by Gare Joyce
In a familiar pattern for Canuck junior teams in international play, they didn’t press the advantage in the second period. Instead, they concentrated on defensive play, which gave the Russian speedsters the chance to get their high-speed, quicktransition game into high gear. A goal by Harije Vitolinish at 6:55 gave the Russians a big lift and it seemed the Canadian lead would not last.
Defenceman Marc Laniel, a staunch defensive presence throughout the event, restored the two-goal margin with a slapshot from the point at 11:45. But the lift to
Theoren Fleury
(wearing the
captain’s C) had been
in the eye of the storm
in Piestany, but he
emerged as a leader
on the disciplined 1988
championship team.
the Canadians didn’t even last a shift. Less than half a minute later Zelepukin got the goal back and again put the Russians on the attack.
With almost half the game to play, the fans at Luzhniki Arena anticipated a batch of goals from their star shooters. But Waite showed the main quality of all great goalies: the ability to be unbeatable at a crucial point in an important game.
“It was as if Jimmy [Waite] decided there was absolutely no way he was going to allow the Russians to tie that game,” Canadian assistant coach Ken Hitchcock said. “The Russians threw everything but the Kremlin at him and he never cracked.”
While Waite did make several difficult stops against Mogilny and Fedorov, the Canadian forwards did strong defensive work against the Russian aces. Little centre Rob DiMaio led the man-to-man shadowing, a defensive job that was his specialty in an NHL career that would last 17 seasons.
In the third period, the Canadians were effective in keeping the Russians on the outside in their zone, away from the high-percentage shot area. But Waite
made seven difficult stops, five in the last 10 minutes, one a breathtaking split-pad save on Stanislav Ranfilenkov.
But in the last six minutes of the game, Canada actually carried the play to the Russians.
“We had an idea by then that Jimmy wasn’t going to allow them to score another goal,” winger Warren Babe said. “It was a big lift and we took it to them a little but carefully. That eased things a bit.”
“We didn’t want our guys to hang back quite as much as they did but when the Russians got momentum, their great passing made forechecking risky because of their breakout plays,” Chambers said. “That forced us into a bit of a defensive shell to guard against odd-man rushes. Overall, we did a good job against them, a smart, straightforward approach. But, in the end, the kid in goal made the difference.”
Waite somewhat reluctantly acknowledged that he had faced difficult shots.
“Some saves were quite tough to make, he said. “But my confidence was
Canadian players in
Piestany poured over
the boards to join the
ugly brawl, but a year
later they hit ice to
celebrate Canada’s
first major triumph in
Moscow since the
1972 Summit Series.
good and I was pleased with the way I played. When we got ahead, I figured that if I played good, we could win.”
Through the tournament, Waite’s laid-back approach was both a source of wonderment and encouragement to his teammates. “The rest of us would be all wound up tight, ready to head for the rink at noon for a night game, and Jimmy would go to his room, stretch out and have a snooze,” said centre Joe Sakic. “I asked him if he ever worried about anything and his reply was that he didn’t because worrying never did any good.”
While the victory over the Russians had every trapping of the tournament championship match, Canada had two games to play against West Germany and Poland, which they won easily to claim the world title.
Fleury, the 5-foot-5, 150-pound captain, had played the tournament—in fact, the entire season as Western Junior League scoring champ—with a burning desire, inspired by the Piestany incident. His lead-by-example intensity inspired his mates to duplicate it. He and Rob Brown tied for the team goal-scoring lead with six.
“For a whole year, including many sleepless nights, I thought only about how the Russians took away something very special that belonged to me—a world championship gold medal,” Fleury said. “Now that we have it, a big load is off my back. It has bugged me for a year—really badly, too, sometimes.”
The victory was a career milestone for all 20 players on the roster, boosted by a strong team feeling that developed quickly at the selection camp before the trip to Moscow. “It was all for one because that’s how it had to be for a shot at the gold,” Sakic said. “The camaraderie was terrific and there were no little groups going their own way. That’s why it was really sad when we got back to Canada and went our own ways.”
Centre Mark Recchi was an important two-way player in the tournament. “I remember very well the empty feeling when the team got to old Mirabel Airport in Montreal and the guys all went to their own teams,” Recchi said. “We had met a really big challenge and we would never have the chance to do it again. But what happened in Moscow will never be forgotten by any of us. All through my NHL career, I’d be, say, lining up for faceoff, look up and see a Theo Fleury, Joe Sakic, Trevor Linden, or Adam Graves, any of the Moscow guys, looking at me. We both would give a little nod or smile that said, ‘Hey, you old dog! You and me did something really special one time.’“
The Canadian roster was built on the evaluation of CAHA director of scouting Dave Draper. He started the construction process at the ‘87 midsummer four-nation (Russia, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Finland) junior tournament in Estonia.
