STILL AT THEIR SUMMIT
Legends of 1972 Canadian team set to tour this summer, including a stop in Vancouver
MONTREAL — At the beginning of a news conference Tuesday to promote the ’72 Summit Series Tour, there was a problem with the audio on a video looking back at the historic hockey event between Canada and the Soviet Union.
“It was so long ago, it was silent film,” said Peter Mahovlich, the former Montreal Canadiens class clown who hasn’t lost his sense of humour since playing for Team Canada 44 years ago.
Everyone in the conference room at the Chateau Champlain Hotel cracked up.
There were a lot of smiles and laughs as seven members of that Canadian team shared stories and memories about their victory that captured the attention of two nations as the eight-game series turned into a political war as much as a hockey battle.
Forty-four years later, the stories never get old and apparently there are some that still haven’t been told.
The ’72 Summit Series Tour is being produced by Pierre Marchand, who created the MusiquePlus and MusiMax TV stations and is president of Atmosphere Inc. The tour will start Sept. 2 in Montreal — the 44th anniversary of Game 1 of the Summit Series at the Montreal Forum, which the Soviets won 7-3 — with stops in Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver (Sept. 8 at Queen Elizabeth Theatre), other Canadian cities that hosted games.
The players won’t be putting on their skates again, but Marchand said it will be like a two-hour “rock show” with a giant screen for a video montage and a moderator getting players to relive their most memorable moments. The second hour will be interactive with members of the public able to ask players their own questions.
“Our team has decided that we have four demographics that we’re reaching,” said Pat Stapleton, who was joined by former teammates Mahovlich, Serge Savard, Ken Dryden, Yvan Cournoyer, Guy Lapointe and Phil Esposito. “Fifty and above, we’re going to refresh the memories. Thirty-five to 50, we’re going to confirm the legend. Twenty to 35, we’re going to tell the story. And under 20, we’re going to advocate the team values.”
And what a team this was. The Summit Series squad was selected as Canada’s team of the century in a poll conducted by The Canadian Press and Broadcast News in 1999.
“You got to understand something,” Esposito said. “This became political and it became political very quickly. Not only the Russians, the Canadian government, too. It became society against society. Not that we wanted it, not that we realized it was going to be that way. But it did. So for me, anyway, it was almost like war.”
The story about Paul Henderson scoring the winning goal for Canada with 34 seconds remaining in Game 8 has been told a million times and any Canadian old enough to remember it knows exactly where they were when it happened. But Dryden said that 44 years later, the most interesting tales are about the “non-big-story stuff.”
“It was the little stuff that I didn’t know was on anybody else’s mind that they were thinking about,” Dryden said. “Those are the surprises.”
The Hall of Fame goaltender shared his feelings the day after Game 1 of the series, when he gave up seven goals.
“I can tell you about the morning after the night before in Montreal,” he said. “Being in Toronto and it’s a Sunday morning and it’s the only time that I had ever been on a team where I didn’t have a roommate. So it’s Toronto, a Sunday morning in 1972, no roommate and at that time in Toronto no Sunday newspapers, no sports radio, no sports television. You wake up in the morning and it is possible that in fact Saturday night didn’t happen. It’s absolutely possible. There is no indication in that hotel room that Saturday night ever existed. And so as long as I stayed in that room, Saturday night didn’t happen. And I stayed in that room as long as I could. And then finally I had to get out of that room to go to practice. And as soon as I arrived at practice, Saturday night happened.”
One of Savard’s lasting memories from the series is the short-handed goal Mahovlich scored in Game 2 in Toronto, which Canada won 4-1.
“I think after that goal, we started to believe that we were going to win that game and even up the series,” Savard said. “It gave us a lot of confidence.” Said Mahovlich: “Every time he tells that story, I have to give him $20. And he tells it every day.”
Responded Savard: “I’m still waiting.”
Mahovlich said he will never forget that Game 1 loss at the Forum for a couple of reasons.
“The sad thing about Sept. 2, 1972 — two drastic things have happened to me because of that,” he said.
“One was the fact that we lost 7-3. The other was it was my son’s birthday. He was two years old. He still hasn’t talked to me.” Everyone laughed again. Forty-four years later, some guys never change and some of the stories get even better.
For more information on the tour, visit teamcanada1972.ca.