Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
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Originally Posted by Dion
Clarence Campbell and many NHL owners were pissed at the WHA for stealing some of their star players and wouldn't let Bobby Hull play for Team Canada. The outcry from Canadians was huge with many asking PM Trudeau to step in and force the NHL to let Hull play.
The way i remember is that Pillaging Pete did ask Campbell on behalf of Hull, and the miserable old codger told Trudeau to get stuffed...in so many words.
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Location: A simple man leading a complicated life....
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Originally Posted by transplant99
The way i remember is that Pillaging Pete did ask Campbell on behalf of Hull, and the miserable old codger told Trudeau to get stuffed...in so many words.
Not sure, but I seem to remember there were billboards put up across Canada asking Campbell to let Hull play.
I am old enough and did watch all this live...on our 15" black and white TV.
Espo had a tremendous shot and was a load to try and defend in front of the net, but you're right he certainly wasn't fleet of foot.
So many memories/stories of that time....IMO the most under rated guys were Bill White and Gary Bergman.
The one thing those who werent around for it can never understand was the mystery the Soviets were to us and certainly the hate between the countries. The geopolitical climate of that time was one of distrust, the highest level the cold war got to sans the Bay of Pigs and how truly evil communism and communists were. Its all we heard and knew for the most part, certainly as a child at the time.
Yes because of the social media, and the proliferation of media in general., you could never have this kind of experience today. A mysterious opponent who was in most every way, the equal of our greatest players.
I probably romanticize it now that I'm older but what a unique and thrilling series of games. I hope every young Canadian hockey player knows the story.
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The story of the Summit Series, as it's never been told before
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Meeker: I got in deep trouble with the team by saying I thought this series would go right down to the wire. Right after that, some Newfie who was an assistant for Eagleson, he comes storming into the broadcast area and … you ever heard a Newfie swear? I remember one thing he yelled: "You're as stunned as me arse if you think they're going to beat us."
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Yakushev: We trained year-round with our own clubs. We did not rest. In the Soviet Union, there was not much access to ice, so we trained on land. It was hard, but worth it. The ultimate goal of the team was to bring out the maximum physical strength of each player.
Awrey: Training camp? I'm not sure if I would call it a training camp by today's standards. There was a little skating, a little off-ice stretching. We all wore this white long underwear, looked like a bunch of zombies.
Sinden: I've heard that – about the training camp in Toronto being too soft – but I think it was one of the most difficult I ever ran. It was a hard, hard camp. I don't think the players liked it.
Esposito: We were all in long underwear, sitting in the hallway trying to do stretching exercises. I just started laughing. I'd never stretched in my life.
Sinden: During camp, I tried to convince the NHL players how good the Russians were going to be. I showed them a 16-millimetre tape of a game I'd played against the Russians in 1957 when I was with the Whitby Dunlops. But they all sat there laughing.
Esposito: Training camp involved lots of drinking, that's what I remember. I partied a lot. I drank a lot. But then after that first game in Montreal, it was, "Okay, okay, we have to get ourselves together, we've got two days to become a team."
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Esposito: That phone kept ringing and I'd pick it up and there'd be nobody on the other end. So, I finally got fed up and ripped the thing right out of the wall. This was in the middle of the night. A few minutes later, someone knocked on my door: They'd come to fix it. I couldn't believe it. Try getting Bell Canada or AT&T to do that.
Reid: No question there was a campaign to interrupt the slumber of the team. I received two of the mysterious calls myself. We eventually solved it by convincing the hotel to route all calls to Canadian rooms through our diplomatic info desk. And then there was the chandelier.
Esposito: The chandelier story goes that me and [Wayne] Cashman were looking for bugs or something. We find a little lump under the rug. It was a box with a series of screws and we start unscrewing it until we hear a big crash below. We peep through the hole downstairs and see that a chandelier in the hotel ballroom had crashed to the floor.
Eagleson: There was no chandelier. It was made up!
Reid: It happened. I was present when some ostentatious hotel employees carted away this chandelier in a series of pieces.
Esposito: Somehow me and Cash got blamed for it. People say it was me. So from then on, I said it was me. It makes for a good story.
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Henderson: Late in the second, I came screaming down the right side, fell, and slammed my head into the end boards. The doc took a look at me and said, "You have a concussion. I don't think you should play."
Zeldin: This was a serious head injury. He had blacked out.
Henderson: I asked him if it could kill me to play. He said no, so I said I was playing.
Sinden: We weren't taking a chance – we just didn't think there was any danger in sending him out there. I think he scored on his next shift.
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Reid: In the sixth game, the organizers put all 3,000 Canadian fans in one area. They got a good rhythm going with the chant, "Nyet nyet Soviet, da da Canada." The Soviets got a little spooked by this. They called in the militia.
Harris: This one guy had a trumpet and every now and then the army guys would try to find it, try to get the trumpeter to hand it over. But everyone rallied around, passing the trumpet to one another and hiding
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Esposito: Trudeau was in the back of the plane, so Eagleson wouldn't let us get off the back. I didn't get off the plane at all, neither did my brother or Cashman. I don't think they could have made it off: too drunk. Trudeau did come on the plane to shake my hand and I never ever will forget that.
You may be joking, but you should check out some of the exhibits at the Smithsonian. Can't count how many times I read "The United States and others..." when I went there.
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Originally Posted by btimbit
WW1 is worse. You'd think they single handily did everything themselves, and obviously getting an influx of fresh troops at the end of the war was huge, but that's a little too much credit to be taking for a country that was in a three and a half year long war for the last 11 months
Scorpion, I was joking but in Concord, Mass. there is a monument to WWII heros that gives the war dates starting with the Americans’ entry. In Boston I had an argument with an American who proudly proclaimed they have never lost a war. I cited the time they tried to invade us and were repelled.
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I cited the time they tried to invade us and were repelled.
i've discovered in talking with americans that they don't like to discuss that.... or the time 'we' burned down the white house (yea... it was the british, but whatever)
__________________ "...and there goes Finger up the middle on Luongo!" - Jim Hughson, Av's vs. 'Nucks
I watched the series, and the win for me was probably the most exciting hockey experience I think I have ever had. We didn't expect the Russians to be as good as they were. It was only 20 years before the Series that we used to laugh at the Russians for running on their skates.
With the Cold War and politics going on at the time, we were led to believe that the Communist persecution of individualism would not lead to players with outstanding individual skills like Kharlamov and Tretiak. In effect the Series, to many of us, represented a battle between Communism and Democracy.
The Russian team was a joy to watch. Obviously well coached, they played in a circular motion, and every player seemed to know exactly where he should be on the ice at all times. Their level of skill and execution as a team was equal to any of the NHL teams at the time. They did have a considerable advantage in playing together for a much longer time than the Canadian team.
I watched the interview above at the time, and remember feeling that Esposito showed a lot of courage and character for sticking up for our team. I think the booing, by some, came because of such a strong feeling that the Russians should not be able to outplay us.
The end result of the Series was that we gained a great deal of respect for Russian hockey thereafter.
Last edited by flamesfever; 02-07-2019 at 02:05 PM.
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