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Team Canada - OUR Team!
If you're a Canadian, and you were born in the mid-1960's or earlier, you know exactly what you were doing in September of 1972 - you were following every moment of the Canada-Russia hockey series. It didn't matter if you were a hockey fan or not - you were following it, because this was more than hockey. This was us versus them; this was democracy versus communism; this was the Cold War on ice - and the Americans might have been leading the West in the Cold War militarily, but our contribution would be hockey. This was the first time the best NHL players (almost all Canadians at that time) would play internationally, taking on the Soviet National Team in an 8 game series (4 in Canada and 4 in Russia.) International hockey has become commonplace since then; the NHL now is populated by Canadians along with Americans and Russians and Swedes and Finns and others, but in 1972 this was a mystery - the Russian players unknown. And we believed. These NHL'ers were going to rout these Russian pretenders. 8 games to none, probably winning each game by at least 4 or 5 goals. How different the series turned out to be; how surprised we all were. This documentary does a great job of capturing all that.
It drew me in immediately. The opening scene, of children in their classroom - watching Game 8 as Paul Henderson scored the winner. Yes. I remember. I was 7 years old. Our school (teachers, students and a few parents) gathered in the gymnasium with a bunch of TVs to watch the game. Schoolwork didn't matter that day. This was hockey! My only criticism of this production is that after that wonderful decision on how to open, the producers inexplicably took the focus off of hockey for a few minutes and gave us a snapshot of Canada in the early 1970's. National unity, the FLQ Crisis - who cares? This needed to be about hockey. Fortunately, after that totally unnecessary few minutes of historical context, the documentary got down to business.
There's a great recap of all the games in the Series, with great action footage interspersed with interviews with the players on both sides, and scattered here and there a few snippets about Canada's international hockey history. Everything about the Series was noted: Canadian over- confidence, the shock of the 7-3 Russian win in Game 1, Phil Esposito's "speech" after Canada lost Game 4 in Vancouver to fall behind 2-1-1 in the Series and were solidly booed, Paul Henderson's heroics (the winning goal in each of the last 3 games), the Alan Eagleson incident in Game 8, the terribly incompetent refereeing in the games in Russia. (As an aside, for all the talk about the refereeing, I don't think the European refs were cheating us or even especially incompetent. They were probably fine referees for the level they were used to refereeing at - they were just totally in over their heads and had no idea how to keep these games under control.) What came across most powerfully, after Canada fell behind 3-1-1 in the Series and faced the seemingly impossible task of having to win 3 games in a row in Moscow to win the Series, was the basic difference between Canadian hockey and Soviet hockey. The Soviets were technically brilliant (probably better than the Canadians) but Team Canada played with guts and heart and emotion and pulled it out, scoring 3 goals in the 3rd period of Game 8 to win the game 6-5 and the Series 4-3-1.
It will never be the same. Hockey will never be like this again. There's no longer any magic to international hockey - all the best international players now play in North America. We see them all the time - and there are still some convinced that even after all these years and in today's NHL it's still only the Canadian players who really play with guts and heart and emotion, with everyone else kind of along for the ride and the money.
If you're a Canadian, and you watched this series, you have to watch this. If you're a Canadian and you were born too late to watch the series, you have to watch this. If you're not a Canadian, you should still watch this - you'll learn a lot about Canada and hockey.
It drew me in immediately. The opening scene, of children in their classroom - watching Game 8 as Paul Henderson scored the winner. Yes. I remember. I was 7 years old. Our school (teachers, students and a few parents) gathered in the gymnasium with a bunch of TVs to watch the game. Schoolwork didn't matter that day. This was hockey! My only criticism of this production is that after that wonderful decision on how to open, the producers inexplicably took the focus off of hockey for a few minutes and gave us a snapshot of Canada in the early 1970's. National unity, the FLQ Crisis - who cares? This needed to be about hockey. Fortunately, after that totally unnecessary few minutes of historical context, the documentary got down to business.
There's a great recap of all the games in the Series, with great action footage interspersed with interviews with the players on both sides, and scattered here and there a few snippets about Canada's international hockey history. Everything about the Series was noted: Canadian over- confidence, the shock of the 7-3 Russian win in Game 1, Phil Esposito's "speech" after Canada lost Game 4 in Vancouver to fall behind 2-1-1 in the Series and were solidly booed, Paul Henderson's heroics (the winning goal in each of the last 3 games), the Alan Eagleson incident in Game 8, the terribly incompetent refereeing in the games in Russia. (As an aside, for all the talk about the refereeing, I don't think the European refs were cheating us or even especially incompetent. They were probably fine referees for the level they were used to refereeing at - they were just totally in over their heads and had no idea how to keep these games under control.) What came across most powerfully, after Canada fell behind 3-1-1 in the Series and faced the seemingly impossible task of having to win 3 games in a row in Moscow to win the Series, was the basic difference between Canadian hockey and Soviet hockey. The Soviets were technically brilliant (probably better than the Canadians) but Team Canada played with guts and heart and emotion and pulled it out, scoring 3 goals in the 3rd period of Game 8 to win the game 6-5 and the Series 4-3-1.
It will never be the same. Hockey will never be like this again. There's no longer any magic to international hockey - all the best international players now play in North America. We see them all the time - and there are still some convinced that even after all these years and in today's NHL it's still only the Canadian players who really play with guts and heart and emotion, with everyone else kind of along for the ride and the money.
If you're a Canadian, and you watched this series, you have to watch this. If you're a Canadian and you were born too late to watch the series, you have to watch this. If you're not a Canadian, you should still watch this - you'll learn a lot about Canada and hockey.
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- sddavis63
- Sep 29, 2012
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