It was 50 years ago today, on September 28, 1972, that Paul Henderson scored to win for Team Canada. As I indicated in the story I posted three weeks ago, I know that goal — that series — is a big reason why I became the sports fan I remain to this day. I played plenty of sports, too, over the years, and I also know — perhaps like most of us who don’t become professional athletes — that my greatest moments came when I was still a kid.
I suppose my greatest personal accomplishment was winning the Grade 9 scoring title in the Zion Heights intramural football league early in the 1977-78 school year. In a five-game season, I scored nine touchdowns and three two-point converts for a total of 60 points. I was a tight end. We didn’t throw the ball much, and I scored most of those points running the “end around” play. Good as I was that year, our team lost the championship game, and as Richard Jacobson would constantly remind me over the years, I couldn’t block him.
Truth was, I couldn’t block anyone! I didn’t like blocking. I didn’t like getting hit either. I just wanted to run and catch. I’m sure my friend Jody Munro will remember the Zion game when I was taken down hard (pretty close to a tree along the sidelines, as I recall). I rolled over and moaned, “Now I KNOW I’m dead!”
My best hockey team. Andrew Morrison Real Estate. I missed the picture at Mitchell Field, so that’s me in the inset. The captain is Carey MacIntyre, standing in front of his dad and our coach, Andy. Ross Takahuchi is holding the white helmet. Andrew Spitzer is our goalie. My defense partner Blake is next to him with the yellow helmet.
Not surprisingly, it was touch football where I really excelled.
The team championships I won came in hockey a few years earlier. When I started playing house league hockey in grade four, I was pretty terrible. My brother David, who is two years younger, also started playing that year and wasn’t very good either. But that summer, we went to the Roger Crozier Hockey School in Barrie, Ontario, near our cottage on Lake Simcoe. It was only for a week, but we learned from some NHL players (Dale Rolfe of the Rangers and Andy Bathgate, who was retired at that point) among other instructors. Both of us improved greatly!
I’m lower middle, next to the goalie. John Romain is behind me to the right. Richard Weait is in my row on the far right. Mostly thanks to Facebook, I’m still in touch with them to this day!
That coming winter, I played for John Elliott Real Estate in my second year as an atom in the Willowdale Boys Club. I was now an indispensable offensive defenseman. (I remember one day, when a forward got hurt, and I volunteered to play the wing in his place, our coach said, “you play good enough offense from defense.”) I won the trophy for Most Improved Player that year, and helped my team win the league title.
The next year, I began my minor peewee season with Jerrett’s Funeral Home. (Honestly!) We started strong, but this was still house league. They liked to keep the teams well-balanced, and after a few weeks the league often made trades to keep things even. I remember getting a call from the convenor of the league saying the coach from Andrew Morrison Real Estate wanted me. It was my choice, and I agonized over it. (I think, after that year, they no longer gave kids the choice when they made trades.) I didn’t want to go, but I remember my father saying, “The coach wants you. He thinks you can help his team.”
So, I said yes.
It was a great call!
David wears the A, standing in the middle. Beside him is family friend Joel Waldman. The goalie is our cousin, Bob Freedman. (Bobby back in those days.)
Maybe the team would have improved anyway, but I helped them win the championship that year. This was a pretty strong team, led on offense by the coach’s son, Carey MacIntyre, and Ross Takahuchi. I played defense with Blake Jacobs. He was the Charlie Huddy to my Paul Coffey. (In those days, I’d have thought of myself more as Bobby Orr — although I knew I wasn’t that good!) Our goalie was Andrew Spitzer; the best in the league.
During that season with Andrew Morrison (1974-75), I had what I consider to be my own personal Team Canada story. (Andrew, if you read this, I’d love to know if you remember!)
At some point during the winter, we played an exhibition game against a team from Keswick, Ontario. Keswick was (and still is) a very small town about an hour north of Toronto. I guess we were snooty, big city kids (even though we all lived in the northern suburbs). We thought, “no way these country bumpkins are going to beat us!”
