Alan Eagleson says he knows exactly what happened and no one else can say the same after all these years.
How the famed Canada-Soviet Union hockey series came to be 50 years ago. And how he — more than anyone else — changed hockey forever.
“At every major anniversary of this someone else professes to have done what I did and I just laugh it off,” said the disgraced Eagleson in a lengthy exclusive telephone interview from his Collingwood, Ont. home, his first in more than a decade. “I know what the truth is. I lived it.
“I can understand if people look at me as a pariah. You can call me whatever you want. I know the truth. Would I change anything? I don’t think so. I’m very proud of what I accomplished here and I don’t think anyone else could have done it … If it wasn’t for me there wouldn’t have been a Canada-Russia series, and after that, there wouldn’t have been Canada Cups, and there wouldn’t have been world junior tournaments with Canada. That was me.
“When I hear, someone did this or someone did that, I think ‘Give me a fucking break.’ I know what I did.” Before he lost his way and went to prison, he changed the sport forever.
Eagleson is 89 years old now, long removed from his time incarcerated for fraud and embezzlement, but sounding as sharp as ever in our hour-long conversation. He has lost so much over the years, all of it his own doing — his reputation, money, his status, his Order of Canada, his ability to practice law, his place in the Hockey Hall of Fame. His professional life, really. He was the first director of the NHL Players’ Association and played a huge role in the establishment of that. Now as the 50th anniversary of the Summit Series is being celebrated across the country in books and newspaper and magazine articles and televised documentaries, he has been all but forgotten, almost left out of the narrative he was once so much a part of.
“Marcel Dionne said to me once ‘Al, you’re going to go down in history as the guy who beat the Russians. You and Team Canada. That’s what you’re going to be remembered for.’”
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Or in the modern context of re-writing or repositioning history, he has been stricken in some ways from memory and the record books.
The thought of a Canada-Soviet series began in the young mind of Eagleson when he was 33 years old and was listening to a soccer game on the radio. The World Cup of Soccer final was being played between England and West Germany. The year was 1966.
“And I’m thinking, this is what we have to start thinking about? We need a World Cup of hockey, just like soccer has. Why can’t we do that?”
That was the year before Eagleson would take over as head of the NHLPA, a position he would hold for the next 25 years.
The idea of a World Cup was sound. The practicality of it was the challenge. “Hockey Canada had just been created to get Canada back at a high level in international hockey. The CAHA existed. The two sides didn’t really get along.”
Eagleson had a position on the board of Hockey Canada until he realized they moved at a speed he wasn’t familiar with: And he was almost at his best acting as a lone wolf.
On his own, Eagleson began showing up uninvited to international hockey events, at world championships, and began wining and dining executives, and making himself known. He had earned enough favour with enough Canadian politicians that he was able to get official letters from the government introducing him as a representative of Canadian hockey. In those days, Eagleson was a whirling dervish. He spoke fast and loud and with confidence. You couldn’t help notice him or be impressed or insulted. Some of it was overwhelming. He used expletives in place of adjectives, a lot of it was the kind of false bravado that would later get him in professional difficulty.
Eagleson was told that Bunny Ahearne, head of the International Ice Hockey Federation, had little use for him and little use for Canadian hockey in those days. The best Canadians played professionally in the NHL. The best Russians, Czechs, and Europeans played for their national team or in their own national leagues.
“So I’m at a world championship in Stockholm (where the Russians had won eight consecutive world titles), and I’m getting out of the car and who pulls up beside me but Bunny Ahearne,” said Eagleson. “I heard he didn’t like me but I didn’t really care. I asked him in the parking lot ‘Can we have lunch tomorrow?’ He said yes.”
When they met one thing was correct: “They didn’t care much for Canada. They thought we acted like we were bigger and better than everybody else and didn’t do much for the IIHF,” said Eagleson.
“The next thing that happened, I call the Russians. ‘Can we meet?’ At first, they refused. They didn’t want to meet with me because I wasn’t an official in any capacity. They like to do things by the book. They wanted to meet with Hockey Canada. Then they said they would meet with NHL president Clarence Campbell if that could be arranged.
“I told them Mr. Campbell acts for the capitalist owners. I am head of the players’ union, the workers. That seemed to sway them.”
Originally, Eagleson was thinking about a World Cup, not a Canada-Russia showdown. But the more he talked to the Russians, the more he realized that a best-on-best series was the way to go. On one of his meetings in Moscow, he met with famed coach Anatoly Tarasov, who was concerned about any kind of play against NHL players. It wasn’t the competition that bothered him as much as he was troubled that his players would lose their amateur eligibility by playing against professionals.
