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12/20/2004: "Tretiak: The Legend"
I missed out on my half-year "anniversary." This site has been up for six months and two days now.
But I figured I'd re-post this, the first entry I made on the site. A lot of people seem to find it on Google, so I thought I'd give it a bump into the new format, along with the "Betty or Veronica?" post, which will be up here within minutes.
Original post date: June 18, 2004
Before Nikolai Khabibulin was the "Bulin Wall," Vladislav Tretiak was the most famous Russian goalie of them all.
Because he never came to the NHL, I knew nothing about Tretiak until I saw the movie "Miracle," and I was inspired to learn ore about him. So, shortly after seeing the film, I went onto Amazon and ordered his book, a fairly egotistically named autobiography called Tretiak: The Legend. It took me a few months to get it off the shelf after it arrived, but I've now finished reading it.
As memoirs go, Tretiak doesn't bring much to the table about his personal life. A book called "Soviet Hockey Results: 1969-84" would probably be just as informative as most of the stuff that Tretiak fills is 262 pages with. It's a catalog of World Championships, Olympic gold medals and other triumphs.
What's interesting to me is Tretiak's description of how he came into hockey. It was almost like he was destined, from the age of 5, to be some sort of mechanical puck-stopping force, and that's pretty much what he became. If the Soviets could have built an economy the way they built hockey players, we might all be speaking Russian right now.
That's the other interesting thing about Tretiak's book -- it was written in 1987, before the demise of European Communism. So, sprinkled throughout the book are little bashes at the North American way of life, notes that Canadian professionals don't play as hard as Russians because they're only out for money, not to preserve the glory of the Motherland. He's probably wrong about that, but the loss of that central control over athletes probably has led to some players from former Communist countries softening their game. It's pretty easy to see what money did for Alexei Kovalev, for example.
Then there's 1980, when Tretiak gave up two goals in the first period and was stupidly pulled out of the game against the USA by Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov -- just an inexcusable strategic blunder. Does the Miracle on Ice happen with Tretiak in net? Maybe, but it's probably less likely, no matter what praise Tretiak heaps on his backup, Volodia Mishkin.
But the most interesting part of the chapter on 1980 is that Tretiak chalks the whole thing up to bad luck -- that, and he complains viciously about the commercial aspect of the Games in Lake Placid, that everyone there was trying to make a buck. He also gripes about the living conditions in the Olympic Village. I wasn't in Lake Placid, I wasn't even born yet, but it comes off as a lot of whining.
Still, Tretiak makes one very good criticism of North American hockey, writing of the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers, "I didn't know that a pack of barbarians could put on skates and get away with unting hockey players in front of thousands of people." Also, he does come to see something good about North America. "In the hotel to which I was taken reigned the most beautiful women I have ever seen," he writes. "Almost immediately, I was asked to confirm that in answer to the question: 'Where do the most beautiful girls in the world live?' 'In Quebec,' I answered without blinking an eye. On the spot, I was honored with a kiss and I was thankful that my wife wasn't around."
Tretiak's book, while often dull, is pretty interesting -- his tales of injuries with which his teammates played give a reader an appreciation for either how tough the Soviet players were or for how demanding the system was. I'd like to read a version of Tretiak's life written by a third party, or even by Tretiak himself now. The perspective of 20 years out of hockey, instead of three, as well as the fall of the Soviet Union, would probably make for a much more interesting read.
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