Thirty Years of the Game at its Best Read online

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  First published 2011

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Copyright © Canadian Hockey Association, 2011

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  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Thirty years of the game at its best / edited by Gare Joyce.

  ISBN 978-0-143-18197-2

  1. World Junior Championships (Hockey)—History.

  2. Hockey—Tournaments—Canada—History. I. Joyce, Gare, 1956-

  GV847.7.T48 2011 796.962’620971 C2011-905129-X

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  INTRODUCTION 1

  ROCHESTER THE OFF-KEY ANTHEM 6

  LENINGRAD THE TOUGHEST ROAD GAME 12

  NYKÖPING THE FIRST CHANCE TO PLAY FOR CANADA 18

  HELSINKITHE ONLY SHIFT ON THE WING 22

  HAMILTON THE LUCKIEST BREAK FOR LUC 30

  PIESTANY THE 33-MINUTE GAME 36

  MOSCOW THE SWEETEST PAYBACK 44

  ANCHORAGE THE RUNAWAY TRAIN 52

  TURKU THE OUT-OF-TOWN SCORE 60

  SASKATOON THE SECOND LIFE 70

  FÜSSEN THE FAILED CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENT 78

  GÄVLE THE BULLETIN BOARD 84

  OSTRAVA THE PLUCKY UNDERDOGS 90

  RED DEER THE DREAM TEAM 96

  BOSTON THE BREAKTHROUGH FOR JAROME 102

  GENEVA THE RESILIENT OVERACHIEVERS 110

  HÄMEENLINNA THE HUMBLING GAME 116

  1982

  1983

  1984

  1985

  1986

  1987

  1988

  1989

  1990

  1991

  1992

  1993

  1994

  1995

  1996

  1997

  1998

  WINNIPEG THE COLDEST NIGHTS 122

  SKELLEFTEÅ THE WEIRD TIMES 128

  MOSCOW THE THIRTEENTH FORWARD 136

  PARDUBICE THE TEST OF DISCIPLINE 144

  HALIFAX THE QUIET ROOM 150

  HELSINKI THE UNLUCKIEST BOUNCE 156

  FARGO THE POWERHOUSE 164

  VANCOUVER THE BEST FRIENDS 172

  LEKSAND THE TENSE VICTORY 180

  PARDUBICE THE NARROW ESCAPE 186

  OTTAWA THE LAST GASP 194

  SASKATOON THE END OF THE GOLDEN RUN 204

  BUFFALO THE BORDER CROSSING 212

  EPILOGUE 222

  TEAM ROSTERS 226

  CONTRIBUTORS 242

  INDEX 244

  1999

  2000

  2001

  2002

  2003

  2004

  2005

  2006

  2007

  2008

  2009

  2010

  2011

  Getting the Program of Excellence off the ground wasn’t easy. We had to sell the program before we built it.

  In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association sent the defending Memorial Cup champions to the International Ice Hockey Federation’s world under-20 tournament over the holiday season. You might think that would have given Canada a fairly representative team in the tournament. It didn’t play out that way, however.

  Major junior teams are built to win one season, and often they’ll load up on older players to make that run. The following season, though, many if not most of their top players have graduated and the best have gone on to the pros—an experienced team one season is often a rebuilding one the next. You have a 16-year-old skating in place of a 19-year-old elite player, a very tough place to put a young man in.

  The Memorial Cup champions sometimes picked up a few top players from other teams in their league, but that still wasn’t enough to be competitive. I think this point was driven home when the Cornwall Royals went to Füssen in 1981. They were a great team when they won the Cup, but they struggled the next year. They had Dale Hawerchuk, who would be a Hall of Famer, but he was only 17 at the time. What we had in place wasn’t fairly representing the Canadian game, and it wasn’t fair to the players either. I remember Canada losing to West Germany 7–6, and we just said that it’s no longer acceptable.

  In the spring of 1981, we went to the Canadian major junior hockey leagues with a proposal for a national junior program. The first part of our plan was to bring together the best tournament-eligible players at a training camp during the summer. The second part of our plan was going to require the major junior teams to loan us their best players for the duration of the world junior tournament. We also proposed instituting a feeder system: an under-17 program. As we laid it out, major junior leagues would send their best young players to play regional teams in a tournament that would give the CAHA an opportunity to identify talent for world junior tournaments down the line. It would also give young players an opportunity to test themselves against the best in their class and a chance to get acquainted with our program.

  In other words, we went to the leagues with a proposal that three decades later remains the foundation of the Program of Excellence.

