The series was played during the Cold War, and intense feelings of nationalism were aroused in fans in both Canada and the Soviet Union and players on the ice.

[2] The games introduced several talented Soviet players to North America, such as Hockey Hall of Fame inductees Alexander Yakushev, Valeri Kharlamov and goaltender Vladislav Tretiak.

The series was filled with controversy, including disputes over officiating, and dirty play on the part of both teams highlighted by the deliberate slash of Kharlamov by Clarke in game six.

A knee injury forced superstar defenceman Bobby Orr, the second leading point scorer in the league the previous season and scoring champion two years prior, to sit out.

From the beginning of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships in 1920, Canada would send a senior amateur club team, usually the previous year's Allan Cup champion, to compete as the Canadian entry.

[28] Before the first game, Eagleson personally paid to settle a lawsuit won by a Montreal man, whose car had been destroyed in the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The condition was widely criticized, including by the NHL's own Harold Ballard, the Toronto Maple Leafs owner and a harsh opponent of the WHA.

The unheralded line of Bobby Clarke, Ron Ellis and Paul Henderson impressed in camp, enough to earn a place in the starting lineup for game one.

[57] Journalist Dick Beddoes of Toronto's The Globe and Mail offered to eat his words "shredded at high noon in a bowl of borscht on the steps of the Russian Embassy" if the Soviets won one game.

[58] Canadian journalists Milt Dunnell (Toronto Star), Jim Coleman (Southam), and Claude Larochelle (Le Soleil) predicted results of seven wins for Canada to one for the Soviets.

"[61] Former professional player Billy Harris who had coached Sweden's national team earlier in the year, predicted a Soviets' win, largely on the strength of Tretiak's goaltending.

[69] According to Sinden, the Canadian players had lost their poise, "running all over the ice" trying to establish their hitting game, while the Soviets used an unexpected tactic, the long pass, to break a man out of their defensive zone.

In the Canadians' attempt to tie the game, Yvan Cournoyer put a puck off the post, but the Soviets broke out afterwards and Boris Mikhailov scored on the counterattack to restore their two-goal lead with six minutes to play.

[73] Dick Beddoes fulfilled his promise - he came to a hotel in Toronto, where Soviet hockey players lived, and ate a printed copy of his column after covering it with borscht.

[79] In the second period, Esposito again scored the first goal of the game, this time from a feed from his regular Boston Bruins' linemate Cashman, who had retrieved the puck deep in the Soviets' zone after colliding with USSR defenceman Vladimir Lutchenko.

Peter Mahovlich then scored a critical shorthanded goal, deking out the Soviet defender one-on-one, then Tretiak, to again give Canada a two-goal lead.

The game started with two consecutive penalties by Bill Goldsworthy, and Boris Mikhailov converted both into power play goals to give the Soviets a 2–0 lead.

While there had been concern about the wider ice surface, what was most strange to the Canadian players was the fish netting draped at the ends of the rink above the boards instead of glass.

[108] According to Montreal Gazette sports editor Ted Blackman, Canadian players Ken Dryden and Brad Park turned in their first big games of the series.

Dryden ended a personal losing streak to Soviet teams dating back to his amateur career and two previous games in the series.

In his opinion, the Canadian penalty-killing unit of Serge Savard, Peter Mahovlich, Bill White and Pat Stapleton was "brilliant" as it held the Soviets to one power play goal despite a wide disadvantage in penalty minutes.

The other was a goal-saving play by Phil Esposito who stopped a shot by Yury Blinov, who had faked goaltender Dryden out of position and had an empty net to shoot at.

He complained that the Canadian team threw "cucumbers and other leftovers" at his colleague Franz Baader on the flight from Moscow to Prague and harassed visitors in hotels.

According to Frank Mahovlich, in Canada, before leaving for the Soviet Union, the players were accompanied by a bunch of instructions that their hotel rooms would be full of listening devices.

[168] Pictures in the newspapers highlighted the blood from a two-stitch cut the Swedish captain Lars-Erik Sjöberg had received on a cross-check from Vic Hadfield.

[185] Many Soviet citizens believed that the outcome may have been different if Anatoli Firsov and Vitaly Davydov had not sat out the series to protest a coaching change.

[192] On the other hand, Swedish sports journalists were extremely impressed by the toughness and "never say die" fighting spirit of the Canadians, who lost only one game out of seven on European ice despite often trailing in the third period.

[193] According to Soviet player Boris Mikhailov, who later became a coach, "it was a meeting between two schools of hockey and we have since continued this great exchange and we have learned from each other, taking the best of both styles.

[199] In 1987, fifteen years after the series, a 60-minute commemorative video was directed and produced by Tom McKee and published by Labatt Brewing Company Limited, Toronto.

The video includes interviews with Alan Eagleson and former players Bobby Clarke, Yvan Cournoyer, Paul Henderson, and Serge Savard in the studio.