Archive: Oral History of 1987 Canada Cup Series Showed Canada At Its Most Potent

The 1987 Canada Cup was a seminal moment in hockey history. And in this feature story from The Hockey News’ Oct. 15, 2012 edition – Vol. 66, Issue 6 – this writer put together an oral history of the event.

(And never forget, for access to The Hockey News’ 77-year exclusive archive, you can subscribe to the magazine by visiting THN.com/Free.)

The penultimate Canada Cup took place in 1987, with Canada ultimately facing off against the Soviet Union in the tournament final. Canada coach Mike Keenan had a versatile lineup to employ against opponents, and from stars including Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux to role players such as Doug Crossman and Normand Rochefort, the Canadians proved they had what it took to win when the games mattered most.

“The players we went with were dependable players under pressure,” Keenan told The Hockey News. “Rochefort was really recommended by Serge Savard, who was one of the managers in ’87. Serge felt he was the type of player you’d need in terms of dependable defensive work that had to be done. And Crossman I knew from Philadelphia. He was very cool under pressure, it didn’t seem to bother him at all. So there were players that maybe surprised others that they were on the team. We wound up cutting a number of Hall of Famers, but sometimes that was more reflective of their ages rather than their abilities at the time.”

In the best-of-three Canada Cup Final series, the Canadians knew how dangerous the USSR lineup was. These were the days before the Soviet players assimilated into the NHL, making the USSR somewhat of an unknown quantity. However, after losing the first game, Team Canada roared back, winning the next two games – including the iconic final game at Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum rink – to capture glory.

“It was deafening (at Copps),” Canadian winger Rick Tocchet said of the final game. “When you see 80-year-old grandmothers jumping up and down in the arena, you know you caught the country’s attention.”

“You had the sense there were 17,000 people in the building going nuts, but really it was the whole country cheering,” added Canadian defenseman Larry Murphy. “You could feel it beyond the arena.”

Anyone who was alive for the '87 Canada Cup will remember the quality of the competition first and foremost. The Canadians had to be nearly perfect to win it, but the team came together just in time to defeat the USSR and carve a place in hockey history for itself.

“That without question is the highlight of my career from a team standpoint,” said Canada winger Mike Gartner. “I never won a (Stanley) Cup, but I was part of one of the best, if not the best teams Canada has ever put together and certainly one of the greatest series Canada has ever played.”

'87 AT 25: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE 1987 CANADA CUP

Vol. 66 No. 6, Oct. 15, 2012

By Adam Proteau

In 1987, the fourth (and second-to-last) Canada Cup was played over the course of two-and-a-half weeks in arenas across North America. Won by a Canadian team that featured Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and a slew of other now Hockey Hall of Famers, the tournament still is regarded by many as the highest-quality hockey ever played. THN recently canvassed several players from Canada’s championship squad for an oral history of the games.

PROLOGUE

The Canadians have a four-week training camp that includes stops in Banff, Alta., and Montreal. Thirty-five players are invited, but soon, coach Mike Keenan – who as Philadelphia Flyers coach has just come off a Stanley Cup final appearance against Edmonton – and Team Canada’s management have to make some incredibly difficult lineup choices.

RICK TOCCHET: It could have been anybody picked. I knew my only chance was to be in the best shape of my life and to fit in. If you were a scorer with your NHL team, could you become a checker on this one? They weren’t looking for the best team on paper, they were looking for the best team. Steve Yzerman was left off the team, for God’s sake.

DOUG GILMOUR: I don’t know who was on my side, but Mike ended up letting Dave Poulin go and kept me. It was overwhelming. I didn’t play a lot. I was a role player, and whatever they wanted me to do, I did.

LARRY MURPHY: They put together a team they felt covered all the bases and I don’t think it’s about ranking all the players 1-through-30. They wanted to be as well rounded as they could.

CLAUDE LEMIEUX: That’s the strength of Keenan – he picked players who he didn’t have to tell what their roles were. I knew very well looking around what I brought to the table: physical presence, being an agitator, being a momentum player.

MIKE GARTNER: I realized right away I’d have to do something other than just score goals to make the team. I did whatever I could in whatever role the coaching staff wanted me to do and I ended up killing penalties and being more of a defensive player and obviously that’s not something I did in my NHL career at that point. A lot of guys were in that position. They had to adjust the way they played.

