An interesting news article from the Seattle Times, dated Jan. 9, 1987, interview with Team Canada player Chris Joseph:
The videotape was fairly fuzzy. You could tell only that it was a hockey fight. No biggie, you think. But a second glance proved this was not just another scene from the movie Slapshot. This was an international incident. Those were not the Seattle Thunderbirds and Portland Winter Hawks having at one another down at the Arena.
This was the cream of the talent of Canada and the Soviet Union's junior teams out there creaming each other. On ice, this was a Cold War indeed. Detente fell to intent - intent to inflict pain.
And there in the middle - not by choice - was defenceman Chris Joseph of the Seattle Thunderbirds, upholding honor personal and national while holding down a Soviet player, who had made the mistake of jumping him. "It was unbelievable," said Joseph, whose next fight is to help the Thunderbirds climb out of the WHL's lower depths. "This never happened in international hockey before. I don't think any of us feel too good about it. But it wasn't our fault. The Russians started it."
The videotape shows that much clearly. Just over halfway through the second period (13:53 mark to be exact) with Canada leading 4-2, Pavel Kostichkin of the Soviet Union two-handed Canada's Theoren Fleury with his stick. Fleury then retaliated with his fists and the others on the ice stand and watch. Suddenly, another Soviet player takes a punch at a Canadian - Joseph.
"He jumped me all right, but I got him down and started pounding him." Joseph struck more than a few blows. He hammered his man, then he sickled him. And he never knew his name. "Number Three," Joseph said, by way of identification.
The worst was yet to come. As the players on the ice squared off and began to fight, Evgeny Davydov left the Soviet bench to join the melee, and that brought a stream of players from both benches.
"When one of our players went out after Davydov, the Russian coach opened the gate to let his entire team on the ice," Joseph said. "When I saw them coming, I got off the guy I was fighting with. I knew his friends would be out to help him. A lot of things were said out there. They talked Russian to us, but you could tell they were saying pretty much the same thing we were saying to them. I just skated around trying to help my buddies that were fighting off two or more. It seemed most everyone wanted to stop, but no one could."
One Canadian, Gary Hoggett of the WHL Kamloops team, was head-butted in the face and suffered a broken nose. "That was the worst injury out of it," Joseph said. "I don't know if any Russians were hurt, but I saw a few shiners." The brawl ended after about 20 minutes when the participants surrendered to exhaustion, too tired to fight on.
Tournament officials turned out the arena lights in an attempt to stop the fracas but it didn't help. The three game officials, from Norway, Poland and Finland, eventually gave up trying to break it up and left the ice. "They left when the lights went out and I didn't blame them," Joseph said. "If someone took a swing at one of them in the dark, they wouldn't know who it was."
Tempers had been building from the start of the game as referee Hans Ronning of Norway appeared to let go several high-stick infractions by each team.
When the fighting was over, first the game was suspended, then both teams were thrown out of the tournament costing Canada a medal, and costing both teams a lot of stature. With the words "The championship is over," IIHF President Guenther Sabetzki awarded the gold medal to Finland.
Joseph went on to say: "Our coaches told us the Russians would be chippy and that we had to be disciplined, and we took a lot from them before anything happened. After the game we figured they planned it. They had nothing to lose. They couldn't win a medal. If we won with five or more goals we would have won a gold; if we won with less, it would have been a silver; if we lost or tied, a bronze.
Instead we got nothing."
When Team Canada's Junior team arrived home, they were met with reactions mixed and strong. Joseph said as soon as they hit the airport in Toronto they heard both support and vilification. "One of the CBC announcers said it was a 'disgraceful display, no matter who started it'. But I think the other announcer Don Cherry described what it was really like. You can't sit and watch five guys get beat up by 20 and not try to help. Not when they are like your brothers." Joseph has taken a lot of kidding from his Seattle teammates about what happened. "It was wild and I guess it had a funny side to it. I guess you can joke about it, too, but I don't know . . ."
Incidentally, the Soviet media only reported about the national team's losses at the tournament and never mentioned the bench-clearing brawl that disqualified both teams. The Soviet Hockey Federation banned seven of the junior team players for the rest of 1987, and the remainder of the team for the rest of this season. The newspaper Izvestia said: "It has been established that there was no premeditation in the actions of Soviet or Canadian players."
