From the authors of  1972 Summit Series.com:   The History of the  Canada Cup and  The World Cup of Hockey

But where does this leave the NHL? Well, the way things are changing overnight - it will be very difficult for us to beat them the next time, and the time after that. In essence, what these hockey confrontations - these so-called battles for world supremacy - have come down to is a clash of societies, and we in North America may well be in a no-win position.

I first encountered Soviet hockey in 1958 at the World Championships in Oslo. At the time I was working in a factory and playing defense three or four nights a week for the Whitby (Ontario) Dunlops, a senior amateur team sponsored by the Dunlop tire factory. We represented Canada in the tournament - I was the captain of that team - and we defeated the Soviet National Team 4-2. Remember, we were just a bunch of guys who carried lunch pails. The Dunlops were one of the strongest amateur teams ever to represent Canada, but we were hardly of 1958 NHL caliber.

Yet, just 14 years later, before my very eyes, the Soviets played the best players from the NHL - I was the coach of that 1972 team - almost to a standstill in an eight game series. And now they've beaten us - and not by accident.

In the Soviet Union, hockey is an outgrowth of the political system. The state funds all the hockey programs and makes them work - or else. In North America, though, hockey is a business. They people in hockey - the players, coaches, owners - are in it to make a living. Hockey has become a rich man's game, too. It's expensive to outfit kids to play the game, expensive to rent rinks - it's expensive just to take kids to see NHL games. As a result, enrolment in youth hockey programs has declined  considerably the past few years. The fact is, hockey isn't a national service with use, and I, for one, don't believe it should be. What I mean is that we should not change the character of our society - from being free and open to one of conscripted service - just to achieve hockey supremacy.

NHL players are brought up to compete against one another on a team and league level, while Soviet players are brought to  compete against the world. To the NHL player,  hockey is 10 exhibition games, 80 regular season games, X number of Stanley Cup playoff games - and then three or four months on the golf course. To the Soviet player, hockey is almost 12 months of arduous daily labor on and off the ice that is programmed to achieve success in two or three international events each year.

The NHL All Stars played scheduled league games almost to the eve of the Challenge Cup series and as a result had only two practices together. The Soviets, on the other hand, prepared for the series by training for several weeks in the Netherlands, where they lived on New York time and practiced on a surface that was tailored to the specifications of the rink at Madison Square Garden.

More power tot he Soviets. They've mapped their strategies and followed them perfectly. But as long as the basic ground rules of the competition remain the same, it's going to become even tough for us to beat a team that only wants to win one for the Kremlin.

The Soviets hardly mask the order of their priorities either. For example, the US dollars they took home to Moscow from thee Challenge Cup were immediately reinvested in development programs. That's sound business practice - plowing money back into the operation in order to make an even better profit. Our proceeds from the series were divided between the NHL office and the players' pension fund. Not one penny was allocated to development.

Here are the cold facts on hockey development in North America. From all the reports I've studied, there are only four or five draft eligible 19 year old juniors in all of Canada who bear the scouting label "can play in the NHL next season." There are maybe another eight or ten graduating juniors who, as the scouts say, "need a little more seasoning," but after that, everyone else is a "probable" or a "maybe" or a "never."

That, to me, tells the real story of why the Soviets beat us at our own game. Beat us handily. Embarrassed us. 

Indeed, perhaps the No. 1 problem facing the NHL today is the fact that the league has spent the last seven years trying to survive economically and  consequently has paid almost no attention to the future of its game. The cost of operating an NHL franchise is staggering - somewhere between $3.5 and $4.5 million a year. In the last decade, the average player's salary has jumped almost 500% - from less than  $20,000 a hear to almost  $200,000; some 52% of a team's operating budget is allocated to player salaries. Also, the NHL has had to spend millions of dollars keeping faltering franchises alive and defending itself legally. And good Lord, we've had about 19 league meetings the last few years - everywhere from Montreal to Key Largo, Florida - just to discuss the various expansion proposals tendered by the World Hockey Association.

Imagine if we had spent half that time, half that energy and half that money formulating development programs, making instructional films, conducting clinics for coaches! We probably wouldn't have the problems we have right now.

One problem the NHL has - and can not continue to ignore - is that the league tolerates too many players whose skills are limited to the area of intimidation. As a result, the NHL has had too much of a monster image for about 10 years. You shouldn't have to be Attila the Hun to play game. The soviets certainly didn't play that way in New York. The fact of the matter is, kids will imitate what they see on TV - and in the NHL. They'll play just like us. Some NHL owners operate on the theory that fights attract crowds. Maybe they do, but let's face facts: Fighting won't sell the game of hockey now.

