Quote Originally Posted by Ron View Post
And let's not forget that by the time game 4 ended in Vancouver ... the country was totally against the team.
I get the point you're trying to make but I think against is the wrong word. Disappointed, let down, embarrassed, yes, but against, no. There were those in Vancouver who booed but I think that was for the reasons in the previous sentence and that they preferred the Soviet style to the style we had been playing to that point.

The more in depth reading I have been doing on this subject lately, the more impressed I am with what we did and less with what the Soviets did (or in this case didn't do.) They didn't adapt to the changing game, Canada did. I see the Soviets great individual skills as something akin to Brazilian soccer ball juggling, great to look at, but does it put the ball in the net?

There were two big myths about the series that were stated during and just after the series and then were dispelled, that I believe actually weren't myth but fact.

The first is that we didn't do well because we weren't in shape. That was the original excuse and was later somewhat morphed into the Soviets just having better skills and being generally better. But the fact was we weren't in any kind of shape after three weeks of training camp to even skate beside a team that trained eleven months of the year. Most of the games (until game six) we started well and ran out of gas. By that time we had figured out their set plays (that they never changed) and were finally fit enough to enable us to break down their plays and use ours.

The other excuse was that we weren't allowed to use WHA players which later morphed into (aside from Bobby Hull) they wouldn't have helped anyway. Bobby Hull, Gerry Cheevers, and JC Tremblay were all veterans invited for 72. In 1974, despite being two years older they were dominant versus the Soviets in the WHA series of 1974. Even though the WHA lost that series rather handily it was closer than people remember. The Soviets thought Cheevers was the best goalie they ever faced and they were amazed by Hull and Howe who were both excellent against them. In Tretiak's book he was very impressed by Tremblay. Had we have had Hull, Tremblay and Cheevers it would have been a different series, the poor fitness issue might have been lessened by those players who instinctively knew how to play the Russians. Where Dryden floundered in his first two games despite previous experience against them, Cheevers knew how to play them and his style fitted playing against them. I realize some will think that two years later those three players would have had a better "book" on the Soviets but those player's styles were a good match for the Russians as amazing was that of Howe.

I will withhold judgment on Derek Sanderson who was also invited. People forget what a great player he was (especially defensively) as it was about this time that his career and lifestyle seemed to be going off the rails so who knows what might have happened with him if he had played.