“We knew then the type of teams four top contenders were building and the style of team we had to send to be competitive,” Draper said. “Maturity in all areas was a prime necessity after Piestany and, with the tournament in Moscow, culture shock was a big factor with different living accommodations and food. We brought a solid, mature group of young men who also could play some hockey. They did Canada and themselves proud.”
Head coach Chambers, who had much international coaching experience, was on sabbatical from his job as director of athletics at Toronto’s York University.
The low-key Chambers made restraint his theme and Hitchcock, a hard-driver from the Kamloops Blazers, and easygoing Jean Begin, from the Drummondville Voltigeurs, were the ideal “bad cop–good cop” duo as assistant coaches.
Given the many NHL successes of the alumni from ‘88, you could make an argument that this was the best-ever Canadian junior team. Of the 20 players on the roster, 18 played at least a few games in the NHL. Six (Fleury, Sakic, Recchi, Graves, Linden, and Eric Desjardins) played more than 1,000 games. Five played on Stanley Cup winners.
Since ‘88, several members of the team expressed their surprise that two key parts of the Moscow effort—goalie Waite and defenceman Laniel—did not have distinguished big-league careers. Waite played 191 NHL games in 10 different stints over 11 seasons plus good minor pro stretches, but never relocated the brilliance of Russia. Laniel never played an NHL game in a six-year pro career.
“Over the years I’ve met guys from the Moscow team and we shake our heads when they think how good Jimmy was in that tournament and how he struggled in the NHL,” Recchi said. “Marc Laniel? How could a guy who was so solid in his own zone, such a smart player with size and skill, not do in the pros what he did so beautifully in Moscow?”
There is no easy answer for the question, like so many others in the game. Nonetheless, the Canadian juniors that year had an answer to a powerful Soviet team: Jimmy Waite. In the toughest road game in the sport, he played as well as any goaltender I had ever seen. I would have paid my own way and bought my ticket to see it.
Rob Cimetta and his
teammates went to
Alaska as defending
champions, but faced
the greatest team the
Soviets ever sent to
the world juniors.
My chance to coach the Canadian junior team came two years after I had to miss out on the tournament. I was named as an assistant coach on the team that went to Piestany, but after I had worked with the team at the summer camp the New York Rangers called me and offered me the head coach’s job. I was coaching the Windsor Spitfires a couple of years later when I got the call from Team Canada to work with the team that was going to Anchorage as defending champion.
I thought our team played well and I’m proud of the job our players did. We went in wanting to put the team in a position to win a gold medal or any other medal. We were in that position down to the wire—we had four wins, a loss to Sweden, and a tie with Czechoslovakia going into our last game of the round robin. But we ran into a runaway train: the Soviets.
That Soviet team is probably one of the best that ever played in the world juniors and I’d say that there’s never been a better line than Pavel Bure, Sergei Fedorov, and Alexander Mogilny in that tournament. Mogilny had an injury and wasn’t even supposed to play in that game but he turned it on against us. We had managed to hang around in the first period, but in the second there were a couple of marginal penalty calls and Mogilny picked up a hat trick. That line was tough to hold off at even strength and impossible when you’re playing short-handed.
Sheldon Kennedy,
crashing the net
against Sweden,
was named Canada’s
captain and was
one of two players
returning from the
team that won gold in
Moscow.
We ended up losing 7–2. That left us with a 4-2-1 record in the round robin, tied with the Czechoslovakians, but they got the bronze by virtue of a better goal differential.
It was a tough way to miss out on a medal and a tough stretch for the program.
NHL teams were starting to change their approach with their young players. The kids that they drafted in June would go directly into NHL lineups the following October. In years past a few had made the jump—the exceptional prospects like Mario Lemieux, the top couple of 18-year-olds. But by the late ‘80s a lot of players were rushed into the pros. There were at least a dozen guys who would have been eligible for our team but weren’t released back to us by their NHL clubs—Joe Sakic, Trevor Linden, Brendan Shanahan, and Pierre Turgeon, just to name a few. We weren’t surprised by that and truthfully we didn’t hold out much hope for getting those guys. It was just the way things were at the time.
I was lucky that my friend Pat Burns, whom I’d worked with in the summer camp a couple of years before, released Eric Desjardins back to us for the tournament. Eric, who was one of the real leaders for us, and Sheldon Kennedy were the only returning players from the gold-medal winners the year before. We might have had some benefit from a few more players who brought some more world junior experience to the team, but really it wasn’t inexperience that
cost us in the end. We happened to run into one of the best teams that ever played in this tournament.
