Playing Soviets Important Means of Improving
By Frank Orr

The following article appeared in the Feb 13, 1987 issue of The Hockey News

The Russians are coming and once again, North American hockey will be placed under the only microscope where it can be examined closely for flaws, cracks in the temper of its steel and fissures in its philosophies.

Of course, all the old arguments are possible about the futility of confrontations such as the two-game series in Rendez-Vous '87 when the NHL's best will have two practices as a team to go against the national side of the Soviet Union, which has been training as a unit for who knows how long? The core of the comrades' roster has been together several years.

There are the old political arguments that can be hauled out, too, about how the Soviet hockey team represents a bad society, all that Harold Ballard crap, that if they don't get out of Afghanistan, then they shouldn't be allowed in Quebec.

But the NHL-Soviet match ups are a must, even though there is really no best time for the pros to play them. If the NHL never faces the Soviets, the chance for growth in the game is limited greatly. The NHL needs to place itself in the Russian wringer to find where its flaws are.

Of course, a large number of NHL players are enthusiastic about Rendez-Vous for a completely different reason. While 25 or so of their peers are carrying the ball against Viacheslav, Alexei and the boys, many of the other 425 will be soaking up a little sun. It will be easy to pick out the Rendez-Vous participants when the NHL resumes: They'll be the pale ones.

This "Super Bowl" of hockey has some advantages over the football match of the same name. By the time New York Giants and Denver Broncos reached Pasadena, there were no secrets. Hours and hours of checking out films meant that no weak spots went undetected and no strengths were overlooked. The NHL - Soviet contests are all a big crap game. only a modicum of scouting is possible of the Soviets and the NHL stars are together for the first time, which means no tendency charts are possible. To a certain extent, the games are sport at its purest - emotion and reaction are the key ingredients. perhaps that's how sport should be, instead of being bogged down in scout reports and statistical snowdrifts.

An interesting feature of every NHL-USSR meeting is the chance to determine where the two schools of hockey thinking are headed. Since the first Summit Series, the Soviet-Team Canada beauty in '72, the game has been played by higher-skilled, better conditioned athletes than ever before.

"I suppose the two big influences the Soviets had on us after '72 were that we started to focus on off-ice conditioning and stressed basic fundamentals more than we had," said Calgary Flames' GM Cliff Fletcher, who had a big hand in the selection of the NHL team for Rendez-Vous.

"There was no wholesale swallowing of their approach. But both sides took the best from the other's approach and hockey everywhere has been upgraded."

Fletcher points to the power play as an example of how the two sides influenced each other.

"There's been an almost total reversal of approaches used by the Soviets and NHL on the power play," Fletcher said.

"When we first started to play them, we would jam the front of the net to screen the goalie and bang away with shots from the point while the Russians moved the puck around the outside of the defensive box and waited for one good chance.

"Now, we're passing the puck around much more on the power play and jamming the net less and the Soviets are jamming the net and blasting away from the points."

Fletcher says with a smile that the distance between the two hockey powers can be measured in feet.

"They still can handle the puck better with their feet than NHL players," he said. "But I think the players we have now are as good in the other skills."

All that, of course, can be checked out in Quebec City.