With the 4 Nations Face-Off beginning Wednesday, here’s a brief, informal history of international hockey.
Disclaimer: Hockey players do not “represent their country.” The armed forces do. Grab a gun, not a hockey stick.
Pre-1972
Canada dominated. Then the Soviet Union took over. Canada claimed that was because NHL players were pros, ineligible for international hockey by the rules of the day. (Almost every NHL player was Canadian.)
Who’s better, Canadian pros or Soviet “amateurs”? Debate was conducted in “The Hockey News” and nowhere else. Nobody cared.
1972
For the first time, Canadian pros played the Soviet juggernaut. The Canadians showed up out of shape and overconfident, winning just one of four games on Canadian ice.
Embarrassment got the Canadians in shape and motivated. They stopped drinking so much beer.
The Canadians broke the ankle of the Soviets’ best player and took the series by winning the last three games at Moscow. Paul Henderson got the winning goal in each of those games. Bobby Clarke wielded the stick that broke the ankle.
The same Canadian press that predicted an eight-game sweep of the Soviets lauded their nation’s narrow victory as a triumph of the will. But it was a triumph of the slash.
Canada left Bobby Hull off the team. He would have been their top winger, but Hull had the temerity to practice capitalism by taking a $1 million signing bonus from the new World Hockey Association. You’d figure that Hull would be the ideal guy to take on communism. The NHL’s czars thought differently.
The big long-term development: Canadian hockey impresario Alan Eagleson figured out that international hockey was lucrative and concocted a skim worthy of Ace Rothstein in “Casino.” Five subsequent Canada Cup tournaments = the Tangiers casino. (Canada won four of those.)
1980
A team of U.S. amateurs beat the Soviet Union and won the gold medal at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. It’s dubbed the “Miracle on Ice.”
The underlying message was that these plucky American kids proved that our capitalist greed-fest is superior to the communist totalitarianism of those dirty Russian dogs.
That argument wilts when it’s considered that the Soviets had an impressive track record vs. capitalism, defeating the NHL All-Stars just the year prior.
The Soviets ruined everything when their players started joining NHL teams and it turned out that they’re OK guys.
U.S. coach Herb Brooks was the hero, later being portrayed in movies by both Karl Malden and Kurt Russell. (That’s quite the acting spectrum.)
U.S. captain Mike Eruzione was the smart one: He netted the winning goal against the Soviets, then never played competitive hockey again. Eruzione was 25. If he was going to play in the NHL, he already would have. Eruzione became America’s guest, touring the nation as an Olympic hero, his reputation undiminished by stiffing in the NHL. (See Craig, Jim.)
Note, however, that Eruzione did not score his monumental goal with a broken freakin’ neck.
1987
Mario Lemieux burst onto the international scene, scoring winning goals in Games 2 and 3 of the best-of-three Canada Cup final vs. the Soviets. That series has been called the best hockey ever, at least till Eagleson got arrested.
Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky skated on the same line in that Canada Cup. It’s said that Gretzky taught Lemieux how to win. Gretzky had won four Stanley Cups with Edmonton. Lemieux went on to win two with the Penguins.
But Mark Messier was on that Canada Cup team, too. He’d also won four Cups with Edmonton, won another with the Oilers after Gretzky left and then won another with the New York Rangers, their first since World War II. Maybe Messier showed Lemieux how to win.
Maybe Messier showed Gretzky how to win, too. Messier kept winning after Gretzky left. Until Gretzky joined Messier in New York. Then the Rangers stopped winning. Maybe Gretzky showed Messier how to lose.
Gretzky coached the Phoenix Coyotes and wasn’t able to show them how to win. They stunk.
Lemieux likely figured out how to win on his own. Hockey never seemed to confuse him much. Not even when Warren Young was his linemate.
1998
NHL players participate in the Olympics for the first time. The Czechs and Jaromir Jagr spoiled the party, winning the gold medal that scriptwriters intended for Gretzky, who called it quits after the following NHL season.
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Lemieux was retired at the time. If only he’d been there to show Gretzky how to win.
2002
Lemieux, in the second season of his NHL comeback, wins Olympic gold with Canada. Canada beat the U.S. (with Brooks returning to coach) in the final. A movie did not get made. (K.D. Lang could have played Lemieux.)
2010
Sidney Crosby, playing in his first Olympics, scores in overtime of the gold medal game as Canada beats the U.S.
Crosby’s “golden goal” is assisted by Jarome Iginla. Iginla joins Crosby on the Penguins at the 2013 trade deadline, but the thought of them skating on the same line is treated like it would give everybody involved a horrible disease.
That brings us to the 4 Nations Face-Off, a meaningless tournament made more meaningless by the absence of Russia because of their war with Ukraine, a ban that will likely carry over to next year’s Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
Omitting Russia invalidates any result. They’re one of the world’s biggest hockey powers.
What if the Olympics were around when the U.S. was wiping out the Native American population and enslaving Black people? This great nation would have surely lobbied against mixing politics and sport. It certainly would have kept down the American medal count.
Denial. It’s tough.