With its back against the wall, Team Canada and a legion of loyal fans travel to Sweden and then into hostile territory behind the Iron Curtain.
Team Canada arrives humiliated after the disaster in Vancouver; first to Sweden, then to Russia, the first group of professional athletes to compete behind the Iron Curtain. The games in Stockholm are vicious and bloody, yet they escape with a sense of self, and finally, the hint of becoming a team. Team Canada’s rooms are bugged and every move surveilled. They lose Game 4 after bringing a three goal lead into the third period, skating off the ice to the roars of 3000 vodkasilly Canadian fans, whose cheering drowns out the whistles of the Russians in attendance. Led by two game-winning goals by the light-scoring Paul Henderson, whose centre, Bobby Clarke, breaks Russian star Valeri Kharlamov’s ankle with a shoulder-high slash, immobilizing him for the rest of the series, Canada evens the Series by throwing it into the ditch, as the war on ice heads towards the defining climax of the final game.
