Dancing in the dark

Soviet Socialist system spawned a more creative game

By Jamie MacDonald, CNNSI.com

The Series An exhibition which turned legendary 1972 Summit Series Game Recaps Defining event in Canadian history Russian hockey changed drastically Oppression bred creativity on ice From SI Eliot: A lasting impression Flashback: Still blushing Flashback: Off to Hockeyland Flashback: Narrow victory Features Q&As: Henderson | Tretiak Team Stats: Canada | Soviet Union More stories Canada bodychecked communism Slap in face to Canadians Hopes were dim heading to Moscow Too much garbage with series

It is worth noting, for the purpose of this exercise, that my parents probably hadn't shopped for my first birthday present when the gift of the Summit Series arrived in September of 1972. That said, we'll aim to provide something more than a snapshot of the series between the Canadian and Soviet national teams as a culture clash, which certainly has its place, and offer a specific explanation as to how a rigid cultural ideology pushed the game of hockey toward an innovative reinvention.

For starters, we'll assume everyone is on board with the notion that the Soviet brand of hockey was indeed innovative and we'll move a bit further into a theory of Socialist hockey, one that focuses on the leading causes of its excellence. Many are obvious. One, however, is less so: that a game played within walls will be more comfortably -- and creatively -- executed by the representatives of a society that live in some ways within its own walls. In other words, the creativity of the Russian hockey system is a natural, albeit unlikely, product of Socialist life.

In 1972 the Russians and Canadians were given essentially the same set of rules and the same canvas. And in one epic display, showed off two very different styles. (We'll refrain from a Mark Rothko/Jackson Pollock reference.) How is it that a people known to Westerners -- granted, with the help of Cold War propaganda -- as rigid, robotic, hard, sinister even, played a game crackling with such expression? This was a group of men who hardly spoke to the Western media during the Series, and said very little when they did, but spun eloquent verse on the ice.

The first consideration is that games and sport are escapist endeavors and, therefore, breeding grounds of self expression. The unlikely canvas in this case is a hockey rink, where a palette of Soviet players, otherwise trudging through a gray and regimented existence, would be free to roam and spin and cut swaths of brazen color across the ice. Considering that Soviet club and national team practices were run, 11 months out of the year, more like Parris Island than Fantasy Island, the escape might be a contributing ingredient, but not the entire recipe.

That inherent boot-camp mentality is another factor, to be sure. Copping an almost pious pursuit of an athletics machine, the Soviet Union devoted very specific resources to develop its athletes. Where hockey was concerned, no country worked as hard to pound into shape a world-class power, and no country rolled up its sleeves and buried its head with the idea of not coming up for air until it was better than everyone else. Even the industrial efforts, however, wouldn't be enough to explain what so embarrassed and exposed the (deadly sin alert) pride Canadians had in their game. You see, it wasn't the Canadians' game that the Russians were playing. Yes, to their credit, the Russians worked harder (perhaps devoting more time to practice than any teams before or since), but to hockey's everlasting gratitude, they also worked different.

Stickhandling and movement, with the puck and without it, were stressed during the Russian team's marathon practices. Sharing the puck was key. (If you can't find footage of the Summit Series, take a look at the goals the Russians scored in Lake Placid in 1980. The system undressed a North American style that is perhaps best described as "STAY IN YOUR LANE!"). Reflective of the Socialist ideal, Russian hockey didn’t have a problem with puckhogs. They were in Siberia. So, while North Americans were playing a living version of table-top rod hockey, the Russians were breathing life into the sport with an almost circular attack.

"Lots of passes," was how Vladislav Tretiak, who from his goaltender's crease had a great seat for the evolution of hockey, recently described the Soviet style, before turning the subject to what made that puck movement so effective. "I think discipline is No. 1 in hockey. The coaches all the time pushed us on this." And it is precisely that adherence to the system, the mastering of chaos, a controlled fire that just torched the Canadians early in the series and burns in various forms to this day.

It had less to do with determination or smarts, we contend here, than the ability to fit a cultural ideology into a sport. Hockey just happens to be a game spectacularly suited to the Socialist way of life, especially in Cold War Russia; it had resources, athletes and held both in check with the threat of Siberia and squalor. And it had walls. Theoretical walls. Literal walls. Theological walls. Ideological walls. In North America, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, which is how problems are solved and businesses flourish. Do it better and faster than anyone else and make a living. Some cultures aren’t built upon being able to do as one wishes.

The self-determining process of, say, deciding to walk from Point A to Point B in a straight line isn't as automatic in some countries as it might be in “free” countries. Those in a Socialist society, therefore, might be given to devising more creative ways of shuttling between Point A and Point B. For instance, hockey players might not stay in their lanes. And coaches wouldn’t make 10-year-old left wingers do pushups for being on the right side, behind a defenseman who had the puck. Out on the ice, Socialist skaters might be less fearful of a hockey rink’s walls, less likely to play parallel to them. They saw walls all the time.

A loose parallel: If a family was born and raised on a high cliff, wouldn’t that family walk more comfortably along the edge of that cliff than a family born and raised on, say, a plateau? In case you were wondering, the role of the plateau will be played by North American hockey, circa 1972. Perhaps it is also the free society that is less willing to push itself toward that edge.

What we’re trying to say here is that game of hockey, as long as it is played within walls, is more suited to a psyche not shackled by the boundless ideals of freedom. The Canadian game, as it was invented, makes much more sense outdoors, on a wall-less frozen lake. Bring the sport inside, confine it, and those who are used to being confined are more likely to adapt creatively. In some ways hockey afforded the Russians a home-ice advantage wherever they went. It is a game of work, tactical sharing, mutual accountability, discipline to read and react to chaos, of finding the best way around a claustrophobic arena. In other words, a sport at odds with a Capitalist way of life.

The display of Russian hockey during the Summit Series, then, was more a testament to the triumph of the human spirit than the oppression of it.

 

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