Going into the tournament we knew we didn’t have a lot of high-end skill like the Soviets. We were going to have to look at rolling all four lines, taking a scoring-by-committee approach and having our players going in the dirty areas. I thought that our scout, Dave Draper, did a great job going out to find talent when a lot of the top young players we might have hoped to be available were sticking in the NHL. We all tried to bring something to the table in terms of the knowledge of players we’d invite to the selection camp. For coaches in our position, you want to keep tabs on the best players and try to get to know them in advance of the camps. Alain Vigneault was my assistant and he knew the players in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League from coaching the Hull Olympiques. I knew those in the Ontario Hockey League and I went up to Michigan State to watch Rod Brind’Amour a few times—Rod was one player who really improved from the summer camp through to December. Dave Draper went across the country and we all shared our knowledge when we were putting together our invitation lists and tournament roster.
Because we were going to have trouble scoring, we had to play smart and avoid unnecessary penalties. It was a time when there was an eye-for-an-eye
Mike Ricci, here
backchecking against
the Swedes, was
luckier than most of
his teammates. He
was young enough
to return to the WJC
the following year for
another shot at gold.
Goaltenders Gus
Morschauser
(pictured) and
Stéphane Fiset
gave a Canadian
team depleted by
the absence of
tournament-eligible
stars on NHL rosters
a chance at a medal
going into the final
game.
attitude among junior players, even really good ones. We had to separate them from that. The team excelled at that the year before in Moscow, and our players did a good job buying into an idea that some others might have had trouble with.
Wayne Halliwell, our team psychologist, did a really good job in helping get the message across to the team. He met with the players as a group and individually. We went through team-building exercises. He really helped get the players focused and aware that each and every shift is important in a short tournament like the world juniors. And, really, when you get the best junior
Dan Lambert takes a
spill in a loss to the
Swedes that was
a blow to Canada’s
medal hopes.
Reggie Savage, here
with the puck behind
the Swedish net,
picked up four goals
and five assists in
seven games for a
Canadian team that
had to rely on scoring
by committee.
players in Canada together, almost all of them are going to respond to that type of direction and coaching.
It’s a small world and it seems even smaller in hockey. After the tournament I went back from Anchorage to Windsor with Darrin Shannon, one of the leaders on that Canadian team and one of my players with the Spitfires. Later I was working in the Philadelphia organization when Rod Brind’Amour and Eric Desjardins were playing there and it made for a special relationship—you’ve shared an experience and gone to war with a young man in what was the biggest moment of his life to that point. Whenever I’d see players from the world junior team we’d always talk and
have a laugh. I feel like I made a lot of friends through that opportunity to coach in the Program of Excellence.
I haven’t coached for a few years now, but I’ve stayed active in hockey as a scout and I’ve seen the impact that Hockey Canada and the Program of Excellence have had on the game. The Program of Excellence has made tremendous strides over the years—we didn’t always have the under-17 and under-18 programs to identify and work with the best young players, priming them for success at the world juniors. And the quality of hockey has just shot up. When you see players on Canadian teams at the world championships, at the World Cup, and at the Olympics, you’re seeing players who have been put into a position to succeed because they’ve been made familiar with the challenges they are facing.
No matter who is
on the roster, every
Canadian team goes
into international play
expecting to win.
Every loss stings,
but to miss out on a
medal because of
goal differential was
especially bitter for the
1989 team.
The 1990 edition of
the Canadian team
knew going into the
tournament that it
would have to rely on
scoring by committee,
an
d the players came
through. Here, Stu
Barnes celebrates a
goal against Sweden.
It wasn’t as if it was a moral dilemma, but I was a little confused on how to handle the information I’d just been given.
This wasn’t anything that had been covered in my three years of journalism school and, to be honest, there hadn’t been anything in my 11 years in the newspaper business that left me with a high degree of confidence on the “right” or “proper” thing to do. Besides, this was really my first foray into the world of broadcasting a live sports event, so who knew the protocol?
I certainly didn’t.
There I was on January 4, 1990, in a frigid arena in Turku, Finland, wearing my royal blue CBC blazer as a member of the broadcast team for the 1990 world junior championship. The late Don Wittman was doing play-by-play up in the booth with legendary coach Scotty Bowman as the colour commentator, and Brian Williams was the host. I was a broadcast novice serving as the intermission analyst and self-appointed rinkside reporter once the game had started.
I had taken up a position at ice level right alongside the Team Canada bench, which is to say nobody booted me out of there. Today, they would fashionably call it “Between the Benches,” but this was 1990 after all, and if I had decided to sit on the
Wes Walz slides the
puck by the sprawling
Soviet netminder
in a 6–4 victory that
kept the Canadians
undefeated after their
stiffest challenge.
Even though they
beat their old rivals,
Canada would need a
lot of help to capture
gold.
end of the long and open bench area, I’m not sure anyone other than Team Canada head coach Guy Charron would have said anything.
Canada was playing its final game of the 1990 tournament, facing a talent-laden Czechoslovakian team led by junior scoring machine Robert Reichel, flanked on either side by man-child Bobby Holik and a big, baby-faced kid with flowing locks, Jaromir Jagr. When they dropped the puck to start that game in Turku, it was thought to be nothing more than the final match of the tournament to decide who would get the silver and bronze medals.