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JJodttdC®D®omi(o][roTORONTO — The Russian national hockey team will be challenging for the Stanley Cup — and winning — within the next 10 years.Any timid readers, who can’t face brutal facts, are advised to jump into bed, right now, and pull the covers over their heads. The Russians, with their tremendous population of more than 200 millions, have demonstrated in the past 20 years that they attack every athletic project in a mood of cold-eyed, humorless dedication. If the calibre of their hockey continues to improve at its present rate, it is inevitable that the Russians w'ill dominate “Canada's national sport.The Russians, who are gracious but uncommunicative guests, declined to inflict complete humiliation on Canada’s National Team” Sunday afternoon at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Comrades merely whipped the Canucks, 4-0. The Comrades weren’t at the peak of their form — it was their second game in 42 hours, after a long, cramped airplane ride from Moscow to Canada, via New York.I note where Mr. Douglas Harvey, the 40-year-old former major leaguer who played against the Comrades in Montreal on Friday night, was faintly patronising in his appraisal of the Russians after they had beaten his team, 3-2. With the customary wry derision of the defeated, he opined that the Russkies couldn’t beat a minor league professional team.Speak softly, Douglas, old chap. If the professionals really desire to give the Russians a hockey lesson, it would be wise to tackle their task in the immediate future. If the pros ignore the Russian threat for another five years, they’ll receive a nasty surprise.Canada's “National Hockey Team,” in Sunday’s state, is a rather forlorn color-bearcr. If this Canadian team is being sent to the world hockey tournament at Helsinki, I trust that it is being sent only as a cultural mission, with no more serious assignment than sampling the caviar and the olives in the martinis.If, how-ever, this team is being sent abroad with the serious intention of regaining the world hockey championship for Canada, it will be the most appalling waste of public funds since the Canadian parliament’s prolongation of The Great Hag Debate.Eating is a favorite Russian pastime and, after checking behind all the potted palms in the Royal York lobby, Comrade coach Anatoli Tarasov asked, through Comrade interpreter Yun Shmushkevitch, where his athletes could launch their initial assault on the victuals.Imperial Room suggestedA helpful Royal York employee suggested the hotel's opulent main dining salon — which is known as “The Imperial Room.”Comrade Tarasov’s face blanched and he recoiled as the reprehensible word “Imperial” smote his ears. Nobly spurning the hotel employee's sly suggestion, he led his hockey players into the Royal York basement where they ate all their meals in the proletarian and communized coffee shop.The Comrade hockey-players are big. muscular, pleasant-looking youngsters. Invariably, they sat in one long row' at a counter in the coffee shop. They were very correct, very proper — but, they isolated themselves from the other patrons, behind their own language barrier, and they indulged in little small-talk among themselves while they were eating. Many of them, before leaving the coffee shop, addressed the hostess gravely and politely, saying in precise English: “Thank you very much.’’w rIt was notable that none of the Comrade hockey-players has been ensnared into the quaint capitalist practice of “tipping.”Informed of this slight oversight, Lloyd Pollock, the Canadian hockey man who is in charge of this section of the tour, asked the hotel to add a 15 percent gratuity to every meal-biil.Mr. Pollock feels that this would be an inappropriate moment for an international incident. There might be worldwide repercussions if a Communist hockey-player’s salad contained a modicum of ground-glass, deposited therein by a disgruntled capitalist waitress.I fear, however, that the Comrades may be overcome by acute indigestion before this tour is completed. After their Sunday game, they took their seats, solemnly, in the Royal York coffee shop at precisely 5.15 p.m. Exactly 17 minutes later, they left their seats after each of them had knocked off a double orange juice, consomme, a half-chicken, salad dessert and milk.If the combination of 17-minute banquets and ElvisPresley movies can’t beat the Russians, no Canadian hockeyteam is likely to beat them.*
Newspaper Details
Winnipeg Tribune
Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA
Mon, Dec 14, 1964
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Jason P.
USA 22 Apr 2019
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