It’s my Parting Shot for some Tuesday, Four Nations Challenge, Tidbits…..
If you want hockey played with a large dose of passion, just put the best players in the world together and slap their respective country’s jerseys on them and let them go! The N-H-L is great, but it will never beat international, best-on-best, competition. All six round-robin games of the Four Nations Challenge were proof positive of that, especially Saturday’s tilt between Canada and the United States – which was a blow to the curb fighting mantra of the sport’s tall foreheads in the executive suites and luxury suites in the various arenas. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a spillover of this kind of emotion, passion and rough stuff when the N-H-L resumes regular-season play on Saturday!
It’s been the case for several years now, ever since the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1991 – and, especially now with Russia being banned from international hockey competition – that Canada’s biggest hockey rival is the United States. Saturday’s game showed that again, especially with the raucous start. With the political climate being what it is, leading to anthems being booed, the Canada-U-S rivalry in hockey has almost taken on a Canada-Soviet Union feel as it was for the 1972 Summit Series!
Which brings me to a story from my youth, when Canada’s National Team – coached by former Saskatoon Blades’ bossman Jackie McLeod, before Shakey took on that task – was based in my home-town of Winnipeg. Starting in 1963, the Soviets won nine consecutive World Championships. In the midst of that, Winnipeg hosted a six-nation Christmas holiday tournament – for men, not junior men – in 1966, going into 67. Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, the U-S, Canada and the Soviets took part. The centrepiece game was on New Year’s Eve when a handful people more than 11-thousand crammed into the old Winnipeg Arena and saw Jackie McLeod’s young university agers – guys like Wayne Stephenson in goal, Terry O’Malley on defence, Fran Huck and Morris Mott up front – out-score the vaunted Soviet Bear 5-4! I remember being allowed to stay up late to watch on our family’s old black and white T-V! That night, along with September 28, 1972, when the N-H-Lers won the deciding eighth game of the Summit Series in Moscow, are the reasons why I prefer international, country versus country, sports over the club stuff we get exposed to so much!!
That’s my Parting Shot. I’m Les Lazaruk…and it turned out nice again!
