Biopic rewrites ’72 Russia-Canada series
SOCHI, Russia — There could be no better motivator for Russia’s Olympic hockey team than a mandatory viewing of Legend No. 17, the blockbuster film about Valeri Kharlamov, the diminutive Soviet superstar who dazzled Canadians with his slick stickhandling, speed and grit during the epic 1972 Summit Series.
The two- hour biopic, which took in $8 million at the Russian box office during its first week last year, should be required viewing for Canada’s Olympic team, too.
From beginning to end, the dominant theme is that Russia is totally obsessed with beating Canada in hockey. It explains why Russians demand only two things from the XXII Winter Games: a Russia-Canada men’s hockey final and that their boys win gold in that game.
As the Kharlamov film makes plain, what beating Canada in Sochi is really about is avenging the Soviet loss the last time, 42 years ago — the first and until now only time the very best Russians and Canadians have met on Russian ice.
An added incentive for Canadians — and what would get their competitive juices flowing even faster — is that the film does what the Soviets did quite often: It rewrites history.
The film ends suddenly after the first game of the 1972 series in Montreal where the Soviet Union pulled off a shock 7-3 victory. The aggravating part for a Canadian is that just before the credits roll, an announcer declares that the game had proven that “we have the best hockey team in the world.”
As someone who was lucky enough to witness the game that night in the Montreal Forum, I will never forget the high tempo, tenacity and sensational passing of the Russians. It was a very close-run thing, but no Canadian or Russian of a certain age will ever forget that Canada, not Russia, won the tournament on Paul Henderson’s dramatic late goal in the eighth and last game of the series at Moscow’s fabled Luzhniki Stadium.
Legend No. 17 says that even as a child, Kharlamov’s head was filled with the importance of beating “the men of steel from Canada.” It was a message Kharlamov constantly heard from his parents and that he, Alexander Maltsev, Alexander Yakushev and the rest of the Red Machine heard from Anatoli Tarasov, their enemy, friend, mentor and coach.
The former soccer star and “father of Russian hockey” stressed that players must have “no ego,” that pain must be silently endured and that passing the puck was the key to success. So notoriously ruthless that his players sometimes compared him to Josef Stalin, Tarasov was also highly inventive, teaching his players gymnastics and ballet and forcing them to carry each other up and down hills for hours to build up their strength, endurance and sense of team unity.
Tarasov was gone by the time the Summit Series began — he was fired after the 1972 Olympics and replaced by Vsevolod Bobrov — but his lessons are a central part of the film.
For the most part, Canadian players and fans come across in the film as tough but respectful. However, Bobby Clarke, who took Kharlamov out of the last game of the 1972 series with a savage two-handed slash, and, less understandably, Phil Esposito, who led the tournament in scoring, come across almost comically as evil heavies prepared to win by devious means.
Legend No. 17 brilliantly captures the Soviet mood. Dowdy clothes, vodka and patriotism were part of every scene. As grey and grim as the Soviet Union was, this was a magical hockey era when players ranked next to war heroes such as Marshal George Zhukov, the sniper Vasili Zaytsev and cosmonauts such as Yuri Gagarin in the Soviet pantheon of heroes.
Just as Vladimir Putin takes an intense public interest in the Russian hockey team today, Leonid Brezhnev is accurately depicted in the film as an avid hockey fan who gambled his personal reputation and that of the Politburo and Communist party on Kharlamov and his teammates excelling when the best from the East and the West clashed in Canada and Russia.
In a message that sounded a lot like it could have come from Tarasov or Kharlamov, who died tragically in a car accident in 1981, Putin was quoted Thursday by Sport Express as having told Vladislav Tretiak, who played so magnificently in goal during the 1972 series: “We can forgive everything but not indifference. Sport is sport and the strongest will win, but hockey players have to give everything they can. Nobody should have a reason to say that they haven’t struggled and given everything they had to the game.”
As Kharlamov’s old teammate, Tretiak, told the Russian sports daily in explaining exactly what is at stake this month in Sochi: “One can forgive defeat if you ‘die’ in battle.”
That is how Anatoli Tarasov taught Valeri Kharlamov to play hockey. That is what Alexander Ovechkin and the new Red Machine must do if they are to defeat Canada in a gold-medal game that the first nations of hockey both so badly want to win.