By the time the final roster is set, future Hall of Famers Steve Yzerman, Cam Neely, Al MacInnis, Patrick Roy, Scott Stevens and Dino Ciccarelli are cut, while relative footsoldiers like Normand Rochefort and Doug Crossman make the team.

MIKE KEENAN: The players we went with were dependable players under pressure. Rochefort was really recommended by Serge Savard, who was one of the managers in ’87. Serge felt he was the type of player you’d need in terms of dependable defensive work that had to be done. And Crossman I knew from Philadelphia. He was very cool under pressure, it didn’t seem to bother him at all. So there were players that maybe surprised others that they were on the team. We wound up cutting a number of Hall of Famers, but sometimes that was more reflective of their ages rather than their abilities at the time. In these tournaments, the process of telling players for the first time in their lives they’re not going to make the team was always the most difficult and demanding part of the job was. They weren’t used to that.

The round-robin tournament begins Aug. 28 and runs through Sept. 6. Canada’s players – many of whom had played the Soviets before in 1984 – not only have to get accustomed to each other in a very short span, but also to Keenan’s demanding style.

DOUG GILMOUR: Mike’s one of those guys who wears his emotion on his sleeve.

JAMES PATRICK: I’d met Mike at a world junior camp so I knew him a little bit. His practices were really intense, really high-tempo. Once games got going, Mike would shorten the bench and change lines around in a split second.

RICK TOCCHET: We had just played Edmonton in a tough series, and I remember Wayne and (Mark) Messier and (Paul) Coffey asking me about Mike. A lot of guys were nervous about Mike. They didn’t know what to expect from him, because around the league he was known as a pretty crazy guy.

BRIAN PROPP: It didn’t take long for guys to find out about him, because Mike would go about pre-game skates by running them like a practice. A lot of the guys weren’t used to that at all. Gretzky and Lemieux were like, ‘What the heck is this? Full equipment? Come on, let’s just go out and fool around in sweatsuits.’ It was definitely funny, because Tocchet and I had been with Keenan for a couple years in Philadelphia and we knew what to expect.

MIKE KEENAN: They were a very easy group to coach, but it took a while and certainly there was a period (at training camp) in Montreal where I was asking a lot of the players for their on-ice preparation. I didn’t ask much of them off-ice, but on it I pushed them pretty hard and I’m glad I did because I don’t think we would’ve been able to beat the Soviet Union at the time unless we developed those types of habits on the ice.

MICHEL GOULET: He’s still one of my favorite coaches I’ve ever had. Mike was a winner and he showed that all his life. I really enjoyed working with him.

That said, there is no doubt Keenan has to make some adjustments of his own to a group of players who bristle at being micromanaged.

RICK TOCCHET: My favorite story is we had our team meal and Mike kind of controlled that. We had chicken, vegetables, but he didn’t have steak – he didn’t believe guys should eat steak before a game – and he didn’t have ice cream on the menu. And I remember Messier and a few guys walking in and going, ‘Where’s the steak and ice cream? Somebody told them Mike Keenan didn’t want that. ‘Mess’ got up and went to Mike’s room and said something to the effect of, ‘Look, I’ve been working and training all summer – if I want steak and ice cream, that’s what I want.’ The next day, we had both steak and ice cream. As much as Mike ran the show, the Edmonton guys had just won a Cup – if they want ice cream, make sure they get ice cream.

MIKE KEENAN: We didn’t have time to deal with an educational process, so there was no sense getting bogged down in the small details if it wasn’t necessary. The details on the ice were very important, but if it came to nutrition or something they were accustomed to, you had to make the adaptation to them, and in a short period of time.

JAMES PATRICK: Early in the tournament, we tied a game and Mike put a curfew after the game. I know some of the guys went to talk to him. ‘Mess’ and ‘Gretz,’ they told him they wanted to win as bad as he did and to loosen the reins a bit.

CLAUDE LEMIEUX: Mike wasn’t afraid or intimidated by all these superstars. If he was, he didn’t show it. He wasn’t afraid of sitting someone down a few shifts. Mike’s ability to read whether a player was going or not was incredible. Anyone who’s played for him knows you better be going early on, because if you weren’t going in the first, he’s long gone. He’s not always going to go back to the well.

