Reflecting on 1972 Summit Series - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Sports, Hobbies and all things unrelated to Politics.

Moderator: PoFo The Lounge Mods

#14057628
I found this article to be quite entertaining, very interesting from historical point of view - as well as hockey point of view, and has plenty of jokes.
I know that its only in Canada that Summit Series was huge, but the matter of a fact is that the series was very entertaining and memorable. It wasn't a blowout either way, and it was decided in the last minute of the last game.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/h ... /?slide=38

Some of my favourite parts:

Before players and fans landed in Moscow, they were warned to steer clear of money changers. “The Moscow dollar bars were where the honey traps were, if you know what I mean,” explained Gary Smith, junior officer in Canada’s Moscow embassy. “The honey traps, they had a stable of men and women whom they would use to entrap foreign business men in compromising situations.” The RCMP used slightly different language, according to Team Canada doctor John Zeldin. “As one RCMP officer rather pithily put it: If you do make out with a good-looking doll, chances are you will be presented later with a photograph of your bare ass."

One Canadian fan in particular wasn’t prepared for the austerity of Soviet shopping. He arrived in Moscow with ill-fitting shoes expecting that he could simply find a replacement pair in a Soviet mall. “He didn’t realize there wasn’t anything like that in Moscow,” said Herb Knox, an officer from Canada’s Helsinki embassy brought in to shore up the consular staff. “We tried for two days to find him shoes. Consumer products like that were hard to get. He eventually bought the most godawful shoes you have ever seen in your life and he must have paid $200 for them. By the end of the series, you could spit through the soles.”

Gary Smith, junior officer, Canadian embassy, Moscow: It wasn't unusual for things to go missing, particularly steaks, milk, beer – anything that was unavailable in the local market. And I told Harry that at one time, the Embassy Club had ordered 1,500 cases of Molson's beer from Montreal and we had hired some guards to protect it but when it arrived in Moscow, 750 cases were gone and the other 750 cases were frozen. So all 1,500 cases were useless.

Don Awrey, defence: I was in a room with two singles and my roomate was Pete Mahovlich. The guy is six and a half feet tall and the two beds had this strange end-to-end configuration. His feet stretched exactly to where my pillow was, so I had Mahovlich’s feet in my face all night.

Mike Harris, future premier of Ontario: The army was everywhere. In that first game, when we went to sit down on the benches, there was an army guy at either end. They expected to fit 10 people on a bench made for eight. Eventually we just shoved those army guys off. They had to sit in the aisle.



Phil Esposito, centre: That phone kept ringing in the middle of the night and I’d pick it up and there’d be nobody on the other end. So I finally got fed up and ripped the thing right out of the wall. This was in the middle of the night. A few minutes later someone knocked on my door. They’d come to fix it. I couldn’t believe it. Shit, try getting Bell Canada or AT&T to do that.

Brad Park, defence: You had no sense of privacy. Every time you left your room you had to leave your key with a big babushka who guarded every floor.

Reid: Some players thought they were being bugged. The would tear apart the rooms searching for these bugs. I had to tell the players there wasn’t much point in searching for bugs. The people who were listening – and there certainly were people listening – would be more confused than anything trying to understand a bunch of Canadian hockey players kibitzing about faceoffs and power plays.

Phil Esposito, centre: The chandelier story goes that me and [Wayne] Cashman were looking for bugs [that KGB planted in players rooms]. We find a little lump under the rug. It was a box with a series of screws and we start unscrewing it until we hear a big crash below. We peep through the screw-hole downstairs and see that a chandelier in the hotel ballroom had crashed to the floor.

Herb Knox, diplomat: The hotel was not far from Red Square. Myself and three or 400 others hiked over. We did the cha-cha-cha and the bunny-hop in Red Square that night. Lenin must have been turning over in his tomb.


Isn't oil and electricity bought and sold like ev[…]

@Potemkin I heard this song in the Plaza Grande […]

Russia-Ukraine War 2022

The "Russian empire" story line is inve[…]

I (still) have a dream

Even with those millions though. I will not be ab[…]