50 years ago, Canada and Russia wanted to clarify which country played ice hockey better. Eight duels should decide – framed by a complex political network.
In September 1972, Canada was spellbound by a series of ice hockey games that went down in history. 50 years ago, the best ice hockey players from Canada and the Soviet Union met. The famous “Summit Series” was to decide who played better hockey: Canadian NHL stars or fans from the Soviet state. Only the eighth game brought the decision in favor of Canada. The event was etched in the soul of the country. Now this breathtaking game is thought. Because it was more than hockey.
“Other teams, other players at other times might have been better. But the 1972 series of games is the most important moment in hockey history. And it’s one of the most important moments of Canadian historysays Ken Dryden today. He was one of Team Canada’s goaltenders alongside Tony Esposito. He won the Stanley Cup six times with the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, later serving as a Liberal Member of Parliament and Minister of Social Affairs.
Canada is the “home of ice hockey”, which is simply called “hockey” in Canada. In 2008, the International Ice Hockey Federation officially credited Canada with the “first organized indoor ice hockey game” at the Victoria Rink in Montreal on March 3, 1875. In 1892, Governor General Lord Stanley, representing the British Crown in Canada, donated a trophy to Canada’s best hockey team, the Stanley Cup, which became the trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL), founded in Montreal in 1917.
Canadian teams have dominated World Cups and the Olympics for decades. In the mid-1950s, however, Soviet players entered the ice and they dominated the international scene from the early 1960s until the fall of the Soviet Union. Canada felt at a disadvantage because it was only allowed to send amateurs to competitions, not professionals, who stood no chance against the “state amateurs” of the Soviet Union. “We made the game. We were the best players in the world, but they, not us, were called world champions,” Dryden said, describing frustration in Canada with the dominance of Soviet state amateurs. given the ban on NHL professionals.
This gave rise to an event still remembered by all who are interested in the history of hockey: the famous “Summit Series”. The summit series of four games in Canada, then four in Moscow, which Canada was allowed to play with its pros, was to show who could play the best hockey.
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The game series was more than a sporting event. In the middle of the cold war was it “‘us’ versus ‘them’, the free world versus communism, good versus evil,” the newspaper describes Globe and Mail Years later, the mood in Canada at the time. Four years earlier, Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops had occupied Czechoslovakia. But Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau visited Moscow in May 1971 and spoke with Russian Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, who in turn came to Canada five months later. One of the themes of the talks was the cultural, scientific and sporting contacts between the two countries.
In Germany tapped Willy Brandt the new Ostpolitik. The Russians were worried about the rapprochement between the United States and China, then an enemy of the Soviet Union. In this field of international tensions and attempts at rapprochement, “series of summits” are planned.
The Canadians were expecting a walk. But on September 2, the series began with a shock. With Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in attendance, Team Canada led 2-0 after just six minutes in Montreal, but the game ended in a 7-3 loss. Players like Valery Kharlamov, Vladimir Petrov, Boris Mikhailov and Alexander Maltsev and Vladislav Tretyak in goal demonstrated hockey to perfection and aged the Canadians. Tony and Phil Esposito, Ken Dryden, Ron Ellis, Yvan Cournoyer, Bobby Clarke and Paul Henderson struggled to understand what was happening to them. The NHL and hockey officials did not pay special attention to the development of Soviet ice hockey and did not take it seriously.
After the fifth match, the first in Moscow, three wins for the Soviet Union were offset by a single win and a draw for Canada. But the Canadians found the strength to fight back, winning games six and seven, with Canadian Bobby Clarke hitting a stick in game six and injuring Soviet star Kharlamov, who was unable to play in the next game and was unfit to play. the final.
With CP leader Leonid Brezhnev in attendance, the Canadians won the thriller 6-5 on September 28. A goal from Paul Henderson 34 seconds before the end of the game decided the showdown in favor of the NHL professionals. The TV commentator’s cry “Henderson scored for Canada” has become etched in the country’s collective memory. It’s comparable to Herbert Zimmermann’s “Rahn should shoot from the background – Rahn shoots – goal, goal, goal” in the 1954 World Cup final between Germany and Hungary.
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