Perhaps the most furious hockey fight in history did not take place in the KHL or NHL, but at the World Championship, moreover, the youth one. All members of the national teams of the USSR and Canada took part in the fight. It didn’t end well for the hockey players.

“You can lose the World Cup, but the Canadians must be beaten for sure”

Now the youth hockey world championships are a real treat for fans. Emotions, energy, adrenaline – all this overflows with young players, so these tournaments are especially interesting to watch. Turns out they’ve always been like this! Even in the 1980s, when no one paid much attention to the youth world championships. But one tournament, which took place in 1987 and was held in Czechoslovakia, went down in history forever …

The long-term confrontation on ice between the teams of the USSR and Canada has borne fruit in the form of the attitude of rivals towards each other. From an early age, that is, from a junior age, the meetings of two sworn opponents were given a special, fundamental status. That championship was held in a circular pattern, and the USSR-Canada match was supposed to actually complete it. The Canadians needed a victory by three goals to become champions, the Soviet hockey players did not claim anything and could not rise above sixth place. But they could not go to the match with the Canadian team without a special mood.

Anatoly Tarasov / Photo: © RIA Novosti / Dmitry Donskoy

Before the final meeting, the legendary Anatoly Tarasov entered the locker room of the Soviet youth team, led by Vladimir Vasiliev. He set the mood for the game: “You can lose the World Cup, but you have to win the Canadians for sure! They knocked out your eye – put it back in place and run after the Canadian, don’t let him throw at the gate!

This was not at all an excess of the stick on the Soviet side, as one might think. The Canadians came out with exactly the same attitude and almost started a fight in the room under the stands, starting to bully the opponents. Although only Soviet hockey players talked about this fact, it’s impossible not to believe them: the Canadians behaved aggressively throughout the tournament. For example, during the warm-up before the meeting with the USA, the Canadians got into a fight with the Americans, because one of them drove into someone else’s half of the ice.

“Soviet guys didn’t know how to fight”

With the beginning of the game, emotions did not subside at all, on the contrary. Canadian forward Theo Fleury scored the puck, and then knelt down and drove past the Soviet bench, pretending to shoot them with a stick like a machine gun.

“Then I thought: it seems we have problems,” recalled Canadian player Murray Costello.

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Dmitry Donskoy

The match really did not end with some jokes and offensive gestures. The longer the game went on, the more aggressive it became. The culmination of the evening came in the middle of the second period with the score 4:2 in favor of Canada: Sergey Shesterikov stumbled over a club stuck in his legs. And then it began … Hockey players who were on the ice began to fight, after a few seconds they were joined by all those who were on the bench.

“Looking back, I don’t know what we could have done differently,” said former Canadian forward Yvon Corriveau. We did what we were taught. But I was definitely very scared. When I flew out onto the ice and looked around, there were only red sweaters around, which were approaching me. By the way, the Soviet guys did not know how to fight. They were still on the ice with sticks. We all took off our clubs and gloves. But they were very strong! I grabbed one of them, and then only realized how powerful it was.

The Soviet player of that youth team, Alexander Galchenyuk, admitted that fights were not their forte. But this did not negate all the passion and hatred with which the USSR hockey players fought with the North Americans. As a result, Vladimir Konstantinov broke Greg Howgood’s nose, Stefan Roy fought off two Soviet hockey players, and the future NHL star Brandan Shanahan managed to have two fights.

It was in the power of one person to stop the battle on the ice – the Norwegian referee Hans Ronning. But instead of taking matters into his own hands, he simply left the ice. But it’s hard to blame him. Ronning was allowed to referee only one match in the tournament, and that only because he was “politically neutral”.

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Dmitry Donskoy

When the referee left the ice, the tournament organizers made an attempt to stop the fight by turning off the lights in the arena. But this, of course, did not stop the excited guys, they continued to find out who was stronger, switching to dirty tricks such as punches between the legs, to the head and on the sly. Finally, the police were involved in the case, threatening the hockey players with arrest. Teams stopped the fight 45 minutes after it started! They went to the locker rooms, from where they were taken to the hotels under the escort of the military. The next day, the teams were sent home.

So who was to blame?

The IIHF President called the event a “black spot” of the tournament. Immediately after the match was stopped, the federation held an emergency meeting to decide the fate of the game, the teams and the results of the championship. Officials did not take into account the young age of the participants in the fight – everyone was disqualified for 18 months, subsequently reducing this period to six months. But the coaches who could not calm their hockey players were given even more – 3 years each. The most offensive for the Canadians is that the result of the match was canceled, leaving them with no medals at all. For the first time in history, the Finns became world champions, who obviously did not expect it.

According to Shanahan, one of the most famous hockey players of that game, an employee of the Ice Hockey Federation of Canada told the team about the annulment of the results.

Photo: © RIA Novosti / Dmitry Donskoy

“He said a phrase that I will never forget: “Deep down, I understand that this is the right decision,” recalled the striker. “The Federation didn’t defend us at this meeting. I am not ashamed of this carnage, although I am not proud. It happens. We sacrificed gold to protect our comrades. And we would do it again.

But the Soviet hockey players, among whom there were also enough future stars in the person of Sergei Fedorov, Vladimir Malakhov, Valery Zelepukin and Alexander Mogilny, probably had more regret: they were reprimanded at home and almost expelled from the Komsomol – a real tragedy for Soviet youth .

In the wake of that famous fight, several memoirs and even books were written. And in one of them, the author gave a detailed opinion of Ronning, a direct witness to what happened. According to him, it was the Canadians who started the fight. They were the first in full force to rush from the bench onto the ice. The Soviet players followed them.

“The fault lies with the Canadians,” he said. – They started it. And I don’t understand why, when they had a real chance for gold.