Canada's Summit Series team honored as NHL Alumni Association 'Man of the Year'

MONTREAL -- More than 52 years after the fact, it’s still a little bit under Paul Henderson’s skin.

“I scored seven goals in the 1972 Summit Series against Vladislav Tretiak, and six of them were nice,” Henderson grumbled with a smile on Friday to a large, appreciative audience. “But the only one they talk about is the one in Game 8 -- the only garbage goal I scored.”

To Canadians, the close-range shot that Henderson slammed past the Soviet goalie Tretiak in Moscow with 34 seconds remaining in the decisive eighth and final game was anything but garbage.

Figuratively, it was an end-to-end rush, Henderson eluding every checker, deking Tretiak and going top shelf to score a highlight-reel goal for the ages, the most famous goal in Canadian hockey history.

A jubilant Paul Henderson is hugged by Yvan Cournoyer following Henderson’s Summit Series Game 8-clinching goal in Moscow.

Henderson was among six members of that iconic team assembled in a Montreal banquet hall at the invitation of the NHL Alumni Association, the team as a whole honored as the organization’s 2025 Keith Magnuson “Man of the Year."

The NHLAA created this award in 2001 to celebrate individuals or teams that have personified the intangibles of perseverance, commitment and teamwork developed through the game into a successful post-career transition.

Twenty-one individuals and the 1967 Stanley Cup champion Toronto Maple Leafs had been honored before the Summit Series team was saluted on Friday in a private reception held in conjunction with the 4 Nations Face-Off.

Henderson, goalie Ken Dryden, defensemen Serge Savard and Rod Seiling and forwards Red Berenson and Yvan Cournoyer were each presented with a crystal award that contained a sterling silver replica of a torn Game 8 ticket.

Glenn Healy, head of the NHL Alumni Association, is the lead piper at right, leading the Summit Series team members into their ceremony on Friday. Players in order of arrival: Paul Henderson, Yvan Cournoyer, Serge Savard, Red Berenson, Rod Seiling and Ken Dryden.

Memories were shared and stories were told, some of them playfully loose with facts that seemed entirely irrelevant in the moment. This was brothers in arms reuniting in the city where, at the Montreal Forum, a mile and a half away, their landmark series had begun on Sept. 2, 1972.

The six weren’t the only NHL alumni in the hall.

You’d find Mark Messier, who from the stage spoke of having thrilled to the Summit Series as an 11-year-old with stars in his eyes, dreaming of one day representing his country – which he would do in 32 games, in three Canada Cup tournaments and a World Cup of Hockey.

Among the others were Finnish legend Teemu Selanne, fellow Hall of Famer Guy Carbonneau, Pat Flatley, Sportsnet broadcasters Craig Simpson and Kelly Hrudey and Montreal Canadiens alumnus Yvon Lambert.

At the front of the room in his kilt, and marching with his Highland Creek Pipe Band, was former goalie Glenn Healy, the energetic head of the NHL Alumni Association who piped the six guests of honor to the stage.

The stage is set for the arrival of the six members of Canada’s 1972 Summit Series, representing the team as the NHL Alumni Association’s 2025 Keith Magnuson "Man of the Year."

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly were in attendance, the Commissioner speaking on behalf of the League, as was NHL Players' Association head Marty Walsh, who spoke for his group.

Hockey Hall of Fame curator Phil Pritchard brought the Ted Lindsay Award, Norris Trophy and Vezina Trophy from Toronto. Under glass were Jean Ratelle’s skates, Seiling’s red and white windbreaker and the late Bill White’s sports jacket, covered with dozens of trading pins. A Henderson stick and his helmet were on display as well.

Three breathtaking videos produced by filmmaker Tim Thompson explained the work of the NHLAA, paid tribute to the 11 members of the Summit Series team who have died, and offered a game-by-game highlights package of a series that literally stopped Canada in its tracks, the country shutting down for Game 8.

Broadcaster Ron MacLean hosted a short fireside chat with the six, who shared a few thoughts about the series and how it continues to impact their lives. Henderson was moved to tears when he spoke of his late friend and teammate Ron Ellis, who was represented by his two children.

The award presented to members of Team Canada on Friday, and a Summit Series game-worn jersey of series hero Paul Henderson.

A canvas that a half-century ago was painted with bold primary colors is now one of sepia hues, the hockey landscape today not remotely what it was in 1972.

The NHL all-star team of Canadian-native players was supposed to make borscht out of a select squad from the Soviet Union, a team that arrived in Montreal as a massive underdog in the eyes of everyone but themselves.

The Soviets almost cooperatively fell behind 2-0 early at the Forum, and then the hockey world tilted off its axis. They left the building having humiliated Canada 7-3 and stunned the host country, the “favorites” skated into the ice shavings by an opponent with superior conditioning, precise passing and opportunistic shooting.

Cournoyer remembers that opening game in his home arena more vividly than any of the 10 Stanley Cup championships he won, his last four as captain of the team.

