The 1972 Summit Series was 'the most transformative hockey series ever played'
See photos from the eight-game series that changed Canada, hockey and the world
Summit 72 is a four-part documentary series that tells the definitive story of the legendary 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series of Hockey. Watch on CBC Gem now.
For a generation of Canadians, the 1972 Summit Series — in which Team Canada, consisting of NHL stars, played the Soviet Union — was a defining moment.
For the first time ever, Canadians got to see how their best hockey players stacked up against the Soviets. For many Canadians, including the players on Team Canada, the Summit Series represented a clash of civilizations on ice: Canadian democracy versus Soviet totalitarianism.
In 1972, the Soviet Union had just won their fourth gold medal at the Winter Olympics and this galled Canadians who'd never been able to send their best players to the world stage. At the time, the Olympics were strictly for amateurs — which meant that the Canadians usually sent teams of university athletes — the Soviets sent full-time hockey players who nominally had another job, often in the military.
Says Canadian goaltender Ken Dryden, "We knew we had the best players, and yet the Russians were called the World Champions. They were the world champions. We were the best!"
The Soviets sounded equally certain they were facing hockey greats. "We were afraid of them, because to us, a team of NHL players was a mythical, unbeatable team," says Boris Mikhailov, who played right wing on the top Soviet line.
When the Canadians lost Game 1, out of shape after a long NHL off-season and underestimating their opponents, people panicked.
But what happened over the course of the eight-game series was more than just hockey. "This became political, and it became political very quickly," says legendary centre Phil Esposito. "It became society against society. For me anyway, it was almost like war."
What started as a proxy war, in many ways, brought greater understanding between the two hockey-mad countries, and changed the way the game was played on both continents.
On September 28, 1972, 90 per cent of Canadians tuned in to watch that eighth game between Canada and the Soviet Union. Now, in the documentary series Summit 72, those of us born after the series will get to see it first hand.
And those who were there will see it through new eyes, with archival 16mm footage upgraded into 4k, and brand new exclusive interviews with the players and people who were there.
Summit 72 goes beyond the hits and goals, and beyond the Cold War rhetoric, to look at how the series changed the country, the game, and the world.
It was, according to Ken Dryden "the most transformative hockey series ever played."
Watch Summit 72 on CBC Gem.
