Last week, I was listening to one of those often-mindless sports radio shows when the chatter was interrupted by an infomercial flashback that was sports-related but not mindless. I immediately recognized the voice of Phil Esposito, the more famous of the two Hockey Hall of Fame brothers from Sault Ste. Marie.
It was an old — okay, distant — replay from 53 years ago. It was Esposito’s famous complaint about Canadian hockey fans after Team Canada was booed for losing the fourth game of the Summit Series versus Russia, then called the Soviet Union, 5-3. It was a night that brought back memories for me…the last hockey game I covered for the Vancouver Sun, just before leaving for a new home, Montreal.
Esposito’s words, re-visited here, aren’t from last week’s voice clip — they’re from my game story:
“We love Canada. That I’d be ridiculed like this blows my dignity. It blew our dignity. We were disappointed in some of the people here, and we were disappointed in some of the people in Winnipeg (Game Three). We tried our damnedest… thirty-five of us came, gave up our summers, gave up a lott of money, maybe even a chance to win the Stanley Cup.”
A couple of his teammates were angrier.
“I’m ashamed to be a Canadian,” said Bill Goldsworthy, Esposito’s right winger that night. “Would the USSR fans treat their team that way?”
“I’ll be glad to get out of Canada,” sneered defenceman Brad Park.
To this day, a close media friend of mine who also worked that game, broadcaster Jim Robson, believes the booing was directed at Frank Mahovlich. The Big M knocked down Vladislav Tretiak, then sat on the Soviet goalie for an extended period, while the fans booed what they perceived to be poor sportsmanship.
However, the consensus was the Russians — up by a goal — took over with two more on power-plays. In the penalty box both times was Bill Goldsworthy.
What Esposito really said after the game, in a round-about way, was that the hockey fans shouldn’t be mad that Team Canada lost, because the effort was there. The skill, and the chemistry of a team that had only played three games together, were not. In so many words, Esposito was humble enough to admit Team Canada was beaten because the Russians beat them, not because they “choked.”
He was right.
Canada’s goalie, the late Ken Dryden, credited the opposing goalie: “Tretiak frustrated us, and I didn’t frustrate the Russians.”
Two weeks later the Canadians also lost Game Five, 5-4, a troubling but encouraging defeat for the players. Then they parlayed three consecutive Paul Henderson goals into a series victory, the last of them 34 seconds from the end. Henderson rightly became a Canadian hockey hero, though not enough of one to be in the Hall of Fame.
On home ice, Canada was 1-2-1. In Moscow, 3-1. Esposito, a Hall of Famer who starred on the ice in Moscow, also deserved much credit for turning things around with his impassioned speech. Today, more than five decades later, it still resonates enough to be an informercial on radio.
The headline on that night’s game story in Vancouver became prematurely ironic:
“From Russia with love.”
