Bobby Clarke sets the record straight on infamous Summit Series slash — and his rocky relationship with Paul Henderson

It’s been characterized, in some tellings, as an unsportsmanlike act of barbarism that diminished Canada’s ultimate victory over the Soviet Union in the 1972 Summit Series.

But some 50 years after Bobby Clarke laid an infamous two-handed slash that broke the ankle of Soviet star Valeri Kharlamov in Game 6 of the eight-game epic, Clarke remains as unapologetic as he is unrepentant.

“You know what? I got way more compliments about that (slash) than I ever got criticism,” Clarke, now 73, was saying in a recent interview. “You get more people telling you, ‘I’m glad you got that f-in’ Russian,’ than I ever got criticized for it. People (in Canada) just come up out of the blue and shake hands and say, ‘I’m glad you hit that Russian.’ You’ve got to remember, at that time, 50 years ago, Canada and Russia were in the Cold War. The Russians were the enemy.”

It’s worth remembering that Clarke did far more for Canada in the series than occasionally wield his wooden stick as a weapon. Though he came into training camp as one of the least-heralded players on Canada’s star-studded roster, forming a trio with Maple Leaf forward Ron Ellis and Paul Henderson that some saw as an afterthought line, Clarke and his linemates emerged as Canadian linchpins. Henderson is most famous for scoring the winning goal, not only in Game 8, but in Games 6 and 7, too. Ellis was a two-way stalwart. And Clarke, in many analyses, was Canada’s second-best player in the series behind the undeniable Phil Esposito.

Certainly Clarke would go on to prove the breadth of his skill set when, in the wake of the Summit Series, he won three of the next four Hart Trophies as NHL MVP, this while captaining the Philadelphia Flyers to Stanley Cup championships in 1974 and 1975.

“(The Summit Series) obviously played a huge part in my development as a player,” Clarke said. “To play those eight games, you had to play at an extremely high level — the highest level you were capable of playing at. And I guess I found out I could play at that level over eight games, anyway. And I just carried that same level of play into the next season.”

All of Clarke’s accolades haven’t stopped some of his contemporaries from retrospectively scolding him for the Kharlamov slash. No less than Henderson has called it “the low-point of the series,” while likening it to “shooting a guy in the hallway.” Alexander Yakushev, the Soviets’ leading scorer in the series, has insisted that the slash “should be on Bobby Clarke’s conscience.”

But Clarke, if there are those who would have him as a villain, has never bragged about nor apologized for the two-hander, sloughing it off as a run-of-the-mill bit of payback for a stick whack Kharlamov levelled on him moments earlier.

“I never thought about (the slash) again after it happened,” Clarke said. “After the game the Russians never said one thing about that slash. Nobody did. It was no big deal. And thirty years later Henderson comes out and says something about how he wouldn’t want his grandson to do something that bad on the ice. And all of a sudden it took on a little bit of life of its own.”

Indeed, it was on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the series that Henderson suddenly registered his public outrage at his former linemate’s dastardliness.

“That’s no way to win a hockey game,” Henderson said in 2002. “Can you imagine a golfer going out and whacking a guy in the leg?”

In the wake of those comments, mind you, Clarke said Henderson called him to ask for a mulligan.

“He called me up and said, ‘I just said it because I didn’t want my grandson doing something like that,’” Clarke said. “And I said, ‘Paul, I have a grandson who plays hockey, too. And he’s taught to stick up for his teammates, not backstab them.’ Paul just hung up.”

Clarke said he and Henderson haven’t spoken in the 20 years since. Though Henderson has publicly retracted his criticism of Clarke, Clarke has called the backpedalling “phoney.”

“Nobody likes Paul as much as Paul likes Paul,” Clarke said.

Considering the members of Team Canada ’72 has been perpetually feted as one of the great squads in hockey history, they’ve weathered their share of internal discord. Clarke, for his part, has skipped more than one reunion over his disagreement with the perpetual banishment of Alan Eagleson, the Team Canada organizer and one-time head of the NHL players’ association, who spent six months in a Mimico prison in 1998 after he was convicted of defrauding NHL players.

“To me, it was just foolishness. A team’s a team, right? It’s supposed to be a team. Everybody who was involved is supposed to be there who helped the team win. And Eagleson helped us win, a lot — a lot more than the players who quit who are still being celebrated,” Clarke said. “So it just pisses me off when they keep Eagleson out … If he did something wrong, shame on him. But we all have done lots of wrong things in our lives. It doesn’t mean we should carry it for the rest of our lives.”

Speaking this week over the phone, Clarke corrected the historical record on one front. While hockey lore has it that Team Canada assistant coach John Ferguson specifically instructed Clarke to hunt down Kharlamov and deliver “a tap on the ankle,” Clarke says now that Ferguson, who died in 2007, fabricated that angle.

“Just to take the heat off of me, Fergie stepped up and said he told me to do it. But he never did,” Clarke said. “I thanked John for doing it. But I said I didn’t care, anyway, that I did that. That was part of the game that was going on. I did what I had to do. There were lots of those kinds of things going on. It was no big deal.”

Seen in the context of the era, to be sure, Clarke’s slash wasn’t particularly egregious. Dirty play abounded on both sides. As much as the Canadians earned a reputation for viciousness, the Soviets weren’t above kicking with their skates. Henderson suffered a Game 5 concussion after he was sent head first into the end boards by a reckless Russian trip. In a series that was billed as a clash of cultures — capitalists versus communists, us against them — the stakes were beyond high, and some went low.

Esposito has since said that he “would have killed to win.” To which Clarke offers an affirming sentiment.

“I see it the same. It was hockey war,” Clarke said. “To compare a hockey game to war is totally unfair to the soldiers who fought the wars. But as far as hockey war went, on-ice hockey war, that was the biggest battle I was ever in.”

More from ‘Summit Series At 50’:

The 1972 Summit Series: Everything you need to know on its 50th anniversary

Summit Series Game 1: Soviets embarrass Canadians on home ice — and demonstrate how the game should be played

Dave Feschuk | How the 1972 Summit Series changed the way Canada looks at hockey

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