1976 Canada Cup Information & 1976 Canada Cup Links at HealthHaven.com

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[edit] Round Robin Standings

[edit] Game Scores

[edit] Player Statistics

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[edit] See also

[edit] External links, Sources and References

Contents

[edit] Round-Robin

[edit] Final (best of 3)

[edit] Points

[edit] Goals

[edit] Assists

[edit] Goaltending

[edit] Tournament Champion

[edit] Tournament MVP

[edit] Team MVPs

[edit] All-Star Team

1976 Canada Cup
Tournament details
Host country	CAN
Dates	September 2–15, 1976
Teams	6
Venue(s)	5 (in 5 host cities)
Champions	Canada (1st title)
Scoring leader(s)	Victor Zhluktov (9 pts)
MVP	Bobby Orr

The 1976 Canada Cup series was the first in a group of tournaments designed in Canada as an attempt to reassert Canadian international hockey dominance. The Canada Cup was begun as a quid pro quo arrived at with the IIHF in exchange for Canadian participation in the World Hockey Championships and the Olympics. Both tournaments now received available professional hockey players from all nations. The Olympics, occurring in the middle of the NHL season, tended to only get recently retired NHL players and North Americans playing in Europe, while the World Championship teams were and are made up of NHL players whose teams had either missed the playoffs or were eliminated in the first round of the NHL playoffs. In exhange for this, Canada won the right to host an international hockey tournament during September, when all Canadian and American hockey players were available to participate. The European powers were expected to send their best players, so this tournament became the only international hockey tournament where the best players from around the world played each other. As such, it was designed to become the defacto, if not dejure, World Hockey Championship. After the Summit Series of 1972 and 1974, the NHL and NHLPA decided to broaden the scope of the competition, inviting to the tournament a number of hockey countries and allowing each invited country to send the best possible team they could muster. To live up to this ideal, the Canada Cup (unlike the 1972 Summit Series) would allow players from the WHA to participate. They also held the tournament on NHL sized rinks in North America, with NHL referees, in order to avoid problems they had encountered in earlier tournaments and to provide a home ice advantage. This first of five such Canada Cup tournaments would take place during the first two weeks of September 1976.

As expected, the star-studded Canadian team won the tournament after Darryl Sittler scored the winning goal in overtime against Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovaks (winners of the 1976 and 1977 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship tournaments) were also very strong. In contrast, the Soviets were in "rebuilding mode", and several experienced players from their Olympic championship team of 1976 (Gennady Tsygankov, Yuri Lyapkin, Valeri Kharlamov, Boris Mikhailov, Vladimir Petrov, Vladimir Shadrin, Alexander Yakushev) did not participate. Consequently, the Soviets finished a disappointing third as the new players lost to Canada and Czechoslovakia, and only managed a draw against Sweden.

Among the remaining teams, Sweden (reinforced by eight professional players from the NHL and WHA, although Christer Abrahamsson and Thommy Abrahamsson were omitted due to a row over unpaid transfer fees between the Swedish Ice Hockey Association and the WHA) played very well, and managed to beat both the Czechoslovaks and Americans. In fact, "Tre Kronor" would have made it to the finals if not for a disastrous loss against Finland, who somehow managed to outscore the Swedes 8–6 despite trailing 1–4 at one point. Apart from that game, the Finns (with four WHA professionals) proved to be by far the weakest team of the tournament. The American team finished fifth after beating the Finns in the last game. The USA coach Bob Pulford assembled a team comprising mostly young and unproven players sprinkled with some serviceable veterans.

	GP	W	L	T	GF	GA	Pts
Canada	5	4	1	0	22	6	8
Czechoslovakia	5	3	1	1	19	9	7
USSR	5	2	2	1	23	14	5
Sweden	5	2	2	1	16	18	5
USA	5	1	3	1	14	21	3
Finland	5	1	4	0	16	42	2

Location	Result
Ottawa, Sept. 02, 1976	Canada 11 Finland 2
Toronto, Sept. 03, 1976	Sweden 5 USA 2
Montreal, Sept. 03, 1976	Czechoslovakia 5 USSR 3
Montreal, Sept. 05, 1976	Sweden 3 USSR 3
Toronto, Sept. 05, 1976	Czechoslovakia 8 Finland 0
Montreal, Sept. 05, 1976	Canada 4 USA 2
Montreal, Sept. 07, 1976	USSR 11 Finland 3
Philadelphia, Sept. 07, 1976	Czechoslovakia 4 USA 4
Toronto, Sept. 07, 1976	Canada 4 Sweden 0
Winnipeg, Sept. 09, 1976	Finland 8 Sweden 6
Philadelphia, Sept. 09, 1976	USSR 5 USA 0
Montreal, Sept. 09, 1976	Czechoslovakia 1 Canada 0
Montreal, Sept. 11, 1976	USA 6 Finland 3
Quebec City, Sept. 11, 1976	Sweden 2 Czechoslovakia 1
Toronto, Sept. 11, 1976	Canada 3 USSR 1

Location	Result
Toronto, Sept. 13, 1976	Canada 6 Czechoslovakia 0
Montreal, Sept. 15, 1976	Canada 5 Czechoslovakia 4 (OT)

	GP	G	A	Pts
Viktor Zhluktov	5	5	4	9
Bobby Orr	7	2	7	9
Denis Potvin	7	1	8	9
Bobby Hull	7	5	3	8
Milan Novy	7	5	3	8
Gilbert Perreault	7	4	4	8
Vladimir Vikulov	4	4	3	7
Borje Salming	5	4	3	7
Phil Esposito	7	4	3	7
Aleksandr Maltsev	5	3	4	7
Vladimir Martinec	7	3	4	7

	GP	G
Milan Novy	7	5
Bobby Hull	7	5
Viktor Zhluktov	5	5
Borje Salming	5	4
Darryl Sittler	7	4
Gilbert Perreault	7	4

	GP	A
Denis Potvin	7	8
Bobby Orr	7	7
Marcel Dionne	7	5
Guy Lafleur	7	5
Alexander Gusev	5	5

minimum 120 minutes played.

Canada

Bobby Orr, Canada

Rogatien Vachon, Canada
Milan Novy, Czechoslovakia
Alexander Maltsev, USSR
Borje Salming, Sweden
Robbie Ftorek, USA
Matti Hagman, Finland

Goaltender: Rogatien Vachon, Canada
Defence: Bobby Orr, Canada; Borje Salming, Sweden
Forwards: Aleksandr Maltsev, USSR; Milan Novy, Czechoslovakia; Darryl Sittler, Canada

Rogatien Vachon

Vladimir Dzurilla

Vladislav Tretiak

Pete LoPresti