by Gare Joyce
Robitaille and his teammates had to settle for silver. Still, the experience was a catalyst to a breakthrough in his play.
“When I returned to play with the Hull Olympiques, everything seemed easier,” he says. “I had just spent a month with the best junior players in the world and my confidence had been given an incredible boost even though we didn’t win the gold medal. I had the impression of being so much faster than my opponent.”
Robitaille won the QMJHL scoring title in 1985–86, the Guy Lafleur Trophy as the playoff MVP, and the President’s Cup with the Olympiques before losing the Memorial Cup final to the Guelph Platers. Lucky Luc, who was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2009, was also chosen as the CHL player of the year after his breakout season in 1986.
Robitaille went on to represent Canada on two other occasions, at the
1991 Canada Cup and at the 1994 world hockey championship. “I always loved to represent my country. For me, it was not about representing the QMJHL or Quebec—I played for Canada and I was extremely proud of it.”
The Los Angeles Kings had closely followed the 1986 WJC and realized they had lucked into a born scorer. “The impression I made at the WJC helped me so much when I arrived at the Kings’ camp the following season,” Robitaille said. “I felt that I had a chance to make the team even if I was only 20 years old.”
Robitaille did a lot more than make the team at age 20. That season he scored 45 goals with the Kings and won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year.
Luc Robitaille won a gold medal with the Canadian team at the world championship in ‘94, and he’d end up hoisting the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings eight years after that. Yes, he’s disappointed that it was “only” a silver at the WJC in Hamilton. But when he’s asked how he went from a ninth-round pick to the Hockey Hall of Fame, he points to the WJC as a turning point. He couldn’t have anticipated that someday he’d make the Hockey Hall of Fame, but he came away from Hamilton with a medal and the confidence that he was going to make the NHL with more talent than luck.
The 1986 tournament
gave the hockey world
a glimpse of another
future 50-goal scorer
and Hall of Famer,
Joe Nieuwendyk.
Goalie Shawn Simpson
gave away at least 60
pounds to the Soviets’
backup netminder
Vadim Privalov during
the infamous bench-
clearing brawl at the
1987 WJC, but he didn’t
shy away.
I wasn’t in the arena when Canada played the Soviet Union with a gold medal on the line in the final game of the 1987 world junior championship in Piestany, Czechoslovakia. I experienced that game like most people familiar with it: I watched it live on television and in replays for years after. Two decades after the fact I wrote a book about the game and ended up talking to almost all who played on the Canadian team and many who played on the Russian side. I talked to many others, including the widow of the Canadian coach and the assistant coach on the Canadian team, Pat Burns. I talked to those who broadcast the game for CBC, Don Wittman, Sherry Bassin, and Fred Walker. And I talked to a linesman who saw trouble coming and a novice referee whose failure to take charge led to the disqualification of both teams from the tournament.
It was indisputably the worst moment in the history of the Program of Excellence, and one of the most important. I was at some level obsessed by the game and it drove me to write a book about it. I guess I was trying to figure out how, as the late Don Wittman put it in introducing the broadcast, Canadians were “guaranteed a medal even with a loss,” and yet they skated off empty-handed even though they scored two more goals than the Soviets. The game became the source of endless debate and editorials. Some argued that the Canadian teenagers had
Pierre Turgeon, Theoren
Fleury, and Everett
Sanipass went to
Czechoslovakia with
hopes of bringing home
a gold medal—they
still were favourites to
win the championship
midway through their
final game in the round
robin.
disgraced the country. Some argued that the Canadian teenagers had been put in an impossible position and hung out to dry. Maybe both were true, and maybe neither fully explains how and why it happened. Or didn’t happen, I suppose. If you went by the International Ice Hockey Federation history of the tournament, it was never played. When I went to the IIHF for the game sheet in the archives, they told me it hadn’t been saved.
The linesman, a Finn named Peter Pomoell, had worked in many world championships and recognized that the situation was a recipe for disaster: take a bunch of hot-blooded Canadian teenagers, mix with a Soviet team that was already eliminated from the medals, and toss in a referee, Hans Rønning of Norway, who had never refereed a major international game. “I asked him, ‘Do you want my help on calls—majors, misconducts?’“ Pomoell recalled. “Rønning said, ‘No, I’ll call my own game.’ Canada vs. the Soviets … those
Virtually every
Canadian and Soviet
player was caught
up in the brawl. Even
before the benches
emptied, the game
was hot-tempered and
rife with cheap shots.
Finnish linesman Peter
Pomoell knew before
the game even started
that an inexperienced
referee and the
Soviets’ elimination
from medal conten-
tion were going to
make the final game
of the round robin
challenging for on-ice
officials.
two teams produced the best hockey but they were also the toughest games to work. I knew this; maybe Rønning didn’t. If Rønning had spoken to the captains and coaches before the game or during the game … maybe it could have been avoided.”
That was exactly what Canadian Amateur Hockey Association executive Dennis McDonald asked IIHF officials to do: Instruct the referee to speak with the teams before the opening faceoff. “The first thing I thought about was the tournament in Hamilton the year before,” McDonald said. “He worked a few smaller games in Hamilton and he was the lowest-rated official there. He was out of his league—just not ready or qualified to work a game like that.”