  If you were to look at our best moments—the gold medals, the great games and players—over the course of those years, you might think that it was an easy sell. It wasn’t, and we knew it wouldn’t be.

  The initial resistance was understandable, really. Major junior teams were going to be reluctant to give up their best players if they were contending for playoff spots, especially over the holidays when teams would draw some of their biggest crowds of the season. And then there was the risk of injury. We had to use all our powers of persuasion to make our case. Over several meetings, we were able to convince the WHL, OHL, and QMJHL that the tournament would benefit their teams and players. Pretty quickly they came to understand that club teams raised their profiles and focused attention on junior hockey when their top players represented Canada internationally. At the start some teams and players were reluctant, but it has been a long time
since a team or a player looked at an invitation to the world junior camp as anything less than the chance of a lifetime.

  The three major junior leagues each have a seat on the Program of Excellence’s policy committee, and Hockey Canada has a fourth vote. In a short time, those on the committee developed a solid working partnership.

  We had a vision of what we could do and how we wanted to do it, and key to that was attention to detail at every level and in every aspect of the program. For instance, we wanted coaches to dedicate 100 percent of their attention to getting the team ready. Often, coaches at all levels of hockey have to handle logistics—whether it’s travel, accommodations, or meals. From the start we had to have staff to clear the table for the coaches who came in. There would be no worries about schedules, buses, travel—we’d look after all of that. We also wanted the coaches to have the last word on the selection of the team with no input or veto from the CAHA on the final roster. In the management of any team or program, you don’t want to give a coach a chance to pin a loss on a decision that wasn’t his or her own.

  The attention to detail had to carry over to the players, of course. We had to reinforce the idea to players that we were doing everything we could to give them the best chance to win. We also had to get them to understand it’s a different game that’s played internationally on Olympic ice. They were going to see different calls. They had to understand that pick plays called for interference penalties in the WJC were just part of the international game, or that good clean checks by our standards would get penalties in Europe. We wanted the players to know all this going in, and be able to adapt instead of finding out the hard way.

  One of the worst images of Canada in international hockey came back in the Summit Series in 1972, when J.P. Parisé skated up to a referee in Moscow and threatened him with his stick, swinging it like he was going to take the ref’s head off. I joke with J.P. every time I see him that for 30 years we’ve been able to use his stunt as an example of what not to do. Part of understanding that it’s a different game is accepting that there are going to be frustrations and that you just have to check your emotions and move on. That attitude and emotional control are keys to winning internationally. To be frank, when we were starting up the program I wasn’t sure that we would be able to get that message across. But in ‘82, the first year for the Program of Excellence, we had two big defencemen, Gord Kluzak and Gary Nylund, who were as tough and mean as anybody in major junior hockey. When I saw that they couldn’t be goaded into retaliation penalties, I knew that players—the best players—are fast learners and capable of adapting.

  I’m not going to say that it was only our planning that has put the Program of Excellence where it is today. We’ve evolved and grown over the years, but still the core values have stayed in place. And we’ve been lucky.

  Because of the players we’ve had the pleasure of working with, the program has enjoyed good fortune. Those players always looked to measure themselves against the most talented players in the country. We’ve been lucky because the best coaches in junior hockey have come to view the Program of Excellence as an opportunity for their development, too. And we’ve been fortunate to be able to maintain a great working partnership with the major junior leagues.

  On the ice, we were lucky to have immediate success, coming away with gold in Minnesota in 1982. That gave the program instant credibility and momentum. We were able to get off to a flying start. There’s no overestimating how important that gold medal was 30 years ago.

  We were also lucky that the world juniors became a huge television event. In the first years, CBC would broadcast only one tournament game—and the network was obliged to do that only if Canada was contending for a gold medal. Later, we found a great partner in The Sports Network and Réseau des sports—basically, the Program of Excellence, TSN, and RDS grew together.

  And I consider myself lucky to have had a chance to work with some of the best and brightest people in the sport. Going back to those first years, that list would include Dennis McDonald, our technical director; Dave Draper, our scout in the launch years; and Dave King, who was coaching at the University of Saskatchewan when he helmed the 1982 team.

  When we went to the major junior leagues with our plan in ‘82, we were aiming to improve our performance at the under-20 tournament. We also thought that the Program of Excellence would help our organization send better-prepared players to international hockey events, including the Olympics. I think we’ve been successful on that count, given that so many of the players on two Olympic championship teams had ties with the program.

