Red Army hockey documentary
Click to viewI am looking forward to this a lot. I've been a die-hard fan of the game for thirty years and am old enough to remember the reaction to the Miracle on Ice and when folks like Slava Fetisov were Them before they became 'them' (1994's Matteau!Matteau!Matteau! doesn't happen without Fetisov on the Devils) and, with the mighty Detroit Red Wings, finally Us. Except not really us, because every NHL fan knows what "enigmatic" really means.
Anyway, I think this could be of interest to anyone old enough to really remember the Cold War, especially as it applied to athletics: the rumors, the defections, the boycotts, the horror stories of the athletes... the Red Army hockey team lived in barracks, trained like soldiers, and were watched like hawks lest they defect. Their lives not their own until they were no longer useful, pawns in a bigger game until their bodies broke down. But until that point, they were the original Russian Machine Never Breaks, making it all the more historic (1972, 1980) when they did.
The end of the Red Army dominance, like the Soviet Union as a whole, was both highly choreographed and completely chaotic. The legends who'd suffered most -- Larionov, Fetisov, etc. -- weren't allowed to leave until they were far past their prime (little did Tikhonov know) while the young guns like Bure, Fedorov, and Mogilny defected rather than endure the same treatment. It was an interesting time and, if this documentary covers even half of it, it should be quite a show.
Also posted at DW.