1972 Summit Series: When hockey was bigger than sport

Bones were crushed and legends made when a clutch of Soviet amateurs collided with Canada’s best in a 1972 ice hockey series that made a small dent in the Iron Curtain decades into the Cold War.

Canada won the cliff-hanger series 4-3 (with one draw) 40 years ago Friday after scoring a last-minute goal in the very final game held on enemy territory in the heart of Soviet Moscow.

It was truly a “goal heard around the world” which brought a close to a series pitting almost unknown Soviets against confident Canadian superstars playing a game their country invented and treated as its own.

“Here’s a shot,” revered commentator Foster Hewitt shouted in a tinny voice from Moscow across Canadian television sets.

“Henderson makes a wild stab for it and falls. Here’s another shot. Right in front. They score! Henderson has scored for Canada!”

One poll ranks that Luzhniki Ice Palace moment as the fifth-biggest event in Canadian history — a deserved honour in a sport that series goaltender Ken Dryden described as his country’s “national theatre”.

But Russians remember the call their own great announcer made after the Soviets demolished the stunned North Americans at the grand old Forum in Montreal in Game 1.

“The myth about the professional Canadians’ invincibility has been busted,” Nikolai Ozerov announced as the seconds wound down on the 7-3 Soviet triumph.

— ‘Absolutely everyone watched’ —

The matches were so good — so filled with cloak-and-dagger political intrigue and sporting prowess never before seen in the sport — that neither side wanted them to end.

A new 1976-1991 series between clubs was soon launched that left Moscow in the dark during tough Soviet stretches as every single TV set switched on for matches and blew out the last fuse. The score mostly went the Russians way.

“Absolutely everyone watched these matches,” the Moscow Higher School of Economics professor Mark Urnov recalled.

“This was beyond important — this was a grand event.”

It was also a month of shocking discovery for both sides.

The North Americans got their first glimpses of stone-faced bureaucrats in identical black coats and glasses watching without appreciation at cold and silent Luzhniki while the animated Canadian coaches waved their arms below.

And the Soviets were openmouthed at the physical violence exacted against their players by Canadians who boldly played without helmets and became increasingly desperate as the series wore on.

Soviet winger Alexander Maltsev had touched the puck just a few times before he was cracked over the head by Bobby Clarke — a fan favourite who later used his stick to slash to pieces the ankles of the late prodigy Valery Kharlamov.

“The Canadians did not treat us like players,” Maltsev said in one recent Russian media interview. “They simply did not care — as if we were second-class.”

The National Hockey League heroes did not exactly belabour the point.

“We did not take them seriously,” clinching goal scorer Paul Henderson said on the NHL.com website. “The line-up we had — how could we ever lose?”

‘Huge arguments in the party leadership’

The Soviets came home for the return four matches up a game and the sudden toast of the Communist Party elite.

They were instantly treated to free vacations and already destined for international fame that made it impossible for Party apparatchiks to keep them out of the NHL.

But this taste of Western luxury and sense of achievement also managed to ruin the team. They lost not only their focus but also the lead.

“We became celebrities and developed a superiority complex,” Maltsev admitted. “We started training three days before the opener.”

There had in fact been sirring debate inside the Party about whether to show the matches at all. They began to be broadcast with a delay once the Canadians proved they could be beaten.

“We later learned that there were huge arguments in the Party leadership,” said journalist and popular historian Vitaly Dymarsky.

“After all, we always professed the superiority of Soviet sport and way of life!”

“We represented the entire world of amateur hockey,” added the brilliant Soviet goalkeeper Vladislav Tretyak.

“Hundreds of Europeans are playing hockey in the NHL because of us.”