Winter Olympics: Calgary : The Big Red Thaw: Team CCCP No Longer Letter Perfect

They still are hockey’s Big Red Machine, but if some team other than the comrades with the CCCP’s on their sweaters winds up with the gold medal in Calgary, it will rank as something less than a miracle.

The world might not have caught up with the Soviet Union yet, but you can bet a garage full of Zambonis that the gap is closing.

When the Soviets take the ice this weekend in Calgary, they won’t even rank as favorites to win their seventh gold medal in nine tries since their first Olympic appearance in 1956. The Swedes are top-seeded, by virtue of their beating out the Soviets in the World Championships last year. Sweden had gone 0-48-1 against the Soviets until winning in Stockholm last year.

That’s not the only defeat the Soviets have absorbed lately. Last fall, they lost the Canada Cup for the second straight time to a team of National Hockey League all-stars.

Then, in December, playing on their home ice, they lost their own tournament, the Izvestia Cup in Moscow, to the Canadian national team that will be skating in the Olympics. The Canadian team won the world junior title, too, also in Moscow.

And the United States hockey team went 6-1-1 in a recent eight-game exhibition series against the visiting Selects, the Soviets’ junior varsity team.

Suddenly, it seems, the chant in rinks around the globe is “ Nyet, nyet, Soviet.”

Not so fast, warns Art Berglund, general manager of the U.S. hockey team.

“There’s nothing wrong with Soviet hockey,” Berglund snapped. “They’re as strong as ever.”

That may be so. But there are factors suggesting that Team CCCP is encountering some rough skating:

The Soviets have yet to find an adequate replacement for Vladislav Tretiak, who from 1969 to 1984 was the starting goaltender on the national team and the most feared masked man of his time.

In Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, in 1984, two Soviet players were fooling around with a table hockey game that matched Team USA against the Soviets. When the U.S. team scored, the Soviet players laughingly pointed at the Soviet goalie and cried, “Myshkin, Myshkin.”

Vladimir Myshkin, who replaced Tretiak during the Miracle on Ice game in 1980 at Lake Placid and allowed the final two U.S. goals, could not fill Tretiak’s pads.

Neither have such successors as Evgeny Belosheikin and Sergei Mylnikov. Belosheikin was suspended for three games last season because of excessive drinking. Another young prospect, Igor Yazmikin, was banned for life for ignoring repeated warnings from Soviet authorities about alcohol consumption.

“If (Wayne) Gretzky suddenly retired, would Canadian hockey replace him easily?” asked former Soviet player Boris Mayarov, in a recent conversation with Frank Orr, the columnist for the Toronto Star.

“Of course the answer is no,” Mayarov said. “Tretiak is our Gretzky.”

Said Bob Johnson, president of the Amateur Hockey Assn. of the United States (AHAUS): “How many great goalies are there in the National Hockey League right now? Not many. Without Tretiak, at least you now have a chance.”

There is some unprecedented grumbling within the Soviet Union, where glasnost apparently has opened a window of self-criticism not only in politics but in sports.

Alexander Yakushev, one of the stars of the 1972 team that played in the first celebrated Summit series between the Soviets and NHL all-stars, sounded just like one of his curmudgeonly Canadian counterparts when he groused:

“The Soviet team has far fewer top players today than it did back then. With the exception of today’s first line, all the rest are far behind.”

That first five-man unit--the Soviets play their forwards and defensemen in the same combinations--will be intact in Calgary: Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makharov up front, Vyacheslav Fetisov and Aleksei Kasatanov on the blue line.

“They’re as good as any unit in the world,” said King forward Dave Taylor, who has played in three World Championships and also has faced the elite Soviet club team, the Central Army, in an exhibition game here at the Forum. “The forwards aren’t very big, but they’re powerful. And the defensemen are big and strong and mobile.

“In ‘83, Fetisov was really dominating--he scored a couple of goals where he picked up the puck and went end to end. He broke his leg after that and seems to be a little slower, but he’s still the quarterback on the point.”

But behind Fetisov and Co., there is a surprising lack of depth, especially for those who believed there was an assembly line somewhere in Vladivostok that mass-produced hockey players.

Koloski Viachelov, the head of the Soviet hockey federation, cited a lack of quality indoor ice arenas as a major problem, and said he has plans to build 300 rinks in the next five years. One skeptical Soviet official cracked to a reporter: “I hope he’s got the money in his pocket.”

The hockey program also is competing with the growing popularity of other sports, particularly basketball, soccer and volleyball.

