Theokritos
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Let's Watch: 1972 Summit Series, Game 1/8
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I was in the nosebleeds behind a goal.....
One thing I never forgot - there was a stoppage as a pane of glass needed to be addressed. Team Canada hung by the bench laughing and joking, the USSR used the time to do wind sprints.
It was a very somber day in Montreal because of a horrific fire in a downtown nightclub the night before, in fact, my brother woke me up at 5:30 AM to make sure I was alive.
One thing I never forgot - there was a stoppage as a pane of glass needed to be addressed. Team Canada hung by the bench laughing and joking, the USSR used the time to do wind sprints.
It was a very somber day in Montreal because of a horrific fire in a downtown nightclub the night before, in fact, my brother woke me up at 5:30 AM to make sure I was alive.
PrimumHockeyist
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"We've had this game before, but since the 50th Anniversary of the Summit Series is coming up I though it's a good opportunity to watch the series in its entirety. I will post one game after the other with one week in between. Game 1 was IMO the most impactful game in the history of international hockey."
Well said. So many firsts. I see Game One as "the most important hockey game of the 20th century," with the 19th Century's equivalent being James Creighton's demonstration match at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal on March 3, 1875.
One thing about Game One of the Summit Series that doesn't seem to get mentioned is how this was the first best on best contest between the best of Ice hockey's two main continental lineages, North America and Europe. National bragging rights notwithstanding, the Soviets' victory over Canada in Montreal was a huge win for Europe in general, or at least to the other European powers, Sweden and Czecholsovakia. The Swedes held the Russians to a 3-3 tie at the 72 Olympics in Sapporo and at the 72 IIHFs six months earlier, whereas the Czechs defeated the Soviets on their way to the championship.
At the continental level Game One is best viewed as the first round in a "September to Remember" battle, one ended in Prague and lasted 11 rounds compared to the Summit Series' 8. North America won the most rounds, but they were all pretty even except one. That was the first round, when the only knockdown in this series occurred, and it wasn't Europe whose back fell to canvas in Montreal that night. By the end of the second period that night it probably seemed very clear on both sides of the Atlantic that Europe's best could at least hang with the best in North America.
Well said. So many firsts. I see Game One as "the most important hockey game of the 20th century," with the 19th Century's equivalent being James Creighton's demonstration match at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal on March 3, 1875.
One thing about Game One of the Summit Series that doesn't seem to get mentioned is how this was the first best on best contest between the best of Ice hockey's two main continental lineages, North America and Europe. National bragging rights notwithstanding, the Soviets' victory over Canada in Montreal was a huge win for Europe in general, or at least to the other European powers, Sweden and Czecholsovakia. The Swedes held the Russians to a 3-3 tie at the 72 Olympics in Sapporo and at the 72 IIHFs six months earlier, whereas the Czechs defeated the Soviets on their way to the championship.
At the continental level Game One is best viewed as the first round in a "September to Remember" battle, one ended in Prague and lasted 11 rounds compared to the Summit Series' 8. North America won the most rounds, but they were all pretty even except one. That was the first round, when the only knockdown in this series occurred, and it wasn't Europe whose back fell to canvas in Montreal that night. By the end of the second period that night it probably seemed very clear on both sides of the Atlantic that Europe's best could at least hang with the best in North America.
The Panther
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One thing I've never understood about this series / game was why the scouting report for Team Canada was evidently so wrong.
Maybe the Canadian players have exaggerated this in the (re-)telling, but we always hear about how Canada was told that they were going to win easy, that Tretiak couldn't stop a beachball, and that the Soviets couldn't shoot, etc.
Yet I've seen interviews with Maurice Richard from around 1960 where he clearly says that the Soviets are the best hockey nation aside from Canada, and that the players are very, very good, etc. Even the TV commentators here (Hewitt and whoever the other guy is?) keep talking about how great the Soviets looked over the past few days in practice. So, why the heck did anyone think this was going to be easy?
I also don't understand why Harry Sinden / Team Canada thought it was a good idea to employ 185 players (or whatever it was) for the Canadian team's expanded roster. You would think, in such a situation where they had a few weeks to get a cohesive "team" together, that a smaller group would be preferable.
Maybe the Canadian players have exaggerated this in the (re-)telling, but we always hear about how Canada was told that they were going to win easy, that Tretiak couldn't stop a beachball, and that the Soviets couldn't shoot, etc.
Yet I've seen interviews with Maurice Richard from around 1960 where he clearly says that the Soviets are the best hockey nation aside from Canada, and that the players are very, very good, etc. Even the TV commentators here (Hewitt and whoever the other guy is?) keep talking about how great the Soviets looked over the past few days in practice. So, why the heck did anyone think this was going to be easy?
