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When The Russians Invaded Saint John |
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The predecessor to the 18-year-old Harbour Station arena, home of the Quebec League’s Seadogs, in Saint John, New Brunswick, is the Lord Beaverbrook Rink, built in 1960. The old barn was freezing Tuesday night as the Bruins Alumni team, featuring Ray Bourque, Terry O’Reilly, Rick Middleton, and a dozen others, took on a team of local all-stars.
A breeze was blowing in off the Bay of Fundy, snaking its way across the mouth of the Saint John River, spreading a chill over the hills of this sprawling town. And while I felt the cold through my winter coat and toque, sitting inside with my back to the ice near the front entrance while signing books, I could also feel the sense of history.
It wasn’t big league, it had nothing to do with the NHL or locals who had made it to the big show; it was just this sense of a strong hockey heritage in small-city Eastern Canada.
“Urban” grass roots hockey if you will, in Canada’s oldest incorporated metropolis.
Long before Maritimer Gerard Gallant coached the ‘Dogs to the Memorial Cup last spring, the locals here had toasted plenty of other national champions. No other town or city in ‘our home and native land’ can claim a Memorial Cup, a Calder Cup (2001), an Allan Cup (1992), and a Hardy Cup (1973).
The latter are senior league titles, ones that held more prestige and significance back in the day, when these teams were the best Canada had to offer internationally. Senior amateurs, not NHLers, took on the Finns and the Swedes; like when Captain Harry Sinden and his boys from the Whitby (Ontario) Dunlops, multiple-time Allan Cup champs, won Gold at the World Championship for Canada back in 1958.
It was the Saint John Vito’s who took the Allan twenty years ago. It was the Saint John Mooseheads who won the intermediate level Hardy two decades before that.
Dave Nicholson, now the manager of the Beaverbrook Rink, was a member of the Mooseheads.
“We were the best Saint John had to offer at that time,” Nicholson said. “We had some very good players, like Earl Rice,” whose son played Tuesday against the ex-Bruins.
But while the Hardy Cup win was sensational, it was an event seven years earlier that proved more memorable for these minor leaguers: The arrival of the Russians.
What stands out in a recent documentary about the Summit Series in 1972 between Canada and Russia, was the utter shock for the Canadians and the NHL players at the style of play and the talent level of the Russians. The eight game series offered a look behind the iron curtain. The Russians were doing it differently, effectively, and showed astonishing team play with their five man units.
It was the folks in Saint John who actually had a chance to experience this shock six years before the Summit, when on December 28, 1966, at the Lord Beaverbrook, Mr. Alexandrov, Ivanov, the Yakushevs, and coach Anatoli Tarasov came to town.
“It ended up 19-nothing,” Nicholson laughs, “We were one of the first of the North Americans to know how good the Russians were. After about the fifteenth goal, one of our players, who was a bit of a card anyway, they were dropping the puck at center ice and he said to the ref, ‘don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back.’”
Puck possession was of course the name of the game.
“Absolutely,” states Nicholson. “Actually, they practiced the day before the game and the practice had to be choreographed. It was more intricate, it was almost like the Ice Capades. They did line rushes from both ends of the ice at the same time. It was amazing, we were in awe of them before we ever stepped foot on the ice.”
It was a Mooseheads team that had tied Finland 4-to-4. They had no idea what was coming.
See Simmer @simmerpuck
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