By LAWRENCE MARTIN
Tuesday, September 17, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A17
It is seen as a sports triumph. But there is a more important legacy from the Canada-Russia hockey series of 1972 that is being reflected upon so much these days, 30 years later.
This was a significant political story as well. The matches were a clash of systems and Canada's victory marked an early Cold War triumph, a small crack in the credibility of the Soviet system. It was a crack that widened to the point where, in the late 1980s when I was a correspondent in Moscow, it was the Russian hockey players who were daring to lead the charge West from the Iron Curtain, setting an example for so many others.
Back in 1972, intensity wasn't part of the Russian game or, for that matter, of the Soviet culture. We remember the hockey players for their V-8 skating engines, their radar passes, their blank faces, their better art. They were taught by the great Anatoly Tarasov that the puck carrier is the servant of his teammates. The Red Machine played as a creative collective, where no individual was supposed to stand out, with emotions in check, with despondent majestic rhythms that had few peaks and valleys, though often a chilling chessboard efficiency.
Before the Canadians came along, they had been ingrained to believe that their system, of which the hockey culture was a mirror, was better. Three years before the 1972 series, Ken Dryden played for Canada's national team against a touring Soviet squad. Mr. Dryden noticed one prototype Soviet player, Alexander Maltsev, soaring around Canucks like they were lawn ornaments. He was scoring at will. Near the end, Mr. Dryden was sweating buckets and he looked over to the face-off circle and there was the adonis, Mr. Maltsev, not a bead of perspiration on him. With an expression as cold as the ice below him, the Soviet player peered over at the Canadian goalkeeper and winked at him: "Don't worry boy," he was saying in so many words. "I'll only toy with you a little while longer."
The Soviet system produced many such players, said Slava Fetisov, the Russian rearguard who became a star NHLer. "Robots on ice," he called them. But beginning with the 1972 series, beginning with the guts and passion shown by the Canadians there, the Soviet mentality slowly began to change.
The heroes of socialist labour learned a lesson in individualism in this series. In the Moscow of the mid-1980s, along the boards of the Luzhniki Arena, I recall seeing Alexander Yakushev. The big centreman with the long reach had been the Phil Esposito of his team except for one mighty difference. There was none of Espo's hot blood in his veins -- and Mr. Yakushev knew it.
Looking back, he conceded his team had lost in 1972 because it had none of the passion, the drive, the spirit the Canadians displayed. Other players were of the same opinion. Many of the series that followed -- the 1984 and 1987 Canada Cups in particular -- produced the same 11th-hour emotional heroics by the Canadian side. "We won it on guts and desire," Wayne Gretzky would say of the 1987 battle. While the Soviets won many of the competitions, they were becoming well aware of a vital missing dynamic, both in the arena and away from it.
The Soviet players were confined to what essentially were boot camps. In quarantined conditions, they lived a dour and monotonous existence, unable to see friends, family, relatives but once a week. Viewing the freedoms of the Canadian skaters, their wealth, their lifestyle, their success, they began to realize how pointlessly suffocating their system was.
In shining a light on the Western way, the hockey competitions were forerunners of Mikhail Gorbachev's politics of glasnost, which encouraged the opening to the West.
Emboldened by Mr. Gorbachev's initiatives, the members of the Red Machine had the courage to rebel against the tyranny of coach Viktor Tikhonov. The great players, Igor Larionov, Sergei Makarov, Alexander Mogilny and Mr. Fetisov got out. Vladislav Tretiak, the goalie from the '72 series, came over to coach. At the 1987 Rendez-Vous series in Quebec City, shortly before the exodus began, Mr. Fetisov demonstrated in a single gesture the admiration for the other northern nation. Governor-General Jeanne Sauvé was in attendance and Mr. Fetisov, not aware of the niceties of protocol involving the Queen's representative, planted a big Russian kiss on her.
With time, the Soviets learned to play with at least some of the emotional abandon and punishing physical style the Canadians had shown. They learned hockey capitalism and other forms of that philosophy as well. Not all have prospered but the despondent rhythms of the old system have been broken and the hockey summit of 1972 was arguably a turning point.
Had the Communists won it, the clock may have slowed. As it was, the historic clash helped set the groundwork for some of the stirring changes to follow.
Lawrence Martin, Washington correspondent for The Globe and Mail from 1985 to 1988, is the author of Breaking with History: The Gorbachev Revolution and The Red Machine: The Soviet Quest to Dominate Canada's Game.
|
Headline Index
Breaking News
All times are ET.