Youngest brother Jonathan was a goalie. Family friend Howard Hamat to his left. Paul Fillman to the right. (Except for the little guy standing at the top left, I can actually remember the names of everyone here!)
I think we played on a Sunday morning at Mitchell Field, which was an outdoor arena where our teams often practiced. The Keswick kids killed us! I think it was 7-1. I remember being outclassed and exhausted — which must have been how Team Canada felt after that stunning first game loss to the Soviets.
Some time later, we went up to Keswick for a return game. This one was played in what I remember as a pretty large indoor arena, after which we all had dinner together in a banquet room attached to the rink. I don’t remember the score of this one (it may have been 4-3), but we played so much better and we beat them by a single goal.
My personal highlight came late in the game, as we were hanging on to our one-goal lead. A Keswick player was on a breakaway. I closed in on him, and then launched myself along the ice to attempt a diving hook check. It was a play I’d pulled off before, having first seen it demonstrated in an instructional film at Roger Crozier’s.
As I reached my stick between this guy’s skates, he started to teeter off balance. I managed to hook the puck away, but I definitely remember thinking, “If he goes down, they’re going to call a penalty shot.” He didn’t — he probably should have! — and I pulled it off. The crisis was averted, and we won the game.
I didn’t score the winning goal, but I still remember that play as my Paul Henderson moment.
It was September of 1972. I was only eight years old — wouldn’t turn nine until late October — and in grade four at Snowcrest Public School. (That’s fourth grade, for those of you who speak American.) I started playing hockey that year too, although I wasn’t very good yet.
There’s actually quite a lot I still remember about that school year.
But nothing was bigger than the Canada-Russia series!
You can pretty much draw a straight line — well, maybe not all that straight, really — from that series in 1972 (it wasn’t called the Summit Series until some time later) to today, and what I do for a living 50 years later, and have been doing for more than 30 years. So, how could I not write about it?
That being said, I really don’t have anything new to contribute to the collective memory. Even my one bit of original insight is discussed (a little bit) in Ken Dryden’s new book, The Series: What I Remember, What It Felt Like, What It Feels Like Now.
I came to know Ken when he was president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. (He has helped me, from time to time over the years, with answers to questions for some of my own projects.) We at Dan Diamond & Associates did a lot of work with the Leafs when they were moving from Maple Leafs Gardens to the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) and Ken and Dan became good friends. He came to a few of our office Christmas parties and curling bonspiels.
At one of those events, I’d mentioned to Ken that I’d recently watched the entire ’72 series, which had come out on DVD around that time, and how exciting it still was! This was probably in 2002. At that point, Ken had never seen the games since having played in them 30 years before. I asked him how come he and the others who had played with the Canadian national team (the Nats) before going pro hadn’t been able to impart to their Team Canada teammates just how good the Russians really were. He basically told me, “I thought the NHL players were that much better.”
A Ken Dryden hockey card from the time period… and Ken and my brother Jonathan at a Dan Diamond bonspiel attempting to replicate Dryden’s famous goalie stick pose with curling brooms.
Dryden had seen the Soviet team in action for the first time when he joined the Nats for the 1969 World Championships in Sweden in March. He would face them for the first time on December 20, 1969. Dryden writes that the game was in Victoria, but it was actually in Vancouver. The Nats beat the Soviets the next night in Victoria 5-1 with Wayne Stephenson in goal, but in Vancouver on the 20th, they’d beaten Dryden and the Canadians 9-3.
“Rod Seiling,” says Dryden of his Team Canada teammate in his new book, “had played against the Russians with the national team, Red Berenson [another new teammate] with the Belleville McFarlands, and a few others against touring Russian teams as juniors. And when I said the Russians were good, I knew they were — I’d lost, 9-3, in Victoria! Some of the others might have known too. [Brian Glennie, who was with Team Canada, had played at the 1968 Olympics.] But the Russians had only been good against the national team and junior teams, few of whose players ever played a minute in the NHL. This was Team Canada. These were NHL stars, the best in the world. So, I knew, but really, I only kind of knew.”
As for me, at the age of eight … I knew nothing!
