The Hockey Hall Of Fame tonight inducted their 2025 Class, inducting six legendary players to their ranks with a number of tremendous international achievements.
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Tag Archives: Soviet Union
🇷🇺 IIHF Confirms 2026 Russian Decision Falls To IOC, Future Tournament Hosts
The IIHF today, at their end-of-tournament press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, confirmed a number of items outlined at this week’s IIHF Congress, including the traditional awarding of tournament hosts for future events, and confirmation that the IIHF has submitted plans to the International Olympic Committee to proceed with excluding Russian men’s and women’s hockey teams from the 2026 Olympics, set to begin in nine months in Milan, Italy.
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🇨🇿 Jiří Kochta: 1946-2025
Jiří Kochta, the Czechoslovak winger who was a member of the historic 1972 World Championship Gold medal squad, and would capture eight international medals in his career, has passed away at the age of 78.
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🇨🇦 🇷🇺 IHLC Classics: The Second Summit Series At Fifty
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 historic fiftieth anniversary of the second and final Summit Series in 1974, we look back at the oft-forgotten Series between the top Soviet players facing off against the best Canadian players from the upstart World Hockey Association.
🇷🇺 Soviet Union 3-2 Canada 🇨🇦
Summit Series, Game 8
Luzhniki Palace Of Sports, Moscow 🇷🇺
Sunday, 06 October 1974
Unlike in 1972, there would be no climatic Game 8 in 1974. Team Canada had lost the series.
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An IHLC Lineage Correction – 1992 Olympics
As part of our continuous improvement to always refine the International Hockey Lineal Championship, we came across an improper lineage in the 1992 season that has now been corrected, impacting in particular lineage during the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France.
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🇨🇦 Bobby Hull: 1939-2023
Bobby Hull, the Canadian two-time league MVP and Hockey Hall of Famer whose accomplishments on the ice were almost as prominent as his checkered life off the ice, today was announced to have died at the age of 84.
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🇨🇦 🇷🇺 IHLC Classics: The Summit Series At Fifty
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 historic fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series, we look back with a new IIHF feature on the historic final game, and final goal, of this epic international hockey showdown.
🇨🇦 Canada 6-5 Soviet Union 🇷🇺
Summit Series, Game 8
Luzhniki Palace Of Sports, Moscow 🇷🇺
Thursday, 28 September 1972
“Henderson made a wild stab for it and fell. Here’s another shot…right in front! They score! Henderson has scored for Canada!” – Foster Hewitt
It is the most famous goal call in Canada’s long and rich hockey history, and it came from the game’s greatest voice exactly 50 years ago today, at the Luzhniki Sports Palace in Moscow.
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🇨🇦 Clark Gillies: 1954-2022
Clark Gillies, the Canadian enforcer and Hall of Famer who helped the New York Islanders to four straight Stanley Cups as part of their 1980’s dynasty, today sadly passed away at the age of 67.
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🇷🇺 Vladimir Shadrin: 1948-2021
Vladimir Shadrin, the Russian centreman who starred on some of the most powerful Soviet squads of the 1970’s, today passed away in Moscow from COVID-19 complications at the age of 73.
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🇷🇺 🇨🇦 IHLC Classics: The Red Machine’s First Olympic Title
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, in honour of Russian National Day, we feature the Red Army’s first Olympic title in 1956, which saw the two most recent World Champions go head-to-head on the Olympic stage in Italy.
🇷🇺 Soviet Union 2-0 Canada 🇨🇦
Olympic Medal Round
Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio, Cortina d’Ampezzo 🇮🇹
Saturday, 04 February 1956
When the Soviets won the 1954 World Championship in Stockholm, their first ever international tournament, they shocked Canada and the hockey world. But by 1956, there was no shock factor heading to the Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
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🇺🇸 Mark Pavelich: 1958-2021
American forward Mark Pavelich, who played an integral role in the 1980 “Miracle On Ice” for Team USA before embarking on an NHL career, was today found dead at a Minnesota treatment facility at the age of 63.
