"The Great Game" by Todd Denault

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. ( Cut for graphic depictions of violence. )

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.