A small nation with a heart bigger than it knew confronts the challenge of a lifetime.
September 28, 1972. The Summit Series is all tied up due to a steadily improving Team Canada, and a Soviet National Team with the creeping feeling that a Communist triumph is in doubt as the clinching victory proves elusive. Anticipation and dread settle over the preparations for the deciding Game 8, while Canadians back home will stop everything to watch, transfixed, this contest of destiny. A refereeing controversy erupts, but puck drops on a game for the ages: one of the greatest ever played. Intensity infuses every face, purpose every jump over the boards. A blistering affair unfolds featuring goals, hits and a pace beyond even a Game 7 for the Stanley Cup. There is cheating. Emotions on the ice boil over. A ruckus in the stands. Communist leaders casting steely gazes. The tension in Luzhniki Palace builds as the clock ticks down on a match that will decide everything from superiority in hockey to how nations regard themselves. Players, fans, the press — everyone — feel that whatever the outcome, hockey and Canada will have changed forever. Half a century later those changes are explored with a modern lens that shows Canada’s game now belongs to the world because of Summit 72 — as the world now resides in Canada.
