Quote Originally Posted by argofan87 View Post
The Americans will always have 1980, and why not? The USSR was sending "amateur" players who for all intents and purposes were of NHL quality while the rest of the countries had to send true amateurs. Team Canada was never (to my knowledge) ever able to pull such an upset.
Actually it happened a handful of times, Except for the first article they are very poorly documented, I'll post more later.

The 1987 Izvestia tournament: Canada’s little known Miracle On Ice
Eric Duhatschek The Globe and Mail Dec. 25 2012

Moscow, in the winter of 1987, was a dreary inhospitable place for the start of the annual Izvestia hockey tournament. The Soviet Union was wheezing towards its political end, and in the last days of the Communist era, there was little to recommend to visitors in December. Consumer goods were in short supply. Fresh food was limited and whenever it appeared – in markets, on unexpected street corners – long lines formed, so people could enjoy an orange or two for the Winter Solstice.

About the only ray of light was its hockey team, the menacing Big Red Machine, featuring the Green Unit – Igor Larionov, Sergei Makarov, Vladimir Krutov, Slava Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov – all at the peaks of their respective careers. Three months earlier, they had been involved in a much-revered meeting of hockey’s royalty, the 1987 Canada Cup, which produced three remarkable 6-5 classics against arguably the best Canadian team ever assembled, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux still in their primes, future Hall Of Famers such as Dale Hawerchuk cast in supporting roles.

Now, some three months later, after the NHLers had all returned to their day jobs, the Soviets were hosting their annual Christmas tourney, the last major event on the international hockey calendar before the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Internationally, Canada was (and is) usually cast as Goliath in hockey competitions, but in this seminal event, played mostly in the Luzhniki Arena, home of Paul Henderson’s memorable 1972 goal in the Summit Series, they played the part of David, a heavy underdog.

But that team, cobbled together from NHL castoffs, holdouts and draftees, went in and knocked off the Soviets at home, the first Canadian team to win there since the final game in 1972.

It was Canada’s own Miracle On Ice, and it has been cast into the back pages of hockey history by two factors: One, there was no video evidence of the victory, no Team Canada rewind that can be replayed constantly on television; and two, that three months later, the Russians exacted their revenge by winning gold in Calgary.

“That was the only downside,” said coach Dave King, who celebrated his 40th birthday on the day Canada unexpectedly clinched the gold medal. “By winning there, we kind of blew our cover.”

It was an upset of massive proportions and it had the Soviets second-guessing their own approach. How could they lose to what was clearly a secondary Canadian team, with King as coach, two young future NHLers, Sean Burke in goal and Zarley Zalapski on defence, and an engaging cast of characters up front: Ken Berry, Marc Habscheid, Gord Sherven, Claude Vilgrain, Serge Boisvert, Cliff Ronning, Bob Joyce, Wally Schreiber and others, most of whom would go on to have journeymen careers as professionals.

Sadly, the framing of hockey history is mostly based on seeing an event live or on television – and that didn’t happen.

“It was played in a vacuum,” said forward Gord Sherven. “There was no footage. There was nothing. There are maybe a thousand people in Canada who know the real story.

“I had played in the Izvestia tournament twice before – in 1983 and 1986. In 1983, we lost 8-1 to the Russians and the only goal we scored was on a fluke. In ‘86, we won the silver. We lost 5-1, but we were certainly more confident and we knew how to play them. By ‘87, the next year, Dave King had us believing we could beat anyone by playing a team system.

“From my experience, from where we’d come in ‘83, I mean, it really was a miracle.”

Russian players are commonplace in the NHL and Moscow is among the most cosmopolitan cities in the world now. But a quarter of a century ago, it was a completely different experience. Visiting hockey teams were deposited in the Sport Hotel, where cockroaches flourished, and you had a choice of two when it came to rooms: Either the temperature was unbearably hot (about 35C) or there was no heat at all. Food? Awful. That year, Schreiber’s food poisoning was so bad, he had to skip a couple of early games in the tournament.

“It was a different era altogether,” said King, who later went on to become the first Canadian ever to coach in Russia. “In those days, not only did you have to beat a pretty good hockey club, but you had to endure some difficult conditions – because this was old Soviet Russia and everything was very spartan.”

Burke played with Russians during his NHL career and coached a Russian goalie, Ilya Bryzgalov in Phoenix, but back then, the Russian players were shrouded in mystery.

“There was no interaction between you and the other team, either before or after the game,” said Burke. “We looked at them as this robotic group of guys that were almost like machines. There was no expression on their faces – and the whole country felt that way.

“You had to peel back a lot of layers before you could get anything out of the Russian people. It was just totally different from everything we were used to and it was definitely an intimidating feeling, playing against those teams.

“It wasn’t just another country, it was another world almost. There was a smell in the building. They served tea in between periods. Everything was just so different.”

Within the Soviet Union, the Izvestia tournament was viewed as vitally important. It was played in a round-robin format, meaning the team with the best record at the end would win gold.

Canada was there to prep for the Olympics and began modestly, splitting its first two games. Almost singlehandedly, Sean Burke won the opener against Sweden which was played in a secondary venue, the Olympic arena, which had hosted gymnastics during the 1980 Summer Olympics and had been partitioned in half for the game.

Midway through the game, in which Sweden would hold a 40-14 edge in shots, the event on the other side of the partition began – a Uriah Heep concert. Heavy-metal music filtered through the divide, the unlikely soundtrack to that victory. King chose Andy Moog in to play the next game, a tight loss to Czechoslovakia, which set the stage for their match against a Soviet team still smarting from the narrow Canada Cup loss.

Canada had one advantage that night. The Soviets were trying to sort out their goaltending in advance of the Olympics. Sergei Mylnikov played for them in the 1987 Canada Cup and wasn’t great, so Tikhonov wanted to look at a rising young talent, Evgeni Beloshieken. But Beloshieken had had a poor outing against the Czechs, so Tikhonov switched to Vitaly Samoylov against Canada.

Nothing seemed amiss in the early going, as the Russians jumped out to an early 2-0 lead on goals by Sergei Svetlov and Larionov before Schreiber got one back before the end of the second period.

Then, early in the third, with Burke keeping Canada in it, Berry drifted in a long shot from the blue line that stunned the players and the crowd, tying the game at two. Five minutes later, in one of the few times Canada was able to exit their own zone, Ronning found Berry open at the side of the net and he tucked it in for the go-ahead goal. There was 11:11 to go in regulation.

“What I remember most about playing the Russians is being very, very aware that if we didn’t play extremely well, we could be embarrassed because of how good they were,” said Burke. “There was a real fear when you stepped on the ice and it brought the team together.

“But in that game, you could just feel our confidence growing as the game moved along. I knew we were going to have to hang on to win, but at some point, early in the third period, I remember thinking, ‘you know what? We can win this game.”

According to Sherven, Berry’s tying goal from long range “changed the game. You could just sense the trust in their goaltending wasn’t there anymore.”

King remembered it that way too.

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