The game was a riveting one for as long as it lasted—which was exactly 33 minutes and 53 seconds of playing time. The score at that point was Canada 4, Soviet Union 2, with a pair of goals by the diminutive Theoren Fleury and single markers by Dave Latta and Steve Nemeth. With the possible exception of Fleury, Canada’s best player was Jimmy Waite, a young goaltender thrust into
service when the projected starterShawn Simpson went down with an injury earlier in the tournament. The game was wide open. It was also mostly untamed. Instead of trying to establish control of the game early with penalty calls, Rønning ignored slashes, cross-checks, elbows, charges, and face-washes from the very first shift. With the line of Fleury, Everett Sanipass, and Mike Keane on the ice with seven minutes to go in the second period, a line brawl broke out.
If you go to YouTube you can find footage of the game’s end, an old-fashioned bench-clearing brawl. The 15 minutes of mayhem look like they were lifted from a barroom scene in the last reel of an old western. You can’t see who left the bench first, though those in attendance told me that it was a Soviet player, likely Evgeni Davydov. You can see Rønning, with a dozen scraps going on in front of him, stuffing his whistle in his pocket like a sheriff putting an empty gun back in his holster. And you can see him ducking into the corner to watch frontier justice play out and then helplessly skating off the ice to get
Theoren Fleury (under
Pavel Kostichkin) was
on the ice with line-
mates Mike Keane
and
Everett Sanipass when
the fight broke out.
Polish linesman Julian
Gorski tries to break up
a fight between Everett
Sanipass (left) and
Sergei Shesterikov.
Eventually, referee
Hans Rønning led his
linesmen off the ice
and watched the brawl
from the sidelines.
out of Dodge. At one point officials in the arena ordered that the lights be turned out, and Czechoslovakian soldiers waited for the two teams to punch themselves into exhaustion or unconsciousness.
Dennis McDonald held out hope that, even if the game was ruled a forfeit, the Canadian teenagers would be allowed to hold on to third place in the standings and bronze medals. Instead, it was the rawest of deals. The IIHF decided to throw Canada and the Soviet Union out of the tournament and void their previous results.
Even with this perfect storm of circumstances, a blood rivalry and an overmatched referee, it shouldn’t have turned out the way it did. Many people absolved the Canadians of any responsibility because they weren’t the first over the boards. Those who defended the Canadian team said it was a simple matter of self-preservation. Still, it did go well past the point of self-defence. “It was a tough tournament for me and I didn’t have any chance to contribute,” said Shawn Simpson, who, at 150 pounds, took on and pinned the Soviets’ 225-pound backup goaltender at centre ice in what wasn’t the most violent fight but the most comical one. “Maybe I was just getting out my frustrations in the fight.”
Like Simpson, at least a few players from the Canadian team seemed to enjoy themselves once the chaos started. It would have turned out differently if many Canadian teams from different years were in the same position. The Canadian team that went to the 1987 world juniors was a younger team than those previous. They didn’t lack for talent. Brendan Shanahan would go on to an NHL career that will land him in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Pierre Turgeon and Glen Wesley would go on to play well over 1,000 games. But they were 18 and had yet to be drafted. Theoren Fleury was a year older but had been so little thought of that he hadn’t been drafted the previous June. It was the only team in the history of the Program of Excellence to hit the ice without a single returning player. In retrospect, a few experienced returnees in the lineup might have steadied a rocky ride. Might it have changed things and allowed Canada to skate away with a medal? Possibly.
In the aftermath, blame was laid at the feet of Bert Templeton, a veteran major junior coach. To put it kindly, he was a tough-love type of guy, so much so that Pat Burns, feared by his players wherever he coached, was good cop to Templeton’s bad cop. After the forfeiture and disqualification from the tournament, Templeton was criticized for losing control of his players. But at least some of the players were on a program of their own. “We became sort of a rebel team,” Shawn Simpson said. “We broke curfew and a bunch of us got trashed. We were the Bad News Bears and that’s how we played and acted the whole tournament. [We were] a bunch of knuckleheads.”
In fact, before the Soviet game, Bert Templeton was receiving praise from the media. Thanks to Templeton’s coaching, the young Canadian team had improved with each game and, arguably, overachieved in being in a position to win a gold medal. The Canadians stumbled at the start of the tournament, tying Finland 6–6 in a sloppy effort and then falling to the host Czechoslovakians 5–1. A sound 6–2 win over the United States was a turning point and set the stage for a dramatic 4–3 win over the Swedes, most credit due to a breakout performance by Jimmy Waite.
All the good work went for naught, and in that way it was awful for the players. It tarnished the image of the Program of Excellence. The team had strayed a long way from the discipline that Murray Costello and Dennis McDonald saw as a foundation of the program. And yet, Canada versus the Soviet Union in Piestany was a hugely important game in the Program of Excellence’s history. It showed exactly what was at risk when that discipline was lost or abandoned. It wasn’t a coincidence that the most undisciplined and infamous moment would be followed a year later by a glorious win with a team that played smart and poised hockey in even more hostile circumstances. The team that went to Moscow a year later understood the risks of any lapse in discipline, as have all the teams that have represented Canada in the tournament since.
