Just a couple of points, although these type of threads always get a bit long-winded, with no one backing down...
There ain't no one convincing me that Challenge Cup was something similar to an NHL All-Star game. NHL All-Stars didn't take it very seriously? Passed-up hit opportunities? Is it really just a coincidence that Kharlamov was injured after a Larry Robinson hit (off-camera but mentioned by Irvin and Orr during the pre-game analysis for g2) at the end of the 1st game? And how about Vladimir Golikov, who had scored 2 key goals in the series, getting injured in the 2nd? Looks just too convinient to me. Barry Beck hit Skvortsov so hard on the boards that his helmet popped off and he laid on the ice for a few worrying moments.
NHL's line-up in the 1st game:
Dryden
Robinson - Salming
Savard - Beck
McDonald - Perreault - Sittler
Barber - Clarke - Gainey
Lafleur - Dionne - Shutt
Bossy - Trottier - Gillies
Hedberg, Nilsson
Guys like Potvin and Lapointe were added later... anyway, someone seriously trying to claim that these players were total strangers to one another? Also, USSR had to juggle their lines and put newcomers like Tyumenev and Gimaev in there due to those aforementioned injuries. And like Peter25 said, Tretiak was lousy in the first 2 games; that is the reason why he didn't play in the 3rd game.
I have no trouble believing that Stanley Cup was more important to the NHLers than the Challenge Cup. Just like the world championships meant more to the Soviets. Touché. I do agree that the series should have been a bit more carefully organized, but hey, NHL went for it and got burned.
Anyway, the hockey was pretty fast-paced and good IMO.
In the 2nd and especially in the 3rd game, NHL All-Stars hardly even got many great scoring chances, and I think the Soviet defence - for once - deserves a little credit. In the 1978-79 season, the Soviet national team definitely reached a peak never seen before (agreed by basically everyone who has seen games from that period and before), for example, beating their old nemesis Czechoslovakia 11-1 and 6-1 in the 1979 World Championships. Challenge Cup is just a part of the story - though the most familiar one to North Americans. And while it is easy to bring up Lake Placid in 1980, that game vs. USA was their only loss between 1978 and 1983 that had any significance. Not a bad record.