Ah, Canada!

It took 479 minutes 26 seconds of playing time to do it, but Team Canada finally overcame the Soviet Union's national team in Moscow last week to win the first "world series" of hockey. With 34 seconds left in the eighth and final game, Paul Henderson of Toronto flicked the puck past Soviet Goalie Vladislav Tretiak to give the Canadian all-star pros a 6-5 lead. The Russians tried desperately to come back, but the Canadians hung on to take their fourth victory against three wins for the Soviets and one tie.

For a team that had been widely expected to win eight games straight, the triumph was somewhat less than overwhelming. The Russians outscored Team Canada in total goals, 32 to 31, and actually outplayed them on Canadian ice during the first half of the series. In the final four games--each played before 11,300 relatively stolid Russian spectators and 2,700 raucous visiting Canadians in Moscow's Luzhniki Sports Palace--the Russians continued to display the precise teamwork that had given them the edge in Canada. But the Canadians managed to overcome the lack of conditioning that had marred their play in the series' first games. The 35-member Canadian squad included such high-scoring luminaries as Montreal's Yvan Cournoyer and Rod Gilbert of the New York Rangers. Nonetheless its most impressive forward line was made up of three relatively unheralded players: Toronto's Paul Henderson and Ron Ellis and Philadelphia's Bobby Clarke.

Then there was the play of Boston's Phil Esposito. Though he has been the top-scoring forward in the National Hockey League for the past four years, Esposito has skated in the shadow of his superstar teammate, Defenseman Bobby Orr (who missed the series because of an injured knee). Where would Espo be, many fans wondered, without Orr? In Moscow, with a superlative display of adroit, aggressive hockey, he supplied the answer by leading Team Canada to victory.

Possibly because he was a mite too aggressive in checking the swift Russian forwards, the Soviets in charge of selecting the stars of the final game ignored Esposito (they chose Henderson and the Rangers' Brad Park) even though he scored two goals and two assists. Yet the slight was mild compared with the puerile and unsportsmanlike behavior that marked much of the series. Soviet team officials demanded that Canadian Coach Harry Sinden order Defenseman Gary Bergman to stop skating past baronial Russian Coach Vsevolod Bobrov during games, on the ground that Bergman was making menacing gestures and lewd comments. In turn, Sinden complained about a Russian player making "crazy-in-the-head gestures" at Assistant Canadian Coach John Ferguson. When a West German referee handed out a two-minute interference penalty to Minnesota's Jean-Paul Parise during the final game, the Canadian player charged toward him threateningly with his stick. Though he did not touch the official, Parise was expelled from the game. In the ensuing uproar, a chair from the Canadian bench area clattered onto the ice.

Inverted Sticks. Though there were fewer fistfights among players than in most N.H.L. games, there were clearly more than either the Soviet players or their Moscow fans were used to seeing. The most extraordinary battle took place during the final game, when Toronto Lawyer Alan Eagleson, executive director of the N.H.L. Players Association and chief organizer of the series, protested what he mistakenly thought was the disallowing of a Canadian goal. As Moscow's police tried to hustle Eagleson from the stadium, the Canadian players sped across the ice to his rescue. With their hockey sticks inverted like spears, they reached over the boards, jousted the police away and convoyed Eagleson across the ice to the sanctuary of the Canadian bench.

In a surprising display of graciousness, the Russians shrugged off their defeat--on and off the ice--good-natured-ly. Reviewing the series, Pravda cheerfully concluded: "The matches between the Soviet and Canadian teams will, despite complications caused by some irate Canadians, contribute to the development of the world's hockey."

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