Unrest in Moscow Over Hockey Defeats

Two unexpected losses by the Soviet national hockey team in the World Championships at Prague, Czechoslovakia, last week have jolted sports fans here and drawn sharp criticism in the press.

It may be the worst sports setback in Russia since a scrappy young American hockey team defeated the Soviets in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.

The Soviet team, which breezed to seven victories without a defeat in the preliminaries, received nothing but praise at the outset of the tournament. But a 2-1 loss to Czechoslovakia in the title round, followed by a 3-1 loss to Canada, knocked the Soviets out of contention. They had held the championship since 1978.

Even Friday’s decisive 10-3 victory over the United States for third place failed to restore the luster to the Soviet team’s reputation. It had won 19 world championships and was heavily favored to add a 20th.

Czechoslovakia defeated Canada for the championship, 5-3.

The consecutive Soviet defeats touched off a wave of criticism by Soviet fans and sportswriters.

“They got too fat,” one Muscovite said, noting that most Soviet sports stars enjoy high pay and privileges matched by few of their fellow citizens.

“They were riding on their past glory,” another fan said.

And still another: “It ruined my May Day.”

The newspaper Soviet Sport, deploring the loss to Czechoslovakia as a “tragedy,” blamed goalie Vladimir Myshkin for making mistakes, and the attacking line for not offsetting those mistakes with more goals.

In an even more biting commentary, the newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya said that the Soviet players didn’t try hard enough against the Czechs and lacked a winning spirit.

Pravda, the Communist Party publication, commented, more in sorrow than in anger, that the loss to Canada showed that the Soviet team and its coaches “failed to learn their lesson from the encounter with the Czechs.”

It said that Canadian Coach Dave Peterson announced his strategy two days in advance of the game but that even that did not help the Soviets.

Earlier, Soviet Coach V. Tikhonov said that the loss to the Czechs was only “an irritating slip, nothing more.”

The defeats were particularly puzzling and irritating to Soviet fans because the Soviet team defeated Czechoslovakia, 5-1, and Canada, 9-1, in the preliminary round.

The American team did much better than expected. It was ranked last among the eight teams before the tournament started. But the Americans defeated Czechoslovakia, Canada, Sweden and West Germany, tied East Germany and lost to Finland and the Soviet Union.