"The Great Game" by Todd Denault

[schneefink]

myrdschaem reminded me that I was still in the middle of reading "The Great Game. The Montréal Canadiens, the Red Army, and the Night That Saved Hockey" by Todd Denault. I'd stopped reading for a few weeks, in hindsight mostly because I was in the middle of the chapter that introduces the villain and explains how they (almost) ruin everything. In this case, the Philadelphia Flyers.
(Of course I know that the current Flyers are not the Broad Street Bullies anymore – last season the Pens had a lot more PIMs than the Flyers, for example – but their history does not help my already existing dislike of the team.)

The "Great Game" mentioned in the title is the New Year's Eve game between the Montréal Canadiens and the Soviet Red Army club in 1975, according to Denault one of the best games ever played. Here it is on youtube; I haven't watched all of it yet and of course the quality is much worse than what I'm used to, but it is a very pretty game.

Denault tells the history of the Canadiens since the 1960s, plus some history of other important players and teams, which of course includes the Red Army team. Things I learned about Habs history: Sam Pollock, Habs GM in the 60s and 70s, and Scotty Bowman, the Habs' coach in the 70s, were geniuses. The Habs also had an excellent scouting staff. Their team in the 70s that won four Cups in a row(!) was simply stacked with world-class talent and is most likely one of the best teams in history.

It was neat to suddenly get some context for some names I'd heard here and there before: Guy LaFleur, Ken Dryden… Bobby Hull appears as an advocate against violence in hockey, which was weird since I only knew of him as a Chicago Blackhawks ambassador who abused his wives. Bobby Clarke appeared, who I only knew as the asshole who deliberately injured Kharlamov's ankle. Turns out he was a leader of the Broad Street Bullies in Philly and in general an asshole who loved to chirp players on opposing teams because he knew they wouldn't attack him because they were afraid of his violent teammates.
Denault does a good job introducing different players and and people and making them all interesting.

The larger story behind the game that Denault focuses on is the debate about violence in hockey. In the early 70s, under their innovative coach Fred Shero, the Flyers, who became known as the Broad Street Bullies, basically terrorized the league, a tactic which won them two Stanley Cups. Hockey became so violent that it became a political matter in Ontario, Canada, and the Attorney-General instructed law enforcement to treat events on the ice like any other event if they are in violation of the Criminal Code, something which league officials condemned. According to them, hockey is not hockey without violence and violence "keeps the game alive" (said the owner of the Leafs; S. 191) Honestly, reading some of that was sickening. The first player to be charged with assault causing bodily harm was Dan Maloney: "Stalking [Brian Glennie] from behind, an angry Maloney viciously swung his clenched fist at the side of Glennie's face. Glennie fell to the ice, limp and unconscious, but Maloney kept punching him, then jerked him up and down off the ice, so that Glennie's head struck the unforgiving solidity of the cold ice a couple of times before the referees intervened. Despite the brutal nature of the assault, Maloney was only assigned a five-minute major penalty with no further disciplinary action from the NHL. Glennie spent the night in a Toronto hospital, with a mild concussion. He was released the next day." (S.191f.) Maloney's coach protested the charge, saying that the NHL was the best-run league of any major sport and that the league was doing an excellent job running itself. (S.192) Excuse me while I puke. "In exchange for a no-contest plea, Maloney did community service work and was banned from playing in Toronto for two seasons", from Violence in ice hockey on Wikipedia, where I also learned that all in all there were few charges (two in 1975, two in 1976, one in 1977) and fewer convictions.

In Denault's narrative the Flyers are the bad guys and the Canadiens the good guys, but to be honest he didn't have to try hard to sell it. Even the Russian players admired the Canadiens very much, but disliked the Flyers and hated their style of hockey. Denault made it very clear that the Flyers' victory over the CSKA in January 1976 didn't really count because the Flyers were out to hurt people and of course the Soviets didn't want to risk injuries in a for them meaningless game.
The good guys win when the Habs win the Stanley Cup against the Flyers in 1976 and then again in the next three years, which led to a renewed focus on skill and speed etc. in hockey instead of violence. Looking at the game even today, I shudder to think what it would look like had the Flyers won more Cups in the 1970s.

In conclusion, I liked the book a lot and would recommend it to anyone interested in hockey history.

Comments

[myrdschaem]

Heh, that sounds interesting, but I also don't really buy all of it. Prepare for my Flyers soft spot to shine through!

I don't think it's cut as simply as the author portrays it. Haven't read the book, but from what I heard. Yup, Flyers hockey was pretty violent in the 70s, but honestly they were not alone. See also Bruins for example.

And at the same time the Flyers didn't only built their team on violence - without their coach Fred Shero they wouldn't have made it. And he's responsible for several innovations in hockey that last to today! He's the first coach in the NHL that used systems - alot of the inspiration came from studying the Red Army style and subsequently focusing on passing. He starts the practice of tape review.

Tbh, when looking at Red Army vs the Flyers, looking back, the Flyers are the villains. Especially during the earlier summit series in 72 you mentioned. But I don't think the Canadiens of that time were sooo different from them. The Flyers didn't win their two cups - a mere 7 years after the '67 expansion! - without skill.

And honestly, especially the Canadiens of the 70s profited from trading for 1st draft picks in the new amateur draft system bc most GMs weren't used to it as much. They could only amass the talent they had that way. Which is ingenious, but maybe they're not as noble as the writer portrays them. :P

Sorry Pens fans friend, but I got a soft spot there and idk if I would say that Flyers hockey, which innovated a great deal, was what was solely holding hockey back. Though I'm glad the violence slowly faded from the game and continues too. ^^

It does sound like a good introduction to one of the glory periods of Habs hockey, so I'll keep that in mind. They have such a long and rich history, it's hard to find a starting point to learn about the franchise.
(Also yes, Fred Shero is Ray Shero's dad.)

[schneefink]

I actually know&agree with most of what you're saying. Fred Shero certainly was a very smart and innovative coach (as an aside I always found it hilarious that his son won a Cup with the Penguins.) The Broad Street Bullies had a lot of talent on their roster, and they were definitely not the only team that fought a lot and were violent. Sam Pollock reminds me of Lou Lamoriello in the way that he knew the system very well and knew how best to use it to his advantage.

But the Flyers started the trend of increased fighting and violence, they made it popular among the other teams (often by what other teams felt was necessity) and influenced teams on all levels and even Juniors, and they were the figurehead for their style. I find the way that injuries were just accepted as part of the game and sometimes even deliberately inflicted disgusting, and the Flyers symbolized that. A team that relied more on skill and less on violence had to win against the Flyers to make other teams realize that they didn't need to rely on violence, and that team happened to be the Canadiens (who of course weren't complete angels themselves, no team was, or is.)

[myrdschaem]

I guess they're kinda the symbol of hockey violence, but I'm not sure if I would put them as the starting point. I think the violence has been there since the start of the games in some form, just looking at Gordie Howe for example. But it does take on another character because they used it more calculatedly. I don't know if anyone did that successfully before in hockey. That might be a good question to research.

I think for that era, the Canadiens undoubtedly had a role model kind of aspect... but honestly, the league is still full of copy cats and after the Habs someone else became the pattern to follow. Sometimes it seems like they don't learn, sadly. I think overall skill (+ speed/endurance/team game...) does trump it in the long run but that style gets back into vogue time and again.

(And then segue into why we need to change the hockey culture in general, not just the rules/players...)