I didn’t even know there was such a thing as international hockey. Had no idea of the string of Soviet successes. I’m not 100 percent certain I actually remember the announcement that was made in April of 1972 that the series would happen, or the unveiling of the roster in June. But I certainly do remember the fuss about Bobby Hull being ineligible for the team because he’d left the NHL to sign with the World Hockey Association. And I remember all the talk of how Canada would beat the Russians in all eight games.
Dryden with the Nats facing the Russians in Vancouver, from the Vancouver Sun, December 22, 1969.
I believed it
Why wouldn’t I?
Like I said, I knew nothing about international hockey. I’d watched the Apollo moon landings, but I really knew nothing of the Space Race either. The Russians might as well have been men from the moon as far as I knew. We played hockey in Canada. No one else did! There were plenty of American teams in the NHL … but all the players were Canadians.
Of course we’d win all eight games!
Game one was played on September 2, (a Saturday night) in Montreal. We watched in Toronto at my Zweig grandparents’ apartment. My grandfather had died at the end of August. This was still a night of sitting shiva, the weeklong mourning period in Judaism. I was at the apartment with my mother and father and my two brothers. I remember my father’s Uncle Abe being there too. I think Uncle Saul as well. (They were my grandmother’s brothers.) I’d been to my grandfather’s funeral just five days before … but the memories are completely separate.
What I remember from that night is the excitement of Canada’s two quick opening goals; Phil Esposito after just 30 seconds, and Paul Henderson’s goal six minutes later. I don’t remember when it dawned on us that the Soviets were starting to take over. I do remember it was 4-2 for them after two periods, and that the heat in Montreal was making our guys look slow, sweaty, and tired. (Did I realize how much it was the Russians making us look slow, sweaty, and tired? I don’t remember.) I do remember Bobby Clarke scoring in the third period to cut the lead to 4-3, and that it was all downhill after that until the 7-3 final.
Was I stunned?
I can’t really say that I was.
When you’re eight years old, I think you take the world as it comes.
I don’t remember anything hockey from the Sunday off day, but Monday was Labour Day so Tuesday was a school day. For that reason, I was only allowed to watch the first period of game two from Toronto on Monday night. I may have listened to more on the radio after going to bed, but I’m sure I didn’t know the final score (Canada won, 4-1) until I woke up on Tuesday morning. I don’t remember talking about it at school … although we must have! I do remember talking to my friend, Alan Rusonik, later in the week about the Soviet national anthem. We all liked that!
On September 6, I likely watched only the first period of game three from Winnipeg as well. That one ended in a 4-4 tie. What I actually do remember about that game came the next day, when a young woman who was going to Seneca College arrived at our house. She would be living in a bedroom in our basement that school year, and helping to look after my brothers and me. The first thing I remember Cheryl saying to us was, “Don’t you think they should be playing overtime in a series like this?”
I knew I was going to like her!
But, of course, that tie game would later help in the dramatic finish.
A recent real estate picture of the house at 44 Beardmore, where my cousins used to live.
Game four, in Vancouver, was played 50 years ago tonight, on September 8, which was a Friday in 1972. We watched that one at our cousin’s, the Freedman’s, house. As it wasn’t a school night, I guess we were allowed to stay up and watch it all, but I can’t say I remember too much of this one either.
I do remember the booing.
Especially when Frank Mahovlich fell on top of Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak … and took way too long to get up off him.
I must have seen Phil Esposito’s speech after the game, where he basically took Canadian fans and media to task for the boos and bad press. I’ve seen the clip many times in recent years, so it’s hard to be sure what I know and what I remember. It’s possible that I mainly remember it from pictures in the book Twenty-Seven Days in September, which came out in 1973, and which I’m sure I studied more closely than any school book I ever read.
After the Vancouver game, the series took a two-week break before it resumed in Moscow. The Canadian players had a few days off, and then travelled to Sweden for a pair of exhibition games with the Swedish national team. There was no coverage of those games here in Canada, but I do remember the bad press and the Swedes accusing the Canadians of being thugs.
