The best 4-4 tie in hockey history A memorable night in Winnipeg saw Canada and the Soviets do battle in iconic series By: Geoff Kirbyson Posted: 8:43 PM CDT Monday, Sep. 5, 2022 Last Modified: 9:03 AM CDT Tuesday, Sep. 6, 2022 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/09/2022 (1439 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was no on-ice winner of Game 3 in the 1972 Summit Series but Team Canada head coach Harry Sinden was the hands-down, off-ice MVP with his candid assessment of the 4-4 draw at the Winnipeg Arena.

“If a tie is like kissing your sister, that looked like (movie star) Raquel Welch to me,” he told reporters afterward. “Aren’t we all glad to be alive and watching hockey like that?”

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the day the Manitoba capital played host to Game 3 of the Summit Series, a (supposedly) friendly competition pitting Canadian professionals from the NHL against Soviet “amateurs.”

It was the first best-on-best series between the two countries.

Things were finally starting to unfold on Sept. 6, 1972 as most hockey observers had expected as the Canadians built a pair of two-goal leads, 3-1 and 4-2, in the second period in front of a sold-out crowd of 9,800. The game could have been well in hand had Team Canada not surrendered a pair of short-handed goals, one by Vladimir Petrov and the second by Valeri Kharlamov.

But as the game wore on, the Soviets started giving more ice time to their fourth line of Yuri Lebedev, Alex Bodunov and Viacheslav Anisin. Equipped with a pair of monikers — the “Kid Line” and the “Headache Line” — the trio erased the Canadian lead. Lebedev scored just 72 seconds after Paul Henderson had put the Canadians up 4-2 and then Bodunov pulled the Soviets even with just a minute and a half left in the second frame.

“They were all over us,” Sinden said years later. “I said to Fergie (assistant coach John Ferguson), ‘Who the hell are these guys? Where did they come from?’ They were really good young players who went on to be great players. They ended up tying the game. Fergie was stunned, just like I was.”

Serge Savard, one of the stalwarts on the Canadian blue line, says there’s no question Team Canada should have left Winnipeg with its second win of the series.

“A tie is not good when you’re leading 3-1,” he said, in a recent interview with the Free Press.

The Soviets had surprised virtually everybody by overcoming an early 2-0 lead in Game 1 in Montreal en route to a 7-3 victory. The Canadians recovered two nights later to record a 4-1 win at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

The Canadian players had been very confident — some would supremely overconfident — heading into the series, which saw the first four games held across Canada and the final four in Moscow.

“Everybody told us that we weren’t going to lose a game,” Savard says.

The overconfidence was due to their own ignorance about the quality of players that the Soviet system produced and an extraordinary acting job by those same players during an open practice the day before Game 1, in which they stumbled and bumbled their way through drills.

“They didn’t look that good,” defencemen Pat Stapleton said during an interview in Winnipeg six years ago. “Did they give us the biggest con job ever? They were falling down and they weren’t making their passes. We were set up.”

Stapleton, who dedicated much of his time and efforts in retirement to cementing Team Canada’s legacy, died in 2020 after suffering a stroke.

Neither Savard nor forward Pete Mahovlich was surprised the Kid Line stepped up in Winnipeg. Savard said he really didn’t know who any of the Soviets were but even though they were young, Lebedev, Bodunov and Anisin were hardly strangers to each other. Like the rest of the team, they had been seconded to a year-round hockey camp during which they rarely saw their families.

“All of those players were ready to go,” Savard said.

Mahovlich was used sparingly in Game 3 as his primary role was killing penalties.

“I hit the post twice in Winnipeg,” he said, in a recent chat.

“It was a tight game. We realized these guys were very good. They had the ability to pass and move the puck extremely well. Their system was such that when they got into trouble, they knew they could throw the puck into an open area and they’d have a player there to pick it up. We may have had more shots on goal, but they won the time of possession.”

The aftermath of Game 3 proved problematic for Team Canada in other ways, too. Back when his team was expected to roll to eight consecutive victories, Sinden had promised every player on the 35-man roster they’d get to play in at least one game. In the dressing room following the Winnipeg game, he said he would make good on that pledge two nights later in Vancouver.

The Canadians lost that game 5-3 and were booed lustily by fans at the Pacific Coliseum, prompting Phil Esposito to give his famous post-game interview in which he expressed his disappointment in the fans.

Team Canada lost Game 5 in Moscow before winning the final three contests, including 6-5 on Henderson’s iconic goal in Game 8, to win the series.

Henderson scored the game-winner in the final three victories.

Said Mahovlich: “You can’t be down three games to one with one tie and then win the next three games unless somebody wrote the Hollywood script.”

geoffkirbyson@mymts.net