Soviet legend looks back
Epic hockey saga ‘will never be repeated’
MOSCOW – The gentlemanly Jean Beliveau of Soviet hockey says it was not only the Canadians who were totally discombobulated by the uncertainties that arose before and during the first series between the Canadian professionals and the Soviet “amateurs.”
Like all the Canadian players, Alexander Yakushev, who equalled Paul Henderson as top goal scorer in the mammoth eight-game series with seven, said none of his teammates had ever seen their opponents play before they suited up for the first game in Montreal 40 years ago this month.
“While we could guess that it would not be easy, we had no idea how difficult it would be,” the lanky, silver-haired Soviet centre said.
The only measuring stick the Soviet team had was Carl Brewer. A former NHL all-star with the Toronto Maple Leafs, he had played for Canada as a reinstated amateur at the 1967 World Championships. “Brewer was a very good defender, but he was kind of alone on that team. Yet he was such a bright example that remembering him we tried to guess the quality of the Canadian team from that one player,” the 65-year-old Yakushev said during a 10-minute stroll from the Luzhniki Arena where the four games in Moscow were played.
“There were many things we had not experienced before our first game in Montreal. There were almost 20,000 fans there and that was strange to us. When they introduced the Canadian team, they all stood and clapped wildly for every player. It made us wonder exactly what kind of team they must have if every player was worthy of such praise.
“That left us a bit paralyzed. But we cannot say that we were afraid. We had been warned by our coaches that the Canadians would try to attack everywhere at the beginning and try to crush us psychologically to suppress us morally and physically. They scored the first two goals, but we were better prepared physically than the Canadians. By the second and third period we were dominating.”
The rapturous reception the Canadian fans accorded their players stood in stark contrast to how Yakushev’s team was greeted in Moscow. Although the Soviet side held what looked like an insuperable lead in the series after returning from Canada, the home crowd greeted them with stony silence while “the 3,000 Canadian tourists in the rink shouted so loudly that our 9,000 citizens could not be heard,” Yakushev said. “An evening of hockey is not like an evening at the Bolshoi. The Canadians were just behaving as people should at a hockey game.”
There was a reason the Soviet fans were so quiet. Inevitably, it involved politics.
“The first people to get tickets were the ministers and members of the state committee of the Communist Party,” Yakushev recalled. “Tickets were distributed in a certain way and there was nothing that could be done about it. Because there was practically no such thing as a ‘Red’ (Communist) hockey fan, what might be considered the real hockey public at those games mainly consisted of the players’ friends and family because we had each been given a few tickets.”
The Politburo was intensely aware of the propaganda value and peril of having its hockey team play against Canada. Anatoli Tarasov, the legendary national team coach who had been fired a few months prior to the ’72 series, “had dreamed of such games for a very long time. But Mikhail Suslov (the Communist Party’s chief ideologue) and the rest of the political leadership feared it,” Yakushev said. “If we lost to Canada it would be a blow to Soviet hockey and a blow to the party ideology. Our political leadership only understood that we had won nine world championships and three Olympics where no professionals from Canada had been present.”
As the Soviet team had won two and tied one of the four games in Canada and triumphed again in the first game when the series resumed in Moscow on Sept. 22, the Canadian team’s prospects seemed doomed.
“We were absolutely sure at this point that we would be victorious because all we had to do was win one of the last three games,” Yakushev said. “But I must pay tribute to the Canadians. They were one step from the abyss. If they had fallen in, it would have been a shame and tragedy for them and their fans.
“This was their most difficult moment, but they found a moral and psychological purpose. They displayed what is the best feature of Canadian hockey. They fought every game until the last second. It was not by chance they won that last game only 34 seconds from the end. It says a lot about the Canadian character.”
Laughing, Yakushev said he had such a vivid recollection of the events of 40 years ago because journalists constantly reminded him about them.
“That series was memorable because it was the first,” he said. “There have been so many competitions since, but none that were like that first one. It is something that will never be repeated.”