BRIAN PROPP: He was just such a competitor, he wanted to win every game. Even in Philly, if it came to a close game and we were down, he’d go to two lines if he thought that’s how we could win. And if we were leading and you were on the top line and you weren’t performing, you’d be sitting on the bench. I always loved that. I always wanted to win and never to feel like I was out of the game. Mike was like that. And if you look at that ’87 tournament, that series, we’re down 3-0 in that final game and he threw out a couple of different lines and we score a couple goals to get us back into it. He just knew how to mix things up.

MICHEL GOULET: As a team, we never really stopped. The score didn’t matter, we just kept going. And to me, that was in the image of Keenan. We never stopped.

Although the Canadians know they have to be careful with five other countries involved in the tournament, they expect the Soviets will be their toughest opponent.

RICK TOCCHET: I was told not to watch their practices or morning skates, because the fear was you’d get psyched out. I remember watching a couple practices and I remember thinking, ‘How am I, Rick Tocchet, going to even go on the ice with these guys?’ They were so good and had been together for years, so they knew all about each other. They were a machine.

JAMES PATRICK: Gretzky had played a lot of international hockey and he knew what we were up against.

BRIAN PROPP: There was very much a love/hate relationship between the countries back then because we still didn’t see a lot of each other. At that point, the ’87 Canada Cup was the same feeling as the 1972 Series where everyone hated Russia and everyone thought they were out to get us all, so the intensity was tremendous.

MICHEL GOULET: The Russians in ’87 were pretty similar to the team they had at the ’84 Canada Cup. A little bit younger, maybe. For me, in ’87, they were a bit better than the ’84 team.

MIKE GARTNER: They played a more physical game in ’87 than they did in previous Canada Cups or World Championships, so they adapted in that sense. We knew they were good. There was no thinking we were the best team in the world and nobody could touch us. We knew we had our hands full.

MIKE KEENAN: The Soviet players were really skilled when I saw a couple as juniors, but they just exemplified the high level of skill and team play and intricacies of the game they’d developed as a unit because they were together so long. They prepared nearly the whole year and we had six weeks. We had high expectations for ourselves and we felt we could make the final and that would probably be the team we’d meet.

The legendary ‘KLM Line’ of Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov is the biggest threat the Soviets have, but one other player stands out as particularly dangerous.

LARRY MURPHY: The KLM line got a lot of attention on our part because they had the potential to do the most damage, but Valeri Kamensky was the guy who really stood out as a real talented guy who had the ability to make you look bad.

CLAUDE LEMIEUX: Everybody focused on their top guys but forgot how good this kid was.

RICK TOCCHET: Kamensky, I thought he was a guy nobody knew much about, but he had a couple end-to-end rushes where, he was almost like a more graceful Rick Middleton. Rick would be off balance or make plays on his knees, but Kamensky made these rushes through his feet, almost falls, stays on the edges of his skates, gets around a guy and scores.

MICHEL GOULET: Kamensky was maybe their best-kept secret. He was an amazing puckhandler and shooter and a guy who could change the tone of the game by himself.

Russia’s defense corps is no slouch, either.

MIKE GARTNER: (Alexei) Kasatonov and (Viacheslav) Fetisov were unbelievable on the point.

BRIAN PROPP: Their defense was very strong because they were good positionally in front of the net and they were big and strong. Guys like Fetisov and Kasatonov and (Alexei) Gusarov, they were all 6-foot-1, 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds of solid muscle. We got more physical as the series went along, but they were still able to hold their ground in front and it was difficult to go to the net and get rebounds, which they weren’t used to. They would have been some of the top defensemen in the NHL at that time and they weren’t given the credit. They were a skating team, but their defense was excellent.

THE SEMIFINAL

The round-robin portion of the tournament ends with Canada atop the rankings based on a 3-0-2 record. The Soviets are right behind them at 3-1-1, setting up semifinal games of the USSR against Sweden and Canada against a Czechoslovakian team featuring a then-little-known goalie named Dominik Hasek.

CLAUDE LEMIEUX: That was the game I drank from Hasek’s water bottle. He was kind of taken aback.

MICHEL GOULET: Hasek, I remember he stopped me a couple times, that bugger. With a goalie like Hasek, the Czechs could have beaten anybody in this tournament.

RICK TOCCHET: The intensity early on was almost like everyone was waiting for the Russians. And nobody knew Hasek. Next thing you know, we were like, ‘Oh, man, we’re in a dogfight here.’

