50 years ago, the Summit Series altered Canada’s view of the game, built hockey legends and brought almost the entire country together. How the 1972 Summit Series changed the way Canada looks at hockey. dfeschuk kicks off our ‘Summit Series At 50’ series
It will be 50 years this weekend that Canada woke up to a vision of itself it hadn’t previously contemplated. The morning after Game 1 of thebetween Canada and the Soviet Union brought with it a crisis of belief — or rather, in some minds, disbelief.
Some facts aren’t fun to face. And even 50 years later it’s easy enough to see why. The whole point of the epochal eight-game series, after all, had been for Canada to announce its resounding dominance in the sport it brought to prominence. Yes, the Soviets had won nine straight world hockey championships to go with three straight Olympic golds heading into the event.
“Geez! No wonder the Maple Leafs end up in last place all the time,” Team Canada forward Phil Esposito would later say. And even though Canada would go on to win the series, with Paul Henderson’s Game 8 series clincher taking its place as the country’s most important sporting moment of its century, things would never be the same again. Fifty years ago this month, there was a lot going on in the pages of this newspaper. There was a federal election campaign underway, with incumbent prime minister Pierre Trudeau occasionally trotting out a baby son named Justin in an attempt to buff the faded shine of Trudeaumania.
The series built legends. It would turn Phil Esposito from a Boston Bruins all-star to a Canadian icon, both for his copious goals and his post-Game 4 admonishment of Vancouver’s boos. It would elevate Henderson from Leafs forward to national hero. And as the first extended attempt at best-on-best international hockey, it would spawn a hankering in hockey fans that, even today, never seems to be sufficiently sated.
Then again, if the team that wants it more wins more often than not, there are members of Team Canada who have made the case that therein lied the difference.
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