It's time for us to take a hard stand and clean up our game. Premeditated hooliganism must be    eradicated. We must weed out the brawlers and deal with them properly. We must be tougher on these people,  and actually there aren't that many. In the last decade, some players have been unable to develop all their skills because they've intimidated. They don't want to drop their gloves and fight - and be embarrassed. We must put in some tough rules to end his.

It's certainly no coincidence that the growth of Soviet hockey has roughly coincided with the NHL's expansion from six teams to as many as 18 and also  with the emergence of the WHA. These things have hindered - not helped, player development.

Unfortunately, not enough people in the NHL are aware of - or even care about - the fact that the league has been forced into such an economic position that player development has been virtually ignored. In 1967 there were only six major league hockey teams competing for amateur talent in North America; today their are 17 in the NHL and six more in the WHA. So what has happened, regrettably, is that a small vase of talent has been spread particularly thin.

In the pre-expansion and pre-WHA days, a player had to correct his deficiencies before he could play major league hockey. but now he arrives with those deficiencies and, because of the law of supply and demand, doesn't have to correct them to play big league hockey. What I can't believe is that some hockey people are foolish enough to think that an expansion with the WHA will improve our product. Anyone who thinks that having 22 or 23 teams in one NHL will make us a better league . . . well, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

To me, the most impressive aspect of the Soviet team that won the Challenge Cup - apart, that is, from its unbelievable skating talent - was its youth. Thirteen of the 20 players were 24 years old or younger, while only two were over 30. And the best of all the young players in the Soviet Union, 20 year old Vyacheslav Fetisov, a defenseman who is regarded as the "Bobby Orr of Soviet hockey," didn't even play because of a shoulder injury.

Ironically, the Soviets halve developed their hockey operation by following a master plan patterned closely after the development program that the NHL was forced to abandon some 10 years ago. Before expansion, the NHL's six teams pumped plenty of money into players development. NHL clubs sponsored teams, and, indeed, entire leagues of young players. Boston, for instance, practically underwrote a Bantam League program in Parry Sound, Ontario while it was courting a 12 year old, towheaded defenseman from Parry Sound named Bobby Orr. Then, once a hot prospect became 15 or 20, NHL teams would offer him about $35 a week to leave his hometown and play junior hockey for one of their affiliates. It was an offer that very few teenagers ever refused.

The NHL dropped its sponsorship program following the 1967 expansion, opting, instead, for what became known as the universal amateur draft. Independent operators now run the junior teams, and they're in business to make money. They idea of developing players, of developing skills, is not foremost on their minds.

In the USSR, the state funds, and closely monitors, the hockey programs at all the military, trade union and factory clubs. The coaches at these clubs are players who have retired from the national team, gold medal Olympic veterans such as Aleksandr Ragulin and Anatoli Firsov, as well as present members of the national team such as goaltender Vladislav Tretiak, who tutors prospective goaltenders at the Central Army club complex in Moscow.

In time, all the best young players in the USSR find themselves living in Moscow - and usually playing form Central Army club team. If, say, the Traktor Club in Chelyabinsk happens to uncover a six year old first grader with lightning quick hands, the Soviet Hockey Federation promptly moves the six year old his entire family to Moscow and enrolls him in an official state hockey program. Then the intense training begins.

One thing I've learned about the Soviets' training program is that it places more emphasis on skating and finesse than on shooting or hitting. It think that our emphasis switched from skating and finesse to shooting back in the late 1950s, when Bobby Hull arrived in Chicago with his slap shot and his curved stick. Suddenly, everyone was talking about how fast a player's shot travelled and about how many goals players scored. Hull spawned what has become an entire generation of kids who can shoot the puck through a stone wall but maybe can't skate a straight line for 10 feet. Not that it was Bobby's fault.

The 20 or Soviets who played in the Challenge Cup all were tremendous skaters - and all had remarkably similar styles. Their accelerations came from short strides, many short strides, and they seemed to move choppily. They looked like 100 meter sprinters. Our skaters are mover like mile runners, with long, loping strides.

Put simply, the Soviets seem to have the upper hand in the most important area of the game - skating.

The best of the speedy young forwards on the Soviet National Team is said to be Helmut Balderis, a 26 year old wing, who plays for the Central Army Club in the 10 team  Soviet major hockey league. Four years ago Balderis was the star of the Latvian based Riga Dynamo team in the same league. Was Balderis traded from Riga to the Central Army club? No. He was, as the Soviets like to say, drafted by the Army club team.

In fact, the great majority of players on the Soviet National Team also play for the Central Army club team, which explains why it has won the Soviet league championship 16 of the last 17 years. The Soviet major league, you might say, is nothing more than a 36 game training schedule for the Soviet National Team.

What if we took all our best young players - the Barry Becks, the Mike Bossys, the Bryan Trottiers, the Robert Picards - and simply assigned them to, say, the Montreal Canadiens!

Forget it. As I said, we're competing against each other - not against the world.