Lions in Winter: the Summit Series, Professionalism, and the Renewal of Hockey in 1970s Britain

These words, by the historian Colin Howell, encapsulate the drama and subsequent
outpouring of victorious emotion that accompanied the challenge series of September 1972.
It was a defining “where were you when” moment for an entire generation of hockey fans –
matched, perhaps, for those in their teens and twenties, by Sidney Crosby‟s remarkable
overtime goal in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. In both instances, the glory of
victory came to be seen as a restoration of Canadian dominance over the world of hockey
and a return to the natural order of things. And like most where were you when moments,
it‟s easy to imagine that ripples thundered across the globe, even in countries where
ignorance rather than jubilation reigned. In Britain, for example, most people were unaware
of what was going on in September 1972. Aside from some perfunctory records of the final
scores printed in the national daily newspapers such as the Times, the Daily Mirror and the
Guardian, the series passed by unnoticed. Ironically, the series might not have been visible to
Canadians but for British technicians, whose role in converting and relaying the notoriously
unreliable signal from the arena in Moscow to Halifax was essential in ensuring that events
were able to be beamed, by the CBC, to expectant hockey fans across Canada.