“Interest in hockey in the Soviet Union is declining,” Valery Kudryavtsev, editor of the daily newspaper Sovietski Sport, wrote almost two years ago.

Part of the reason is the club system in the Soviet Union, which renders the hockey season there almost as meaningless as the NHL regular-season schedule.

Most of the best players perform for the Central Army, from which the national team draws the majority of its players. Central Army has won the Soviet league title 11 straight seasons, and the lack of competition has caused attendance to plummet. That’s one reason the Soviets are adding a playoff system this spring.

“They’re really having problems drawing fans,” Taylor said. “That’s one reason I think they’re negotiating with the NHL now, to have a Soviet team or two come here and play some games, and NHL teams go over there.”

There is even some hint of open rebellion on the national team, where Larionov went public with his complaints about the Soviets’ 11-month training program, which frequently keeps him in a dormitory, away from his family.

“I have a 7-month-old daughter whom my wife is alone to take care of,” he told the Soviet press. “I can do nothing worthwhile to help.”

The coach, Viktor Tikhonov, also has come under fire. Former Soviet hockey star Anatoly Firsov wrote that Tikhonov’s experimentation with defensive-style hockey has been a failure.

And former player Alexander Pashkov said in an interview: “The days of our smashing victories are over. Now it seems we have victories always followed by defeats. And we don’t know why.”

Some Western-style, capitalistic decadence may also have taken its toll. Johnson, the AHAUS director, laughed as he described what had happened at a meeting of top international hockey officials in September.

“The head of their delegation came up to me and talked to me about getting advertising on their jerseys,” Johnson said. “That’s all he talked about. I talked to McDonald’s about it, but it was too late by then.

“They wanted to know about lining up agents to help them market here. When (the Selects) were here in December, they wanted money. They were selling sticks, vodka.

“Those Russians--they’re a great bunch of guys. I guess we’ve taught them pretty good. They’re finding out what’s happening in the rest of the world.”

And the rest of the world took to heart the hockey lessons they learned from the Soviets, which may be the principal reason Team CCCP is vulnerable in Calgary.

“Canadian hockey took a stick in the back and went to work,” Orr said. “They upgraded their coaching, their coaching credentials--things the Soviets had already done--and along came the ‘80s, and look at the good players Canada is developing. The Soviet system, meanwhile, has hit a gap.”

To beat the Soviets in the Izvestia Cup, Team Canada Coach Dave King, borrowing a term from former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, adopted what he called a rope-a-dope strategy. Instead of sending forecheckers into the Soviet zone, King chose to keep his players back.

“What you should do is play a patient game, lay back and control the neutral zone, thereby frustrating the opponent,” King said. “Rope a dope.”

With Canadian goaltender Sean Burke making like a young Ken Dryden, the strategy worked like a dream. Team Canada spotted the Soviets a 2-0 lead, then stormed back to win, 3-2.

The Soviets, who love to develop their circling, motion offense in the neutral zone, instead found themselves bottled up by the Canadian strategy, which was light years removed from the Neanderthal approach once favored by North Americans, that the best way to beat the Soviets was to beat on them. It finally sank in that you can’t hit what you can’t catch.

“I haven’t seen hockey so fast,” said Johnson, recalling the close-up look he had at the Soviet team last February in the RendezVous series in Quebec. “They’re still the same, but the other countries are catching up.

“Because pros can play now, other countries are using better players. Sweden used pros. Finland uses pros. Canada uses pros.”

And the Big Red Machine is under siege.

THE OUTLOOK

In a thinly disguised move to accommodate ABC-TV, the International Olympic Committee changed the rules and is now allowing three teams from each of the two hockey tournament pools into the medal round.

That, of course, will greatly enhance the chances of Team USA to advance, even if it should lose games to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, which are in the same pool. West Germany is the biggest threat to keep the Americans out of the medal round, but the guess is that Team USA will wind up with a shot at the bronze.

Despite their goaltending problems, the Soviets still must rate as favorites. Sweden won the world championship last season but lost several top players to the National Hockey League. Czechoslovakia has an outstanding goalie in Dominik Hasek and beat Team Canada in the Izvestia Cup in Moscow in December, but the Czechs’ depth is suspect.

Team Canada may pose the greatest challenge to the Soviets. The goaltending of Sean Burke and Andy Moog is superb, Coach Dave King understands the cautious style of play necessary to frustrate the Soviets, keeping four skaters back and forcing the Soviets to the outside, and the Canadians’ defensive corps--anchored by former Edmonton Oiler Randy Gregg--is solid. On home ice, Team Canada may be formidable enough to win a gold.