Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
Yeah, not so much. The Soviets were extremely consistent and machine like. That's why of the top 10 scorers 7 were Soviets. And really, the 2nd game of the finals was really the difference in scoring totals. Gretzky had a 5 point game and Lemieux had the natural hat trick. Outside of that the lines were pretty square.
In fact, outside of "the goal" the Gretzky-Lemieux tandem was pretty quiet, outside of the power play, in the final game. The Soviets jumped on the Canadians and looked like they were going to run the host team out of their own barn. It was the grinders that got the Canadians back in the game, lead by Tocchet, Sutter and Hawerchuk. People don't appreciate the little things the grinders did that game, allowing the big names to earn the glory. If it were not for Hawerchuk dragging down Bykov, in an obvious uncalled interference penalty, the Canadians wouldn't have had the odd man rush that led to the Lemieux goal. What really hurt the Soviets was Larianov's injury and his inability to center the top line. I still remember that series like it was yesterday. Man I wish they would bring the Canada Cup back!
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Gretzky had 2.33 PPG
Lemieux 2.00
Makarov 1.67
Even without the final game (and again, coming up big in the final game is kind of important to me), Gretzky still wins the scoring title.
Maybe If the Russians had come up big in the final, things would have looked a bit different, but they didn't.