It wasn't until Canadian teams started losing in international tournaments in the mid 1950s that an epic hockey rivalry between Canada and the Soviet Union began. Canadians believed hockey was
"their game." So Canadians were in for a rude awakening when they lost Game One of the 1972 Summit Series to the Soviets. The eight-game tournament quickly became a "war on ice" fuelled by
competing Cold War ideologies. Hockey fans will enjoy reading about: small-town teams that represented Canada in international tournaments before there was a Team Canada; Father David Bauer and the first National Hockey Team; the birth of Hockey Canada; Canada and the Cold War; Canadian style of play in hockey versus the Russian style of play; and Bobby Clarke's dirty slash on Kharlamov.