by Dave McCurdy

It's too bad that politics and nationalistic hysteria always have to.intervene in international_hockey. I've seen a lof‘of international series -- both amatuer and professional -- screwed up by this unfortunate phenom- enon, and the Team Canada '74 i USSR series which juSt concluded yesterday was no exception.

The fact that the Russians ‘

won the series four games to one with three ties is almost immaterial. What really matters is that once again polities came first, hockey second, and it's just a shame.’ -

I watched all four of the Moscow games.in the base; ment of Memorial Hall at UPEI after watching the four Canadian games in Halifax. I make no secret,-

of the fact that I cheered for

the Russians throughout the series, for reasons I'll ex- plain.momentarily.(Now that those of you who watched the games in Memorial Hall know who I am, I'll proceed.) It's important to note here that I was cheering for the Russian team, not fOr the Russian system. As far as I'm concerned the whdle

business of the series being -

"our system against theirs" is so.much nonsense.

There were so many areas of controversy in the se‘ies= I'm going to get my two cents worth on them one by one.

The refereeing: As usual in international hockey, it was dismally incompetent. However I make no distinction among the four refs who worked the games -- they were

all bad. And I don't think that

on the whole they were bia-, sed one way or the other.

In games two and five, for example (4 —l for Canada and 3 — 2 for Russia) The Can— adians definitely got the break in officiating in my opinion. In game six, the Russians got away with blue murder. Throughout the series the most ridicu10usly'ob— vious plays were botched --

Penalties, goals, offside calls,

and just about everything"" else you can name. Surely any amateur ref from any small town in Canada cOuld have done a far better job, Particularly in games five 'and six, which_both—got com- Pletely out of hand. ‘

The-"dirty" play of the Russians: It's a popular I belief that the Russian Players, while apparently cleaner than the Canadians, are secretly the filthiest

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greasers alive. However, Team WHA coach Billy Harris, in an interview in the Sept. issue of MacLeans‘(I urge one and all to read it)

I gives the lie to this: he ,says the Russians can play

dirty all right but he's

never seen them instigate the dirty stuff. And he's seen them a lot -- he was coach of the Swedish nat— ional team for a while, rem— ember. The recent series

‘bears him out in my opinion:

the first players to go in— dividually headhunting were Paul Shmyr and Johnny Mc- Kenzie of the WHA in Canada, and then in Moscow, Team WHA put on a fine display of

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politics, ' as usual

the disgusting animal show put on by almost the entire Canadian team in game 5; and the same horribly in— adequate refereeing that Team WHA had to cope with.. They took no misconducts, the Canadians took four (or five, I can't remember); they put up with stick blades in the groin on at least two occasions with- out causing a fuss; and generally acted in a much

more mature manner than the WHA crybabies. As for the Soviet Ice Hockey Feder- ation, of course, their behavior was as usual out- rageous; but that's another matter altogether.

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true collective greaSe in game five. Had I been a member of the Russian team, I would have played it dir— ty in the sixth game too -- for fear of getting my

head knocked off if I did' i not protect myself. A dis— cussion of dirty players on Team WHA would include many names: McKenzie, Shmyr, Rickey_ Ley, the vicious Jim HarriSon, GOrdie Howe, Gerry Cheevers, Brad Sel- wook and Serge Bernier.

The Russians do have some rough players (eg. Valery Vasiliev,‘Valery Kharlamov, Vladimir Lutchenko, Vlad- imir Shadrin) but they are neither as numerous nor

-as malicious as their Can— adian counterparts.

0n Self-restraint: The . Russians as a team excer- cised much more restraint than the WHA team during the series. They had to put up with that outrageous disallowed goal in game 2;

The Announcinggon Canadian T.V. : Don Chevrier acquit- ted himself much more com— ‘ petently and with more fairness than I had expected (he's a football announcer, after all). However, Johnny Esaw acted like an imbecile as always, and Howie Meeker lost an awful lot of cred— ibility with his always biased, often just plain silly antics. (Where I watched the games, those cheering for Russia and those cheering for Canada had one thing in common: they were all laughing at Meeker and Esaw.) Bob Cole, The radio announcer, is a great improvement on those two, and had there been a radio handy I would have tried to get the T.V. tur— ned down.

The Fans in Canada: I wat~ ched two of the Canadian games in the SUB pub at

St. Mary's University in Halifax, and was generally

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contemptuous of the attitude the people there displayed. It was all "Co Canada Go" without any regard for quality of play. Watching the first Russian game at U.P.E.I. encouraged me a little about Canadian fans: the lads seemed to be watch- ing the play as much as the score, and there was even another guy there cheering for the Russians! Of course, the fact that the Canadians played a filthy game and

got away with it must have had something to do with this "fairness", because it sure evaporated for game 6. The Russians played it pretty rough that game, and the comments from the guys in the T.V. room were just incredible:"Kill 'em!" "I want to see at least

two Russians carried off the ice this period." "Yeah-— not killed, just maimed!" "Next game the Canadians should just come out with razor blades in their sticks and hack the Russians to pieces." And the most id— iotic grade-Z-mentality political jokes you could

imagine: "I wonder how many of those fans are there by choice." "The refs are afraid they'll get shot if they call a penalty against the Russians." The hell of it is that the assemblage considered these gems hil— arious!

To wrap up, I really wish people would get a few things straight about this type of series. I think the final result, considering all the ins and outs and ups and downs of the series, was a fair one. Russia did have the better team, and they won. So be it.

Just as a postscript, during the eighth game I told a guy in the T.V. room to go fuck himself after he had made a particularly stupid Cold-War—type remark (a Russian player offered to shake hands with a Can- adian player after the Canadian had speared him in the groin, and this clown said "He was paid to do it.") In the great Canadian male macho tradition he dared me to repeat it to his face, which I did, although I was_sitting down at the time and he was standing up. He then proceeded to pummel at me for a while.(I madelittle attempt to resist.) In doing so he very conveniently backe‘ up just about every re—

‘mark I had made during the

series about Canadian grease. I hope he's proud of himself.