“He said, you’ll have to arrange this through our federation and your federation.” Eagleson was a federation all his own.
At the same time, Hockey Canada was having similar meetings internationally, not informing Eagleson In 1972, Hockey Canada announced in Prague that a deal was made for a Canada-Soviet series in September. That announcement was made by Calgary’s Joe Kryczka. But almost immediately, NHL president Campbell announced there would be no series.
“The thing is, we had a deal made with the Soviets, an arrangement that wasn’t very workable,” said Eagleson. He had to start reworking the deal piece by piece, which included arranging sponsorship, television rights, and all that went along with putting on an international tournament of this magnitude.
Originally, there was almost no interest in the series. When Eagleson approached the CBC about televising the Canada-Soviet event, CBC was only interested in televising the first game and maybe the last one. Eventually, a deal was made with CTV.
And that was just the beginning of the complications.
Hockey Canada wanted Father David Bauer and Jackie McLeod to coach Team Canada, just as they had in amateur events prior to 1972. Eagleson wanted Harry Sinden to coach, and demanded, in fact, that Sinden be the coach. As usual, Eagleson won.
What he didn’t win was the battle for Bobby Hull, J.C. Tremblay, Gerry Cheevers, and Derek Sanderson. At the time, Hull was one of hockey’s greatest players. He had just signed with the Winnipeg Jets of the new World Hockey Association. Owners in the NHL, especially American owners, were against Hull and other departers playing for Team Canada.
“Campbell told me ‘You can take Hull, but if you do that, we’re not undertaking the cost of guaranteeing contracts.’ That was a big thing back then. When we looked into the cost of that, we realized it was something we couldn’t do,” said Eagleson. “So we lost that one and I’ve always wondered how it would have been different if we had Hull and J.C. Tremblay, who was a really good defenceman in those days.”
Eagleson, the de-facto general manager, coach Sinden, and his assistant, John Ferguson, handpicked the Canadian roster for the eight-game series. A series no one will ever forget.
But there was nothing quite like Game 8 in Moscow. Not for Canada nor Team Canada. Certainly not for Eagleson.
At the end of two periods, Canada trailed 5-3 and Eagleson ran into his Russian counterpart in the lounge area. “Wouldn’t it be great if we score two goals in the third period and tie it up and the series ends in a tie,” Eagleson said.
“Alan, if we tie, you lose,” he was told. “It’s international hockey. We have more goals. I told him what I thought of the rule in two words.” Then he raced immediately to the Canadian dressing room, where he never ventured between periods.
An almost crazed Eagleon burst into the room and “Harry said there was fire coming out of my ears. I said ‘Listen, guys, this is horseshit. A tie is no god damn good for us. Get a fast goal. Then win this thing.’ That was my last speech and I went back to my seat.”
At 12:56 of the final period, Yvan Cournoyer scored to tie the game 5-5 but the goal light never went on. Outraged, Eagleson dashed from his seat in the stands and headed towards the scoring bench. In jumping out of his seat, he elbowed a policeman, maybe two, on his way to try and correct a wrong.
“I think they had about 1,500 soldiers in the rink,” said Eagleson. “I think the soldiers thought I was some kind of goofball. One grabs me around the neck, one grabs me around the head, and they’re whacking me pretty good.
“I figure that’s about it for me when all of a sudden Pete Mahovlich, who was on the ice, leaps over the boards and is coming towards me. And other guys who weren’t dressed, like Dale Tallon, Bill Goldsworthy, Stan Mikita, Marcel Dionne, are in there scrapping with the army guys. They grab me and
Pete, a huge guy, takes me across the ice. And I shake my fist at the goal judge.” And maybe he raised a middle finger as well.
Cournoyer’s goal counted and six a half minutes later, Henderson scored for Canada.
It all sounds so remarkable, still, 50 years later, with Eagleson central to negotiations, the series, the games, the players, the frenetic, dramatic ending. A few years ago, at an earlier anniversary, players on Team Canada were asked to vote about whether to include Eagleson at the celebration.
He says the vote was 19-3 in his favour. “But three players said if he comes, we’re not coming,” said Eagleson. “So I understand why I wasn’t invited.”
Publicly he remains on the outside looking in. Privately, there are prominent players from ‘72 who still communicate with him, send the occasional present, and occasionally socialize with him. He won’t mention their names. “I couldn’t have got through all these years without them,” he said. “After all all that’s happened, I can understand if people look at me badly, look at me as a pariah. But I don’t have any shortage of friends, I can tell you that.”
And when they dial his phone number, the last four digits remain 1972. That they haven’t been able to take away from him.
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