Liam Responds
Defending Canadian Hockey, Feb 26, 2004

Iain F. posted the following comment on a site called Above and Beyond Hockey:

I've been known to disagree with these guys from time to time, but in their analysis of the Summit Series Klein and Reif are dead on. Canada did not win because they had more desire. They won because they cheated. Bobby Clarke INTENTIONALLY broke Kharlamov's ankle, prompted by assistant coach John Ferguson. As is, Fergy said, "somebody should take him out of the game" and Clarke went out and did it. One of the most shameful moments in hockey history, to be sure. And Paul Henderson agrees.

I like to look at the series as Canada having lost. After all, 99% of the population expected them to win 8-0, or maybe 7-1, so going 4-3-1 can hardly be called a victory.

Liam's Response:

I just came across this website. I've read some of the authors work and I've always enjoyed their view on various stats and such. Although I did not see their comments on the 1972 Summit Series. For anybody to suggest that was anything but a tremendous win for Canada is total garbage. My experience in discussing various moments and the like from '72 usually breaks down depending on the nationality of the person you're debating. Obviously the overwhelming majority of Canadians who lived through the series see it as a tremendous win. Most outside of Canada it seems will state that Canada was either lucky or cheated or it's a moot point because they were so heavily favored. So you really get the different points.

The other great divider is dissecting the various incidents. Clarke's slash of Kharlamov prompting him to miss the one game, Bergman being kicked right through the shin pad, Esposito butt ended in the mouth and many others too numerous to mention seem to be reviewed differently by people who played the game at some level of competitiveness versus those who can't or never skated.

I've met and interviewed almost all of the Team Canada participants and many of the Soviets including Vladislav Tretiak. Interestingly Tretiak's biggest disappointment in hindsight about the series was the overall play of the Soviets in games 6-8. He told me he felt their own lapse in play versus the inspired and improved play of Canada was the reason for the loss. Nobody on the Soviet team points to the Kharlamov ankle injury including their captain who I interviewed in Montreal last year during an Alumni game he played for Moscow Dynamo against Concordia University. Victor Kuzkin stated among other things that had Bobby Orr and Bobby Hull played perhaps Canada's prophecy of winning the series easily might have happened. Regardless he was incredibly happy to have played in the series and through an interpreter he told me he felt Canada's comeback in the series was the greatest in all of sports history. I concur.

There isn't a player on either side that I talked to that did not admit to the hockey being played as the most intense and dirtiest they had ever been involved in. I personally don't know why the slash on Kharlamov would be viewed any differently than the Gary Suter check from behind on Wayne Gretzky in 1991? Both tremendous cheap shots that have no place in the game but unfortunately on many occasions they find there way into certain key moments in time.

It was an incredible hockey series the most intense ever played in my opinion. I believe the better team won however look what it took to get that done. 34 seconds to go in the final game only went to show how little was actually decided between those two teams at that time. Personally I do not think Canada would have lost another game. Our hockey was superior at that time and had Orr and Hull played it would have been a moot point, regardless, the Soviets showed the world they were for real and that was quite evident over the next twenty years and continues to be with the play of some of their players today.

To focus on that slash or any hockey part of that series shows a tremendous lack of understanding of what transpired during those 28 days in September, a lack of understanding of the sport of hockey and a callous disregard for what Canada accomplished coming back to win three games in a row, all on Russian soil, all by one goal and the winning goal scored by the same player in all three games. Get over yourselves and enjoy it for what it was, the most intense hockey series ever played, and the first of its kind, never to be duplicated despite the attempt of the WHA two years later.

Liam Maguire