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🇷🇺 Alexander Gusev: 1947-2020
Alexander Gusev, one of the key defensive backstops for the Soviet Red Army dynasty of the 1970’s that won Summit Series, Olympic and World Championship titles, passed away at the age of 73.
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🇷🇺 🇨🇦 IHLC Classics: The Red Army Stuns Canada…And The World
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, in honour of Russian National Day, we feature the Red Army’s first major international title, and their debut IHLC matchup, against Canada to finish the 1954 World Championship.
🇷🇺 Soviet Union 7-2 Canada 🇨🇦
World Championship Final Round
Stockholms Olympiastadion, Stockholm 🇸🇪
Sunday, 07 March 1954
There is no question that 1954 was the start of the modern era of international hockey. Prior to the World Championship in Stockholm, Sweden, that year, Canada ruled the ice lanes uncontested. Indeed, from 1920 to 1954, it lost only two significant games, one to the United States at the 1933 World Championship and one to Great Britain at the 1936 Olympics.
But in 1954, the Soviet Union made its first appearance in international hockey, and it did so in a blaze of glory. The Soviets had only started playing “Canadian hockey” (as opposed to European bandy) in 1946, and just eight years later that nation’s top players and managers believed they were ready to play against the world – and win.
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🇨🇦 Canada’s Boycott: 1970-77
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.
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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🇨🇦 Pat Stapleton: 1940-2020
Pat Stapleton, a defensive star throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s in both the NHL and WHA, and one of just three players on both Canadian Summit Series teams, passed away today at the age of 79.
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🇺🇸 🇷🇺 IHLC Classics: The Miracle On Ice
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, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of perhaps the most historic game in international hockey, “The Miracle on Ice.”
🇺🇸 United States 4-3 Soviet Union 🇷🇺
Olympic Medal Round
Olympic Fieldhouse, Lake Placid 🇺🇸
Friday, 22 February 1980
The Olympic Fieldhouse in Lake Placid, New York, hardly seemed like the place where hockey history could be made, but on one afternoon in 1980, the greatest moment in international hockey took place. It was a moment that transformed the game in one country and, over time, around the world.
It was a moment that came to define Olympic success. It was a moment that came to inspire dreams. After 22 February 1980, anything was possible.
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🇷🇺 Alexander Skvortsov: 1954-2020
Alexander Skvortsov, a Soviet winger part of the Red Army juggernaut that dominated international hockey throughout the late 1970’s and 1980’s, passed away in Moscow on 04 February at the age of 65.
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Hockey Hall Of Fame Announces Class Of 2019
The Hockey Hall Of Fame today announced the newest members that will join as the Class of 2019 on 15 November, with the most decorated women’s player in history, the first Iron Curtain star to defect to the west, and a pair of multiple Stanley Cup champions, who between them hold a number of International Hockey Lineal Championships, all to join the ranks of the Hall in Toronto.
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🇸🇪 🇷🇺 IHLC Classics: Sundin’s Dagger Brings Down The Red Machine
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, in honour of Swedish Sveriges nationaldag (National Day), we feature their shocking World Championship Gold medal from 1991, which saw them win their fifth world title, marking the end of the Iron Curtain regime in international hockey.
🇸🇪 Sweden 2-1 Soviet Union 🇷🇺
World Championship Final Round
Elysée Arena, Turku 🇫🇮
Saturday, 04 May 1991
Mats Sundin, only 20 at that time, scored what many consider as the “best goal in the history of the IIHF World Championship” when he single-handedly gave Sweden gold in 1991 in Turku. But it isn’t only the exceptional end-to-end rush that counts into the overall verdict. The performance capped a season which began with Sundin escaping his country as villain – in what also was the last hockey game ever to be played by the Soviet Union national team at the World Championship.
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🇷🇺 Yevgeni Zimin: 1947-2018
Soviet star player Yevgeni Zimin, a multiple-Gold medal winner at both the World Championships and Olympic Games, passed away today of a heart attack at the age of 71.
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International Hockey Lineal Championship 