Category Archives: Summit Series

🇨🇦 Canada’s Boycott: 1970-77

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With the now-cancelled 2020 World Championships set to have begun today in Switzerland, TheIHLC.com will instead highlight the last time there was a major lack of competition in the century-plus lineage of the IHLC – Canada’s international hockey boycott from 1970-77, and how the IHLC could have looked if just one fateful game in 1970 went another way.

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On 04 January 1970, the creator of modern ice hockey and the most dominant team in the game up to that point, Canada, shocked the hockey world when it announced that effective immediately, it was withdrawing from all international competition, including the World Championships, Olympic Games and other exhibition games or tournaments.
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Hockey Hall Of Fame Announces Class Of 2018

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The Hockey Hall Of Fame today announced the newest members that will join as the Class of 2018 on 12 November, with a pair of Canadian Martins (Brodeur and St-Louis), Alexander Yakushev and Jayna Hefford entering the players wing of the Hall, bringing their professional and international accolades (along with their International Hockey Lineal Championship reigns) to Toronto.
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🇨🇦 🇷🇺 IHLC Classics: “Henderson Has Scored For Canada!”

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From time to time, TheIHLC.com will feature detailed recaps and boxscores of some of the most legendary games in international hockey history, considered to be “IHLC Classics.” Today, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series finale, we look back on perhaps the most influential goal in international hockey history, Paul Henderson’s series-winning tally past Vladislav Tretyak.

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🇨🇦 Canada 6-5 Soviet Union 🇷🇺
Summit Series, Game 8
Luzhniki Palace Of Sports, Moscow 🇷🇺
Thursday, 28 September 1972

Game eight of the Summit Series was maybe the most important hockey game ever played. It was the climax of the greatest series ever played, Canada versus the Soviet Union. It was a series that pitted the professionals of Canada against the “amateurs” of the Soviet Union. It matched Canadian-style hockey with Soviet-style.

Most important, it was a battle between lifestyles, values and two vastly different political systems.
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🇷🇺 🇨🇦 IHLC Classics: The Red Army Shocks The World

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From time to time, TheIHLC.com will feature detailed recaps and boxscores of some of the most legendary games in international hockey history, considered to be “IHLC Classics.” Today, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series, we feature the opening game of the tournament, a stunning Soviet victory in Montréal.

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🇷🇺 Soviet Union 7-3 Canada 🇨🇦
Summit Series, Game 1
Forum de Montréal, Montréal 🇨🇦
Saturday, 02 September 1972

The withdrawal of Canada from international hockey in 1970 was the result of an increasingly bitter feud between that country and other top European countries, notably the Soviet Union. Canada had long believed that Iron Curtain countries used professional players in World Championship and Olympic competition because their players did nothing but play hockey eleven months of the year.

The withdrawal, though, did have one benefit—it produced the Summit Series in September 1972, an eight-game showdown between Canada’s professionals from the NHL and the best from the Soviet Union (essentially their World Championship / Olympic team).
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