I also don't understand why Harry Sinden / Team Canada thought it was a good idea to employ 185 players (or whatever it was) for the Canadian team's expanded roster. You would think, in such a situation where they had a few weeks to get a cohesive "team" together, that a smaller group would be preferable.
The Soviets using TV equipment sent to Montreal for Expo 67 taped every NHL game they could and sent the tapes to Moscow.
In retrospect, Sinden was an odd choice to be HC as he quit the Bruins after 1970 to make his fortune selling prefab housing in Rochester, NY which didn't end well. Eagleson wanted Harry and that was that.
The 1972 Summit Series had limited coverage in the US and Canadian rights were brokered by Eagleson
Summit Series - Wikipedia
The games' broadcasts were produced by Hockey Canada, using experienced hockey commentators from Canadian television networks. In English, CBC Television (CBC) and CTV Television Network (CTV) split the coverage, with CTV carrying games one, three, five, seven and eight, while CBC aired games two, four, six and eight. Foster Hewitt called the play-by-play and former player Brian Conacher was the color commentator for all of the games. At the request of the broadcasters, Hewitt came out of semi-retirement to be part of the broadcast. In French, all games were broadcast on SRC and the broadcast team was Rene Lecavalier and former player Jacques Plante for the games played in Canada, and with SRC's Richard Garneau for the games played in Moscow - Garneau was already in Europe, having covered the 1972 Summer Olympics. For the eighth game, it was estimated that 16 million Canadians watched the match (A year earlier, the national census had counted 21,963,000 Canadians.)
A partnership between Bobby Orr Enterprises and Harold Ballard bought the broadcast rights from Hockey Canada for $750,000. The bid, negotiated by Alan Eagleson, who, at the time, was both Orr's agent and a Hockey Canada director, outbid McLaren Advertising, producers of Hockey Night in Canada, which had offered $500,000. Ballard-Orr realized a profit on the series of $1.2 million.
The series was picked up by some U.S. television stations, such as WSNS (Channel 44) in Chicago. The telecasts of games one through four were produced by WSBK (Channel 38) in Boston and called by Bruins' announcers Fred Cusick and John Peirson.[157] After efforts by WSBK to get rights to the four games in Moscow broke down, a last-minute deal by Boston public television station WGBH-TV allowed it to broadcast the CBC/CTV feed of games five through eight and to make the telecast available to PBS stations in several American cities, mostly those who had NHL, minor-league, or major college hockey teams. WGBH fed the Canadian telecasts; games six, seven, and eight were seen on WGBH and PBS on a tape-delay in prime-time.
The Soviet play-by-play was done by Nikolai Ozerov.[158] In the style of that time, the Soviets did not televise anything during the pre-game, intermissions or post-game. During the intermission, the screen went black, with classical music playing quietly. After the games, the broadcast simply ended and Soviet television networks returned to regular programming.
Now keep in mind the 4 games in Canada were being played at the same time as the Olympics in Munich. Outside of old-school hockey markets in the US, the series was ignored but then this happened at the Olympics the day after Game 4 in Vancouver.
That was the mindset of the era.
As noted above WGBH Boston a non-commercial station secured the US TV rights for the games played in Moscow and then offered the games to other PBS stations. Game 6 was shown live on a Sunday afternoon - the rest were taped delayed.
Carrying those games shattered every PBS fundraising effort.
For Game 8 I took great pains not to know the outcome even though the game was on a Boston radio station live. I figured watching Walter Cronkite doing the news on CBS was safe at 6:30 PM ET - silly me - IT WAS THE LEAD STORY!!!!!!
Theokritos
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There were very mixed opinions about the Soviets in Canada prior to 1972. You'll find a lot of praise and you'll also find the opinion that the Soviets only looked good because they never played against Canadian pros. (Greg Franken does a great job chronicling all those opinions voiced over the years in his book "Epic Confrontation: Canada vs Russia On Ice".) For them to play against a team of NHL All-stars? That prospect even had Father David Bauer (who, through the Canadian national team of the 1960s, knew the Soviets very well) predicting total domination by Team Canada.
Sinden was one of the people on the Canadian side who took the Soviets more seriously than many others did. He didn't think they'd have players of the individual quality to go toe-to-toe with elite NHL players, but he thought they were quite good and their great conditioning would make it a physically taxing series for Team Canada. In his mind a big roster gave him the welcome option to rest players while Canada's talent/quality edge would be sufficient to beat the Soviets no matter who played (even if certainly not without a lot of sweat). Of course, Game 1 changed all those expectations.
And of course, they had been attending every NHL game they could whenever they had been in North America between 1957 and 1971.
Was he an odd choice? I would say it's natural they wanted someone with NHL experience to headcoach that Team Canada and I also think it's a given that no active NHL coach was available for the gig since it overlapped with the NHL preseason. That left Hockey Canada with retired NHL coaches. Toe Blake and Punch Imlach weren't options due to health issues, so the list of potential candidates came down to ... Harry Sinden, Al MacNeil and maybe Claude Ruel?
