🇨🇦 Canada 5-0 Soviet Union 🇷🇺
World Championship Final Round
Rheinlandhalle, Krefeld 🇩🇪
Sunday, 06 March 1955

When the 1955 World Championship started in West Germany in late February of that year, the Penticton Vees, Canada’s representatives, were expected not just to win Gold but to restore pride to a nation that had been humiliated on the international stage the previous year for the first time in 35 years of participation.

It was in 1954 that the Soviets played in their first World Championship, and at that time they claimed the Gold medal ahead of the Canadians with a 7-2 win on the final day.

All of Canada had a year to wait for revenge, and the 1955 World Championship was so important that the legendary announcer Foster Hewitt left his gondola at Maple Leaf Gardens during the height of the NHL season to fly to Germany and do the radio play-by-play for the championship. As the tournament progressed, the games went according to form: for every Canadian win, the Soviets also won. Clearly the last game of the tournament, between these two nations, would again determine the world champion.

Yet on that final night, in Krefeld, the Canadians did, indeed, reclaim what they felt was rightfully theirs, hammering the Soviets, 5-0. Goalie Ivan McLelland got the shutout, and the team was led by the three Warwick brothers — Grant, Bill, and Dick. Grant also coached the team. He had played in the NHL but later in his career he left the league and re-acquired his amateur status.

This was the crowning glory of his career, and as brother Bill said told Hewitt after the game, “Boy, this was better than winning the Stanley Cup,” he expressed the importance of the victory back home. Nonetheless, the game established once and for all a rivalry that has produced many of international hockey’s greatest moments. Canada vs. Soviet Union — it doesn’t get much better today, and it didn’t get any better half a century ago, either.

To this very day, Canada has never managed to win against the Soviet Union / Russia by a higher score in an official men’s championship game.

BOXSCORE
1st Period
04:23 – 🇨🇦 GOAL – Shabaga (Middleton)
06:00 – 🇨🇦 PEN – McAvoy

2nd Period
22:30 – 🇨🇦 PEN – Conway
27:30 – 🇨🇦 GOAL – B. Warwick
28:10 – 🇨🇦 PEN – McAvoy
33:00 – 🇨🇦 GOAL – Shabaga (Fairburn)
38:50 – 🇷🇺 PEN – Sologubov

3rd Period
40:30 – 🇨🇦 GOAL – B. Warwick
42:30 – 🇨🇦 GOAL – McAvoy
46:10 – 🇨🇦 PEN – Taggart
59:00 – 🇨🇦 PEN – Middleton
59:30 – 🇨🇦 PEN – Conway

GOALTENDERS
W: 🇨🇦 McLelland
L: 🇷🇺 Puchkov

ROSTERS
🇨🇦 Goaltenders: Ivan McLelland. Defence: Kevin Conway, George McAvoy, Jack Taggart, Hal Tarala. Forwards: Jim Fairburn, Doug Kilburn, Jack McDonald, Jack McIntyre, Jim Middleton, Mike Shabaga, Bill Warwick, Dick Warwick, Grant Warwick.
🇷🇺 Goaltenders: Nikolai Puchkov. Defence: Alfred Kuchevski, Nikolai Sologubov, Ivan Tregubov, Dmitri Ukolov. Forwards: Yevgeni Babich, Vsevolod Bobrov, Mikhail Bychkov, Alexei Guryshev, Nikolai Khlystov, Yuri Krylov, Valentin Kuzin, Viktor Shuvalov, Alexander Uvarov.

Article Credit: IIHF 100 Top Stories Of The Century
Photo Credit: KHL – IIHF – HHOF – IOC