  We never imagined that the world junior tournament would grow like it has and become so significant in the sport. That’s just a happy by-product of the success. The Program of Excellence was tough to get off the ground, but once we were able to do that, over the years it took flight thanks to the top-notch players, coaches, and officials I’ve had the honour of working with behind the scenes.

  The Program of

  Excellence’s team-

  building strategies

  paid immediate

  dividends in

  Minnesota.

  I was in a unique position. I experienced the world juniors before the Program of Excellence, and then again with the program in place.

  I played my junior hockey for the Peterborough Petes and we went to the 1980 tournament in Finland as the Memorial Cup champions. I say “we” but the fact is I didn’t play. I was just 17 and the team picked up a few top players in the OHL. We took the top line from the Ottawa 67’s, Shawn Simpson, Jim Fox, and Yvan Joly, and we brought in Dino Ciccarelli from London, among others. The younger guys on the Petes went on the trip and practised with the team but didn’t dress for games. We went for the experience and it wasn’t pretty. We lost our first two games to the Finns and the Soviets and ended up in fifth place. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the personnel. We had a lot of talent. And it wasn’t that we didn’t have the coaching. Mike Keenan was our coach and he was one of the best coaches at any level of the game. Mike did everything he could to prepare the team for the tournament but we weren’t positioned to win. We had a lot of things working against us. Too much, as it turned out. Just when the team started to come together, the tournament was over.

  It was a completely different experience two years later. A lot of what you see in the Program of Excellence today was there in ‘82, including the summer camp

  Coach Dave King

  delivered what

  would be an enduring

  message to Canadian

  players: disciplined

  play is the key to

  victory.

  and the tryout camp in December. When we had gone to the 1980 tournament, it was like we had a standing start, but in ‘82 we weren’t starting at square one. Our coach, Dave King, let us know just what to expect in the tournament. He let us know that staying out of the penalty box was key—if we just played our usual game, we’d get penalty calls going against us and the European teams’ power plays could hurt us.

  We weren’t the most talented team that ever represented Canada in the world juniors but we were a good fit to our roles. I don’t think that would have been possible if we didn’t have the opportunity to play together in the summer and get to know each other. Having to play your way onto the team in December raised the stakes—you couldn’t possibly take a shift off or you could lose your chance to play for your country. The competitiveness of our selection camp carried over to the tournament.

  That year the WJC was being played in Manitoba and Minnesota. The Soviet Union had been the dominant team in the tournament’s history—I remember in 1980 Vladimir Krutov had two or three goals against us and it seemed like there was nothing you could do to stop him. It was a different story in ‘82, though. We

  Troy Murray, here

  flying through the air,

  and his teammates

  played in a packed

  arena in Winnipeg, but

>   a near-empty rink in

  Minnesota.

  Mike Moller (left) and

  his teammates stayed

  out of the penalty

  box but didn’t totally

  sacrifice physical play

  en route to the gold

  medal.

  beat the Soviets 7–0 in Winnipeg in front of a crowd that was just going crazy. It was an amazing atmosphere. I can’t say the same about the scene when we went to Rochester, Minnesota, for our game against Czechoslovakia, the last game in the round robin. We were playing in this little arena that sat about 3,000 and probably wasn’t half-filled. In Winnipeg, on home ice, it felt like we were involved in something historic. It really wasn’t like that in Rochester.

  In that final game we needed only a tie against Czechoslovakia to win the gold. Before the game the coaches somehow got hold of a gold medal and brought it into the dressing room and everyone in the room touched it. I don’t know that we could have been any more motivated than we were before that, but it got our attention.

  We were down 2–1 to the Czechoslovaks after two periods, and the score could have been a lot worse. Our goaltender Mike Moffat kept us in the game for 40 minutes. We poured it on in the third—we had 19 shots in the last 20 minutes. Marc Habscheid and Mike Moller scored to give us the lead but then the Czechoslovaks came back to tie it up. I just remember how tense the last few minutes were—we were just hanging on. It was a tough time, but we had come together and understood our roles well enough that we could handle it.

  People who have followed the world junior program over the years might not know the name of a single player on that team, or might never have seen a video of the action from that game, but a lot of them know what happened afterwards. The hosts didn’t have the Canadian national anthem—or it wouldn’t play, we never really heard the definitive story on that. So we stood on the blue line and sang “O Canada.” It was really just a spontaneous thing but it’s the first thing people think about when they think about that ‘82 team, our signature moment. And 30 years later it’s become one of the great stories in the history of the Program of Excellence. At the time, though, we had no idea that it would have so much staying power. In fact, it wasn’t until my hockey career was over that it really hit home.