BRIAN PROPP: We knew everybody would be very difficult and that the expectations in Canada were, ‘Hey, we have the best players in the world and we should be able to whip through everybody.’ But that’s not always the case. You easily could run into a hot goalie and Hasek had that capability.

Meanwhile, Canada’s young superstar Mario Lemieux – who hasn’t made the playoffs in his first three NHL seasons in Pittsburgh – is breaking out in a big way.

RICK TOCCHET: Mario was emerging as the 1A, 1B with Wayne. Mario scored some big-time goals for us in that tournament. Everybody in Canada knew who he was, but if people in Europe or the States didn’t know who Mario was before that tournament, they sure did after.

MIKE KEENAN: Mario learned a great deal with some great players and they were integrated well. No one was hiding anything from anybody else. They all wanted to compete as well as they could and Mario just learned about winning from being in that environment. Certainly in Pittsburgh, he didn’t have that opportunity because the team wasn’t good enough, but he took a good deal back to that Pittsburgh organization.

CLAUDE LEMIEUX: No doubt he was a superstar and he was going to be one of the greatest of all-time, but he learned tremendously from the leaders there and how to gel as a team. It served all of us extremely well, but especially Mario.

THE FINAL

The Canadians come back on the Czechs to win 5-3 in their semifinal, while the Soviets outlast the Swedes for a 4-2 victory. It sets up the showdown everyone is waiting for. In the first game Sept. 11 in Montreal’s famous Forum, the Canadians fall behind 4-1 by the second period and rally to tie the game and send it to overtime, where Russian Alexander Semak beats Grant Fuhr at 5:33 of the extra frame to give the USSR a 6-5 win and a huge advantage in the best-of-three final.

DOUG GILMOUR: I actually scored that goal. Went off my stick and top shelf over ‘Fuhrsie’ (laughs).

LARRY MURPHY: Montreal was a disappointment and we knew we’d gotten ourselves in a jam. Did we still believe we could win? Yeah, we did. But the reality was it was a short tournament. You can lose two in a row pretty easy. I was concerned. I didn’t feel we were overmatched, but I was very concerned. We had to make some changes, our special teams needed some adjustments, but I was never going to guarantee we were going to win this. The harsh reality was staring us right in the face.

BRIAN PROPP: We knew we just had to concentrate on the game that was at hand. We all believed we knew we could do a little better and our backs were against the wall. I was never going to be a negative type person, but we all really believed we could win.

MIKE GARTNER: There was no panic at any point. There was a real confidence we knew we could accomplish the task at hand.

Games 2 and 3 are played at Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum and Canada has just two days after its loss in Montreal to turn things around. Game 2 is the most entertaining of the tournament and sees Canada go up 3-1 after 20 minutes. It ends with a 6-5 Canadian victory, five assists from Gretzky and a hat trick – including the game-winner – from Lemieux.

MIKE GARTNER: We had good cohesion as a team from the start, but really didn’t start playing well as a team until the final. Then you can see we got through Game 1, played well but lost in overtime, then in game two we really played well and guys were getting their legs under them.

With the high-scoring games, younger hockey fans are forgiven for assuming the goalies aren’t at their best. The converse is true.

MIKE KEENAN: If you look at that Game 2, they had three or four glorious chances to score in overtime and eliminate us. But Grant was just cool under pressure.

RICK TOCCHET: That was a chance-for-chance type of game. It was aggressive and ruthless, too – a lot of stick work and real mean hockey. But it was also very exciting. The plays and rushes Wayne and Lemieux led were incredible. Fuhr was fabulous. If you thought all these 6-5 games indicated the goalies must have sucked, you weren’t paying attention. It’s actually the opposite. They played great, but it wasn’t defensive hockey at all.

MIKE GARTNER: Who would have thought that in three 6-5 games, the goalies would be so good? Fuhrsie really stood on his head. He made some unbelievable saves in key situations. But the game was played differently. We took more chances, more than in the game now, because that’s the way we were coached back then. We were allowed to be more creative. So when you have the two best teams in the world and you allow them to be creative, it was like a very intense All-Star Game.

LARRY MURPHY: Goaltending was a lot different back then. Goaltenders had to make saves. Today, goalies are more like shot-blockers, relying on squaring up against the shooter, playing the percentages by positioning. Where at that point in time, they didn’t cover as much of the net and they had to make saves. So when you had two teams that were offensively potent, the score could get high quickly.

