the game have changed.

Scott Stevens would be considered Wilson by today's standards of blindside hits and predatory headhunting

 

[67 others]

Soviets were plenty dirty themselves with their stickwork. Physicality and intimidation are a part of the game. The Canadian players were elite skill players but many of them had an edge to their game and there is nothing wrong with using every tool in your toolbox to defeat the opposition. That 72 team pulled out all the stops to win. That's the entire purpose of the game, to win, not win and be perfect angels doing it

The soviets would skate behind you spearing you behind the kneecaps ALL GAME back then. It just wasn't as visible and a thunderous headshot.

 

[WarriorofTime]

I can not believe Canadians give this dirty player a pass but criticize modern players like Wilson who is an angel compared to Clarke.

I dunno about in the Summit Series in particular (if Tom Wilson was good enough to play for Canada in the Olympics, I'm sure a lot of people might overlook their normal feelings of the guy for those couple of weeks) but everyone knew Clarke was a dirty player.. he was definitely viewed very negatively by a lot of people during his career.

 

[NyQuil]

Absolutely.

They did whatever they could to win, legally or otherwise.

And they did, in the end.

 

[jigglysquishy]

The standards for violence have completely changed in the last 15 years, let alone 49.

The medical understanding of concussions and CTE have grown immensely since 2005. It's not fair to blame players in 1972 for acting like it is 1972 and not 2021.

 

[scott clam]

I can not believe Canadians give this dirty player a pass but criticize modern players like Wilson who is an angel compared to Clarke.

Can't change the past. If anything the league deserves to be blamed for not doing enough to discourage vicious cheapshots.

 

[Bondurant]

Good on Canada. Soviets want hockey and, by golly, they got hockey...rammed down their gullets.

 

[David Bruce Banner]

Clarke was the "bad boy" of the Summit Series. Wouldn't really say that about anyone else on either team. Also to suggest that Clarke is "given a pass" in general for how he played is very inaccurate, both for his career in general and the Summit Series in particular.

Exactly. Clarke was known then, and is known now, as a real POS... a real POS who was also very good at the game of hockey. See also Messier and to some extent, Howe.

Otherwise it was just two separate hockey universes colliding and the Canadian game was much more overtly rough and tumble.

 

[OgeeOgelthorpe]

I can not believe Canadians give this dirty player a pass but criticize modern players like Wilson who is an angel compared to Clarke.

Look at this through a historical lens and don't apply modern morals and ethics to it.

By today's standards was Clarke's behavior ok? Hell f*** no.
By the 1970's standards was it ok? Sadly yes.

All the league can do is look at its past and work to prevent its future from looking like the 1970s.

 

[Smirnov2Chistov]

The time, and historical era was so different.

People often forget that the Soviets were THE best at nearly every sport. The US and Canada could not keep up. Hockey was just another battle between the great nations.

 

[TheMoreYouKnow]

Canada played that series like they would have played any games that really mattered to them. Without a degree of violence it wouldn't have been a real 'best v best' game. You were looking in some ways at two different visions of the sport - Canadian 'war on ice' vs Russian 'soccer on ice'.

The Canadian vision won that series. But part of the problem with that Canadian approach was that in order to do that you need to have 100% buy-in from all players - including a willingness to dramatically increase the risk of serious injury - for an exhibition series. I think after that series, it was tough to get that. The Russian game prospered under less intense circumstances (hence their good results in most of these series in spite of inferior talent).

In the decades since, the sport overall has been taken over to some extent by the European and Russian approach to it. It's simply more suitable for the "#bekind" mentality of our age.

It's one of the ironies of sports that Canada, a very sophisticated and rational society with a strong focus on violence avoidance, played their favorite game in such a tempestuous violent way. Russia meanwhile has certainly been a more brutal and violent society than Canada and yet advocated a skill-focused and mostly non-violent way of playing the game.

 

[buffalowing88]

Exactly. Clarke was known then, and is known now, as a real POS... a real POS who was also very good at the game of hockey. See also Messier and to some extent, Howe.

Otherwise it was just two separate hockey universes colliding and the Canadian game was much more overtly rough and tumble.

Came here to post and you took the words right out of my mouth. Clarke is a crappy human being in general. He hasn't exactly proven otherwise in his post-playing career either. I would be willing to bet he was in the top-10 most hated players by opposing fan bases in the league for the entirety of the 70s. My father and step-father were both in high school in Buffalo during the Broadstreet Bully days and to this day they talk about how big of a POS Clarke was...but begrudgingly admit he got the best of Perreault and the Sabres.