The pin-covered jacket of the late Bill White, Rod Seiling’s Team Canada windbreaker, the Norris Trophy and one of Paul Henderson’s sticks, in a display case.

A conversation he had with Frank Mahovlich, a fellow Team Canada player who then was a Canadiens teammate, is burned into Cournoyer’s consciousness.

"Before Game 1, just before we left for the Forum, I told Frank, ‘I’m worried. I don't know the Russians,’ ” he said. “I told him, ‘I’ve never played against them. I don’t know how they play. I’m going to war and I don’t even know my enemy.’

“All we knew was that the Russians wore bad skates, ugly helmets and played with ugly sticks. But they were good hockey players. They were a good team, no doubt about it. They were in shape, which we were not. And you know what happened that night.”

Canada recovered from its dismantling in Game 1 with a 4-1 victory in Game 2 in Toronto two nights later. The teams tied 4-4 in Game 3 at Winnipeg, and the Soviets won 5-3 in Game 4 in Vancouver before their 5-4 win in Game 5 after the series moved to Moscow.

Yvan Cournoyer in action during the Summit Series, and at home in 2022 on the 50th anniversary of the series, with a replica Team Canada jersey.

That set the stage for Canada's backs-to-the-wall rally and three straight victories – 3-2, 4-3 and 6-5 – to win the series in anything but the blowout that most everyone had predicted.

Indeed, Canada was about half a minute from a national nervous breakdown, the Russians claiming that a tie in Game 8 in Moscow would give them the overall win based on goals scored.

Henderson rescued his country by scoring his third consecutive winning goal, an unthinkable hat trick, his series clincher coming in the dying moments of Game 8.

But this series was about much more than one man's heroics. It was about two teams going at each other with hammer and sickle and tong, eight games much more about Cold War politics than two teams playing hockey.

The pedigree of the Team Canada roster is magnificent:Collectively, the players won the Stanley Cup 58 times and made 143 NHL All-Star Game appearances. Their individual awards: Art Ross Trophy, nine times; Vezina, eight; Hart, seven; Lady Byng and Bill Masterton, five each; Calder and Ted Lindsay Award (the latter then called the Lester B. Pearson), four each; Conn Smythe, three; Jack Adams for top coach, two; and a Frank J. Selke.

A Maple Leaf Gardens training camp photo of Team Canada, chosen to represent the country in the 1972 Summit Series. Bottom row, from left: Tony Esposito, Brad Park, Stan Mikita, Phil Esposito, coach Harry Sinden, organizer Alan Eagleson, assistant coach John Ferguson, Frank Mahovlich, Jean Ratelle, Bobby Orr, Ken Dryden. Second row: executive Bob Haggert, Dennis Hull, Mickey Redmond, Paul Henderson, Red Berenson, Wayne Cashman, Vic Hadfield, Ed Johnston, Bill Goldsworthy, Ron Ellis, Rod Gilbert, executive Mike Cannon. Third row: trainer Joe Sgro, Yvan Cournoyer, Gary Bergman, Dale Tallon, Bill White, Peter Mahovlich, Serge Savard, Jocelyn Guevremont, Gilbert Perreault, Pat Stapleton, trainer Frosty Forristall. Top row: massage therapist Karl Elieff, Marcel Dionne, Bobby Clarke, Don Awrey, Brian Glennie, Rod Seiling, Guy Lapointe, Richard Martin, Jean-Paul Parise, equipment manager Tommy Nayler.

Thirteen members of the team were elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame and 11 were chosen among the 100 Greatest NHL Players for the League’s centennial year. Voted Canada’s team of the century, 1901-2000, the entire Summit Series team was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame on Nov. 2, 2005.

The Summit Series changed the face of hockey forever. Until that time, Canada had believed, often smugly, that the game was its personal property. The Soviets proved otherwise, players from Europe and the United States soon broadening the base.

Dryden, an author and educator with a deeper view than most, puts the series in its proper context.

“It clearly and undeniably is the most important moment in hockey’s history. Not Canadian hockey history, but in hockey’s history,” he said. “Up until that moment, hockey was definitively a Canadian game. We were the originators of hockey, the developers, the world’s best at it. Our way was the hockey way.

“Others could play differently but that was their fault. Different meant inferior. Different is interesting, but if different is inferior, who cares? In that series, the Soviet team showed there is another way to play and another way to prepare to play.”

On Friday, six Summit Series teammates gathered again to renew friendships and tighten their bonds.

What they achieved a half-century ago pulled Canada more tightly together than any sporting event before or since, and they were reminded of that fact by everyone in a banquet hall who had come to celebrate them.

Top photo: Six members of Canada’s 1972 Summit Series were honored Friday by the NHL Alumni Association, flanked by presenters Adam Graves (l.) and Teemu Selanne (r.). From left: Ken Dryden, Rod Seiling, Red Berenson, Serge Savard, Yvan Cournoyer and Paul Henderson.