It was on September 28, 1972 that Paul Henderson’s famous game-winning goal went down in history, in the eighth and final Game of the Century Series between Canada and the Soviet Union.
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Far from being considered the most dangerous Canadian player on offense, the one who was at the time a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs completed a spectacular push by his team. Sure enough, the Maple Leaf representatives had rallied from a 5-3 deficit in the third period and with 34 seconds to go, Henderson pushed the puck past an already lying Vladislav Tretiak in a memorable streak that continues to air regularly on capsules. memories on television.
The victorious net therefore allowed Canada to leave Moscow with a 6-5 victory, giving them the honors of the series with four triumphs against three defeats and a draw.
A symbol of the Cold War marking the opposition between capitalism and communism, between the Western and Eastern blocs, the Canada-USSR clash marked an entire generation. Moreover, the last meeting was watched on television by 16 million Canadians; at the time, the national population was estimated at around 22 million people.
“Nobody got what they wanted, but we all got what we needed. Both teams triumphed in a way and in a dimension they never imagined,” wrote former keeper Ken Dryden in his recently published book “The Series of the Century – As I Lived It” at Editions de l’Homme.