Game five, the first game in Moscow, was played on September 22. Another Friday. I watched the opening ceremonies, with the exchange of gifts and flowers, while I was home for lunch. Definitely saw Espo slip and fall, then bow to the crowd. And then it was back to school.
At some point that afternoon, probably after recess, I remember just walking out of my classroom. Mr. McMinn’s class was up the hall. His kids were what we called “the slow learners.” They had a TV in their room. I suppose they used it to watch Sesame Street, or other educational programs on TVO. This afternoon, they were watching the hockey game!
I sat in the hallway, outside the door, and listened.
I can still sort of see myself, sitting there.
I don’t really remember what I heard, but I know that Canada blew a 4-1 lead in that game and lost 5-4. Still, the noisy gang of 3,000 Canadian fans in the stands cheered the team off the ice. Team Canada trailed the series 3-1-1 … but the tide was about to turn.
I don’t remember if, back in Canada, we knew what was going on in Moscow at the time. Over the years, we’ve heard about the phones ringing all night. The food (and beer) disappearing. (I feel like I knew about that at the time.) I also don’t remember any discussion of Bobby Clarke’s slash to the ankle of Valeri Kharlamov in game six. In fact, for some reason, I don’t remember much of game six at all. It was played on a Sunday afternoon, Toronto time. I remember hearing some of it in the car while running errands with my father.
I have no idea why I wasn’t at home watching.
Around the back of Snowcrest, my public school. That’s the gym on the left, and what we called the “open area” on the right. The upper windows at the back were my classroom in grades five and six. I was pacing this pavement anxiously at recess during game eight.
Radio would play a big part in my following game seven on Tuesday afternoon. Once again, I watched the early part of the game on TV at lunchtime, but this time I brought a transistor radio to school with me. I remember listening to it while walking in the school yard. Might still have been lunch time, but definitely at recess later.
It was 2-2 after two periods … and Canada needed to win this game to have a chance to win the series in game eight. Back at my desk in our classroom, I turned the radio down, but I didn’t turn it off. Our teacher, Ms. Tadman (the first Ms. I ever knew) didn’t seem like a hockey fan (I remember her as a terrible skater), but she said something to me along the lines of, “if you’ve got a radio, turn it up so we can all hear.” Which I did … and we listened to Canada score a 4-3 victory. The series was tied 3-3-1.
Two days later, for the eighth and final game, Ms. Tadman brought a TV into our classroom!
Again, I don’t really know what I remember because I saw it that afternoon or what I remember because I know it happened. There were all the bad penalty calls early in the game. There was J.P. Parise nearly swinging his stick at the referee. Later, there was the goal judge failing to turn on the light to signal a Canadian goal, and the players skating across the ice to rescue Alan Eagleson from the Soviet police after he’d protested.
As for the score, it was 2-2 after one period, but it was 5-3 Russia after two.
One of the things I remember for certain was that, when it was time for recess, the school made us go out and play. Normally, recess was my favourite part of the day, but that day, I wanted to stay inside and watch the game! I guess because we’d have the TV in our classroom, I hadn’t brought my radio this time so it was 15 minutes of pacing outside and waiting to get back in!
Prudential Insurance Great Moments painting of the Paul Henderson goal along with Henderson’s Team Canada hockey card.
I don’t know for sure, but I think I saw the early third-period goal by Phil Esposito that cut the lead to 5-4, and I’m certain I saw the later goal from Yvan Cournoyer that tied it 5-5. But another thing I remember for sure is that when our school day ended at 3:10, the game wasn’t over yet.
Ms. Tadman didn’t make us leave this time … but I know that plenty of kids left anyway!
Were they crazy!?!
Of course, I stayed. And I saw Paul Henderson’s goal with 34 seconds left.
I watched Canada hold on for the 6-5 victory.
I remember throwing things into the air.
I can’t honestly say if that was after the goal, or after the game ended.
Maybe it was both times.
But it doesn’t matter.
Clearly, after 50 years, I can’t remember it all … but I’ll still never forget it!