CLAUDE LEMIEUX: With the skill level, the passing and the quickness of the puck. There wasn’t much the goalies could do.

Game 3 is played Sept. 15 and, once again, the Canadians dig themselves an early hole, falling behind 3-0 after the first eight minutes of the first period.

DOUG GILMOUR: We were down 3-0 and sitting there in the intermission the dressing room was pretty quiet. All of a sudden Glenn Anderson starts rocking back and forth in his stall going, ‘Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!’ We all looked at him for a second and then we all broke out laughing. The chemistry in that room, nobody panicked.

MIKE KEENAN: Glenn was always good for diffusing pressure situations, but on the other hand he was a fierce competitor. It was a good group with people who knew how to win.

RICK TOCCHET: When he started doing that, we’re on the brink of losing and we’re going to get crucified by Canada for losing the series and here’s the great player Glenn Anderson goofing around. To see everybody crack up, it was just that icebreaker that told us, ‘Hey guys, we’re a great team and nobody’s going to die here. Let’s enjoy the moment.’ It was almost like Glenn said let’s enjoy this moment. Everybody just took a deep breath after that and that’s when Mario took over.

The Canadians roar back in the second to take a 5-4 lead before the Russians tie the game in the third. But by now, Canada has the confidence and talent to change the momentum. And once again, the Soviets prove unable to adapt on the fly.

MIKE KEENAN: The turning point was when we switched tactics and went to a more grinding style of game, more physical approach. That definitely impacted the results and turned the game around. Not too many teams could have come back from a three-goal deficit to the Soviet Union.

LARRY MURPHY: The big difference to me was play behind the goal line. That’s where I thought we really excelled. We made it really difficult to defend. They were hearing footsteps, rushing their plays and that was the result of a more up-tempo game.

MIKE GARTNER: Even in that three-game final, most of the time they rolled their lines. They had four lines rolling over, so their best players were on the ice every fourth time and ours were on every second time. I don’t think they adapted quite as well.

MIKE KEENAN: I remember (Soviet coach Viktor) Tikonov, when I pulled back Wayne a little bit in his ice time and put out some more rugged players, he kept looking at our bench a little bit in disbelief.

The Canadians take the lead for good on the now-iconic goal Gretzky and Lemieux collaborate on at 1:26 of the third and Canada’s 6-5 win sets off a national celebration.

RICK TOCCHET: It was deafening. When you see 80-year-old grandmothers jumping up and down in the arena, you know you caught the country’s attention.

JAMES PATRICK: I wasn’t fortunate to win a Cup, so that was as big a moment as I had playing. Hamilton really embraced the team. I remember after the streets were going crazy and the roar of Copps. It was a pretty euphoric feeling.

LARRY MURPHY: You had the sense there were 17,000 people in the building going nuts, but really it was the whole country cheering. You could feel it beyond the arena.

THE LEGACY

A quarter-century later, all Canada’s players call the ’87 tournament a career highlight as well as perhaps the highest-quality hockey ever played.

JAMES PATRICK: That was the greatest hockey I’d ever been part of, no question. I’d never seen any of those games until this year and I watched about the first 10 minutes of the first game. Just watching it, I was amazed. Twenty-five years later, it’s still good hockey. It looks fast even for now, so go back 25 years and imagine how fast it was then.

BRIAN PROPP: The hockey was so unbelievably good that anyone who was part of that team will never forget it.

MIKE KEENAN: It absolutely was the best against the best. The thing that still stands out for me is that in spite of the rules the way they were called at the time, these players were so skilled that there wasn’t anyone who couldn’t work through a check, or any level of obstruction. They were skilled and determined and could play an exciting, entertaining brand of hockey at a really high pace.

LARRY MURPHY: It was definitely thrilling. It was the end of “Us vs. Them” and that was part of the backdrop. It was by far the most pressure-packed series I’ve been involved in and I’ve played in four Stanley Cup finals.

MICHEL GOULET: In my head, it was my Olympics, because NHLers couldn’t play for their country at that time. So it was our Olympics. It was like 2010 in Vancouver. It was a lot of pressure, but it was very rewarding.

MIKE GARTNER: That without question is the highlight of my career from a team standpoint. I never won a Cup, but I was part of one of the best, if not the best teams Canada has ever put together and certainly one of the greatest series Canada has ever played.

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