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Ahhh but there was no THEY
Eagleson ran Hockey Canada and Sinden was one of his many clients.
The NHL wanted no part of the 1972 Summit Series but Eagleson promised Bill Wirtz Bobby Orr if the NHL would sign off on it and that did happen.
Eagleson was pure evil and was brought down by a reporter from a suburban Boston newspaper who kept digging when nobody in Canada would touch it.
Russ Conway, 70, Dies; His Reporting Led to a Hockey Boss’s Downfall (Published 2019)
He detailed the corrupt acts of the head of the N.H.L. players’ union, laying the groundwork for successful prosecutions in the United States and Canada.
PrimumHockeyist
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The most interesting book I have ever read on the Summit Series is Hockey Showdown by Harry Sinden. What makes it especially interesting - aside from his amazing first person point of view - is that he wrote it as the summit series was unfolding. One example of the freshness of his content comes when he writes that Pat Stapleton was the one who slashed Kharlamov.
Here's a portion of his comments just five hours after the conclusion of Game One:
Won't forget for a long time, indeed.
Here's a portion of his comments just five hours after the conclusion of Game One:
Won't forget for a long time, indeed.
PrimumHockeyist
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I'm not sure if I would use "mindset" to describe the thematic similarities between the 1972 Olympic gold medal basketball game and the Summit Series, but the similarites were deep nonetheless.
As I recall, during the first four games in Canada the prevailing chatter was mainly about how good the Soviet hockey team was and how unprepared TC72 was for what confronted them, quality wise.
The series turned into much more of a moral drama after shifting to Europe, although to the general public in Canada the moral perspective was limited to how bad if not corrupt the referring was in Moscow, at Canada's expense. Only later did the rest of us learn that this kind of thing extended to other things as well, from the time the team arrived there.
The way that the IOC treated the Americans in that basketball game shamefully recalls how the IOC and the IIHF had worked in lockstep for years prior to the Summit Series, as they made farces of their tournaments and institutions through their conscious and ongoing tacit endorsment of shamateurism. I should take care to mention that these were previous IOC and IIHF administrations, but their treatments of sport during this time was disgraceful. That legacy was quite forgotten or put aside in Canada during the first four games of the Summit Series. Then it all came back after the series moved to Moscow, for various reasons that are similarly reflected in that basketball game. Perhap the most crucial common ingredient was that the Americans laid claim to 'ownership' of basketball during this era, in much the same way that Canada did with respect to ice hockey. Had a similar thing occurred in the biathlon it would have soon been forgotten.
Staniowski
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Great game - maybe the most important hockey game ever.
For me, the first Kharlamov goal - the 3rd Soviet goal - is the most memorable goal of all-time.
For me, the first Kharlamov goal - the 3rd Soviet goal - is the most memorable goal of all-time.
reckoning
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I actually just read the book. One of the points he made about Game 1 is that while he admits the Soviets were the better team that night and deserved to win by four goals, it could have easily ended in a tie. Cournoyer nearly scored to tie it in the third, then Mikhailov scores about 20 seconds later to put the Soviets up 5-3. Canada was mentally finished after that, but had Cournoyer scored to tie it there's good chance both teams play it safe and don't take any chances for the rest of the third.
reckoning
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In addition to the Olympic basketball game, another big U.S.- Soviet battle that finished right before the Summit Series was when Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky for the World Chess Championship. The Soviets had dominated Chess for decades, and it had to be a blow to their pride for someone from an "enemy" country to convincingly beat their best at their sport.
Then in Game 1 of the Summit Series, Canada experiences the same thing.
Then in Game 1 of the Summit Series, Canada experiences the same thing.
PrimumHockeyist
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Yes, it was an epic time for Cold War contests. Then the Israeli thing between Games 2 and 3 as I recall. That chess match seemed to go on all summer. People got sucked in. Quite amazing, that.
PrimumHockeyist
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Here's the relevant text. I hope I'm not doing anything wrong with these pastes. I guess I'll soon find out. This is Sinden talking about his thoughts leading into the 3rd period....
One of the things I liked about Sinden in this book was the integrity he shows in 'real time', as we see here in how he credits the Soviet players. This establishes credibility long before he expressed more ethical concerns later on in Moscow. That 'moral' theme also sheds interesting light on Eagleson's behavior in the 3rd period of game 8. His reaction to the goal light not coming on at 5-5 involved so much more that even Canadian fans knew at the time. All we might have added to what set him off was bad-if-not-corrupt referring. We didn't see what was going on in Moscow behind the scenes. Eagleson had been on the front lines of all that.
