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CBC doing a 4 part mini series about this monumental event in Canadian hockey and history.

Some hi-lites

Paul Henderson scored with 34 seconds remaining in the eighth and final game to lift Canada to a win in its first best-on-best meeting with the Soviet Union. Schoolchildren watched on television screens wheeled into gymnasiums and businesses across the country ground briefly to a halt. (The actual size of the Canadian viewing audience on Sept. 28, 1972, became more legend than fact.)

It was a national celebration. It was Canadian hockey Woodstock.

To mark the 50th anniversary this year, a group of filmmakers is aiming to strike a balance between the ritual celebration with the fact Canada is changing at a faster pace than the game it has embraced. New voices, layered context and a flash of modern commentary have been added to the old story.

“For certain generations and demographics, this will be quite nostalgic,” he said. “We put in some of the cheesy old ads, and we put in some of the culture of the time, and archive that isn’t hockey.”

On the day of Game 8, he said the CBC dispatched crews across the country to document how ordinary Canadians were watching the game. A film crew had also been following the Canadian players, and the sum total left de Pencier with access to “time capsules” that had been “unseen for 50 years.”

He also gained access to many of the surviving participants from the Series, including Henderson, Ken Dryden and Peter Mahovlich. Several Soviet stars — notably goaltender Vladislav Tretiak — have also been given a voice over the four episodes.

In 1972, Canada had already gone 20 years since its last Olympic gold-medal win. (Women’s hockey was not included in the Olympic roster until 1998.) The Canadians were also enduring a prolonged drought at the world championships. The country’s best — the NHL players — were excluded from both events.

The Summit Series set out to change that. With NHL stars on the roster, some pundits suggested the Canadians would sweep all eight games against the Soviets. Some Canadian players proudly partied harder than they trained during the pre-series camp in Toronto. The documentary has an old interview with forward Phil Esposito, with a reporter asking about the Canadian training regimen leading into the Series.

“(Coach) Harry (Sinden) made a comment on the weekend saying that the Russians get up at 6 o’clock in the morning to run around their hotel to keep in shape,” the reporter says, “and some of you fellas are just coming in at that time.” Esposito responds: “That’s their fault for getting up that early.”

Canadian forward Bobby Clarke chopped Soviet star Valeri Kharlamov across the ankle with a two-handed slash in Game 6, effectively ending his opponent’s series. Winger J.P. Parise came within an inch of carving referee Josef Kompalla like a holiday turkey in Game 8, wielding his stick above his head in a moment of frustration.

In the domestic version of the story, the Canadian players rallied to victory around a shared sense of grit and determination. A sober review of the tape five decades later raises a challenge to that view.

“Totally legit in terms of a lot of play that would not be countenanced today,” said de Pencier. “Does that make us villains? I’m not going to impose moral values on a nation of hockey-lovers. I would be a fool. I think there’s some amount of presenting it without sugar-coating anything, and then everyone’s going to find their reaction.”

“It was political to include Eagleson at all,” said de Pencier. “We don’t have any context for that. The people who know will know. Is it relevant? Maybe? Was there really room for it, or an elegant way to include it? We didn’t find one.”

Baichwal said some players still defend Eagleson, while others have gone on record saying they want nothing to do with him.

“It was a very tough call,” he said. “But to ignore Alan Eagleson in this wouldn’t, I think, have been journalistically accurate to help tell the story. He’s in it where he needs to be in it, and that’s pretty much it.”

https://theathletic.com/3539016/2022...ampaign=601983