Dave Feschuk: The Russians couldn’t stop Paul Henderson in the Summit Series, but Team Canada’s doctors nearly did

They say timing is everything. And if the Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union had happened in a time beyond 1972, it’s possible Paul Henderson wouldn’t have been the hero. When the series was decided, he might not have been in the lineup.

History certainly would have played out differently if Henderson had taken the medical advice of Dr. John Zeldin, one of the team doctors for Canada during the iconic battle between hockey superpowers that happened 50 years ago this month.

Henderson, of course, scored the winning goals for Canada, not only in the series-clinching Game 8, but in Games 6 and 7, too.

But it’s often forgotten that he did so after he was knocked unconscious briefly in Game 5 in Moscow, this after he was tripped and hurtled headfirst into the end boards. It was in the wake of that spill, which resulted in a concussion, that Zeldin, after consultation with fellow team doctors Jim Murray and Charles Bull, advised Henderson that he was done for the game.

Zeldin, now 96, said in an interview this week that if the doctors had it their way, Henderson would have been out of the lineup for at least a few days. With games played every other day in Moscow, that meant Henderson would have missed the rest of Game 5, certainly Game 6 and perhaps beyond.

“The consensus (among the doctors) was that it was very important to win the game, but it was more important to take care of the players,” Zeldin said over the phone from his Toronto condo near Yonge and Lawrence. “The proper care for someone with a concussion was to take it easy for a few days while it was being investigated. In a regular game, there would be very little controversy. But this was not a regular game, we realized.”

Given the times, not to mention the stakes of a Cold War series in which Canada found itself in desperate competitive straits, perhaps it surprised no one that Zeldin and his colleagues didn’t get the final say. While Zeldin remembers discussions between the medical staff and Team Canada officials, including organizer Alan Eagleson and head coach Harry Sinden, he also remembers Henderson lobbying Sinden to get back on the ice.

The final decision, Zeldin said, rested with the coach. And perhaps thanks in part to the devil-may-care mentality toward head injuries in those days, Henderson promptly returned to Game 5 and scored his second goal of the contest to put Canada ahead 4-1 — a lead they would ultimately squander in a 5-4 loss.

Henderson, in the years since, has said more than once that if he’d suffered that head injury playing under the concussion protocols of more recent times, it’s possible he would have been erased from what turned out to be one of the most important moments in hockey history.

“They wouldn’t have let me go back on the ice,” Henderson has said.

And not without reason. As Zeldin told the Star’s Jim Proudfoot in 1992, Henderson was fortunate that was he was among a small minority of NHLers in the habit of wearing a helmet in 1972.

“I can assure you he could easily have been killed if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet. The impact was that severe,” Zeldin told Proudfoot. “This was in the second period … I told him playing the third period was out of the question. I felt he’d need several days off and told him so then, and the next morning and right up till the next game. He wouldn’t hear of it, naturally.”

Eric Zeldin, the doctor’s son who was eight years old at the time of the Summit Series and accompanied his father to the opener in Montreal, said the tale has been told and retold in family circles through the years.

“The story was that Henderson said to my dad, ‘Is it going to kill me (to keep playing)?’ And my dad said, ‘Well, probably not.’ And Henderson said, ‘Thanks but no thanks, I’ll go out there,’” said Eric.

The notion of Henderson sitting out for precautionary reasons wouldn’t have played well in those days.

It would be an understatement to suggest player safety wasn’t a priority in that era. Henderson has recalled that when he donned a helmet as a member of the Detroit Red Wings in the late 1960s — first because he was mandated to wear one after an injury, then because he was offered money by manufacturer CCM to keep wearing it — Wings coach Sid Abel took umbrage with his choice. Abel didn’t want his players wearing helmets, and he wasn’t alone.

NHL power brokers saw helmets as bad for business, since they made players less identifiable. And while players wore helmets climbing the developmental ladder to the world’s best league, there was a mixture of peer pressure and prestige attached to shedding them once they made the NHL. As it was, the league didn’t make it mandatory for incoming players until 1979.

The story goes that it was only after Henderson convinced Abel that he was being paid real money to wear one — and after Henderson reeled off a four-goal game while doing so — that the coach dropped his objections. The red CCM pro-standard model in which Henderson scored the Summit Series winner eventually became popularly known as the “Paul Henderson helmet,” and one of the most beloved designs in the game.

Zeldin, who started one of Canada’s first sports medicine clinics, was among those who lobbied the NHL to make helmets compulsory. And the series turned out to be a lifelong memory he still cherishes. Zeldin, who was born in Russia and came to Canada as a baby, remembers getting special permission to visit an aunt in Moscow, a rare privilege in the time of the Iron Curtain. He remembers his late wife Sheila helping to arrange an outing with the players’ wives to the famed Russian national ballet. And he remembers the jubilation of being one of about 3,000 Canadians in Luzhniki Ice Palace when Henderson scored for Canada.

“We (on the medical staff) took turns standing on the bench, so I was sitting in the stands next to an ambassador from Italy, of all places,” Zeldin said. “And when Henderson scored, we embraced.”

For all Zeldin’s good intentions in keeping Henderson safe from the risk of further brain injury, the doctor took his share of good-natured jabs after the story of his futile protestations became part of Summit Series lore. The Russians couldn’t stop Henderson, the joke surely went, but Dr. Zeldin nearly did.

“The funny part of it was, my children at the time said, ‘Dad, if Henderson wouldn’t listen to you, why should we?’” Zeldin said with a laugh.

Said Zeldin’s daughter, Karen Bleiweis, who was 12 at the time of the Summit Series: “That’s absolutely true. We couldn’t believe that my dad said that to Henderson. We’re like, ‘But dad, he wouldn’t have scored the winning goal.’ But it’s a very big thing that my dad was the one who said that to him.”

Indeed as it turns out, 50 years on, both Henderson and Zeldin ended up on the right side of history.

“We kept a close eye on him after that,” Zeldin said of Henderson. “As it turns out, we were happy it didn’t turn out to be as serious as it might have been. We’re grateful it worked out so well.”

More from Summit Series At 50:

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

Summit Series Game 4: Canadians hit rock bottom vs. Soviets as boos rain down in Vancouver

Summit Series Game 3: Canadians tie Soviets, but there’s no doubt they lost something too

Summit Series Game 2: Canada shows why they’re the NHL stars, evening series vs. Soviets

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

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