Goaltender Jimmy
Waite, one of four
returning players
from the Canadian
team disqualified in
Piestany, exacted a
measure of revenge
in Moscow. Waite’s
inspired performance
sealed both the win
over the Soviets and
the gold medal.
I was a young sportswriter six months into my first newspaper job in Cornwall, Ontario, back in November 1957. I bought my own train ticket and paid my way into Maple Leaf Gardens for an exhibition game between the Soviet Union’s national team and the Whitby Dunlops. It was the Soviets’ first tour of North America and the Dunlops, one of the best amateur teams ever assembled, gave up two early goals but roared back for a 7–2 victory.
I didn’t miss too many instalments of the game’s fiercest rivalry over the next generation or two. In 1966, again at Maple Leaf Gardens, I covered a game between the Soviet nationals and the Toronto Marlboros, a strong junior team further fortified by a teenager from the Oshawa Generals, Bobby Orr. The Marlboros lost the game 4–3 but Orr was brilliant, rushing through the Russians repeatedly and giving a portent of a great NHL career. In 1972, I was in the arenas for the first four games of the historic Summit Series. The 1975 New Year’s Eve game between the Red Army and the Montreal Canadiens, the 1976 Canada Cup, all manner of tournaments and exhibitions: Canada versus the Soviet Union was a recurring theme in my career. If you’re writing about hockey, it’s hard to lose with us versus them.
It wasn’t until late 1987, however, that I made my first trip to the USSR. And it wasn’t a case of being parachuted in for a game or two. It was a five-
“In my entire hockey
career, I never saw
goaltending as good
as Jimmy [Waite] was
in Moscow,” Theoren
Fleury said. Waite was
aided by a defensive
unit that featured Eric
Desjardins, on loan
from the Montreal
Canadiens.
week jaunt to cover, first, the pre-Christmas Izvestia Tournament involving the top teams for the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary—Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia. In a surprise, the Canadians won the gold medal with a narrow win over the Russians in the concluding game. As he had done with the Canadian junior team back in 1982, coach Dave King had his team at the Izvestia well-prepared for the countless attempts by the Europeans, notably the Czechoslovaks and Russians, to incite them into retaliation penalties with assorted stealthy fouls.
That provided the perfect lead-in for the junior championship in Moscow. In the wake of Piestany, the Canadian team was selected carefully for of course skill, but almost as important, for the discipline to ignore the irritating attempts by opponents to draw penalties.
Undoubtedly, their best move was bringing back one player who covered himself in glory until chaos reigned in Piestany: goaltender Jimmy Waite of the Quebec Major Junior League’s Chicoutimi Saguenéens. In Moscow Waite played in all seven games and surrendered a meagre 16 goals. Waite was outstanding in all games but absolutely brilliant in Canada’s 3–2 win over the Russians the
pivotal game of the tournament. The Russians held a 40–16 margin in shots on goal, 17–4 in each of the second and third periods.
“In my entire hockey career, I never saw goaltending as good as Jimmy [Waite] was in Moscow, especially in that game against the Russians,” said Theoren Fleury, captain of the ‘88 team. After being part of the Piestany debacle, Fleury went to Moscow a year later lookin
g for redemption and got it.
That Canadian team had three other players back from Piestany—two defencemen, Greg Hawgood and Chris Joseph, and goaltender Waite. The Russians had four returnees, including their exceptional stars, forwards Alexander Mogilny and Sergei Fedorov, both of whom became all-stars in the National Hockey League.
“The Russians had a high skill level led by the offensive excellence and exceptional speed of Mogilny and Fedorov with Valeri Zelepukin not far behind,” said Canadian head coach Dave Chambers. “Our scoring was not as explosive but more balanced and our defencemen, especially Greg Hawgood (Canada’s leading tournament scorer with a goal and eight assists), were intelligent offensively.
“Our advantage was that all our forwards, even the high scorers, could play both ways. We used four lines through much of the tournament with no fall-off in quality or production.”
Reflecting years later, Chambers felt the game against Czechoslovakia was important in Canada’s gold-medal journey. As they often did against Canadian teams, the Czechs played a sneakily aggressive game with countless little spears, jabs, hooks, and elbows, and then staged elaborate dives when the Canucks retaliated with muscle. The Canadian teenagers spent much of that game shorthanded and, as he was throughout the tournament, Waite proved to be their best penalty killer in a 4–2 win.
“We learned the hard way that in international hockey it’s almost always the retaliator, not the instigator, who gets the penalty,” Chambers said. “We had a lengthy meeting after that game, one of the few we had, and you could feel the entire team vow to take all the baloney they threw at us and skate away from it. The players did for the rest of the games.”
Against Russia, Canada opened with a strong first period and a 2–0 lead on goals by Fleury and Trevor Linden, a poised 17-year-old who finished off a dazzling rush by Hawgood.