JackSlater
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Probably the most interesting single hockey game of all time, all things considered. I've seen it a few times already. Not a particularly good game to get a sense of the Canadian players. This game, pretty much by itself, really established Kharlamov as a legend in Canada
Batis
Registered User
One of the things that stands out the most to me is that even if Canada had a 2-0 lead six minutes into the game it should already at that point have been clear to anyone that was paying attention that this series not would be the cakewalk that most people had predicted. Based on how Harry Sinden was pacing back and forth behind the bench only a few minutes into the game it is clear that he was paying attention and was worried despite their early lead (1-0 at that point).
The crowd did not seem to be nearly as worried as Sinden was early on in this game. But one can hardly fault them for that considering both the predictions going into the series and that their team took the lead after 30 seconds of play and was up 2-0 after six minutes.
The crowd did not seem to be nearly as worried as Sinden was early on in this game. But one can hardly fault them for that considering both the predictions going into the series and that their team took the lead after 30 seconds of play and was up 2-0 after six minutes.
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Theokritos
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One of the biggest eye-openers for sure. Even someone like Harry Sinden who believed the Soviets were no joke didn't expect them to have players with the individual quality to match NHL stars.
I'll never forget coming across a pre-series quote by Sinden on why he picked Don Awrey for Team Canada: he said that it was almost impossible to walk around Awrey. Enter Kharlamov:
Respective quotes from Greg Franken's book:
Harry Sinden: "The Russians tore up and down the ice, making beautiful passes, taking beautiful passes, getting their men in position, beating us to loose pucks, and doing everything but putting it in the net. It was right then I knew the Russians were everything I didn't want them to be, and everything we were led to believe they wouldn't be."
Paul Henderson (after making it 2-0 for Canada): "I remember coming back to the bench, and saying that this was going to be tough. It didn't matter what the score was – these guys were for real. There was just a sickening feeling that we had totally underestimated them."
It makes me sad the Soviets didn't use the 71 lines instead.
Firsov-Maltsev-Vikulov
Kharlamov-Petrov-Mikhailov
Had the series happened in 71 there would have also been Hull and Orr present. Very unfortunate.
Firsov-Maltsev-Vikulov
Kharlamov-Petrov-Mikhailov
Had the series happened in 71 there would have also been Hull and Orr present. Very unfortunate.
Theokritos
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Decided to let this one run a little longer because I didn't even have time to re-watch the game until today.
True! Would have been very interesting to see.
True! Would have been very interesting to see.
Theokritos
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Game 2 thread is up, but this one will of course remain open and I hope I will have the time to still make some comments later on.
Big Phil
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I think a lot of it was media driven. Phil Esposito mentioned this in his rant after Game 4 how much the tires of Team Canada got pumped up by the media in so many words. Even Clarence Campbell warned that it would be a disgrace to lose even one game. John Robertson of the Montreal Star is a rare guy who predicted the Soviets would win. In the end he was wrong, but he was closer than anyone else. I often wonder what made him think that way.
The scouts that were sent over to watch the Soviets were the Leaf scouts. Maybe that tells the story in itself, but there were still hockey men sent over there. Bob Davidson of Maple Leaf royalty was part of that scouting team that said Tretiak couldn't stop a beach ball. However, they did watch him a day after his wedding. So that probably wasn't the best time.
There is a mixed view on it though, because Sinden seemed to know how hard it would be. Dryden has said training camp was difficult, Esposito said that he never worked harder before or since. So Sinden had running knowledge of how hard this would be. I think the media was just drowning it all out and the players were hooping it up believing their own press clippings. I often wonder how Orr would have viewed them. He was on the sidelines for this tournament but still traveled with the team. He obviously had a keen eye for talent and I would assume had watched them practice a time or two. Anyway, I've never heard the players say that they were concerned about how hard it would be. Esposito said that even when they were up 2-0 the players on the bench were all in agreement that they were out of breath and that it was overly hot. They were being worked over.
I am thinking if Sinden had his way there wouldn't have been so many players picked. Eagleson and the NHLPA were the ones who didn't allow the WHA guys, and neither did the NHL want them as well. But unless Sinden said something publicly that I don't know about, I have never heard him say that he was the one who decided on the whole idea of each player playing at least twice initially.
In truth, this was the most dysfunctional way to pick and prepare a team. They won by the skin of their teeth, but whether it was player selection, or deciding on who was getting benched, or whatever that may be, this wasn't a way to model how to run a team.
Sinden was a rare person who was taking the Soviets seriously. He would have known this by playing against them in the 1958 World Championships. He did try to warn the players about it, even showed them some video from the tournament back then. So he knew at least.
Theokritos
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Before the series Sinden actually insisted on making full use of the allowed roster size. He said the Soviet conditioning edge would make it difficult for the Canadian players to play in all eight games. The idea was to rest players along the way, which sounded plausible ... as long as he expected the Soviets to be good enough to make the Canadians sweat but not good enough to pull off something like e.g. a 7-3 upset in Game 1.
