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The puck people are reviving the World Cup of Hockey. It's a fine idea as there is nothing to stir the sport's juices like international competition, particularly between Canada and the Russians.

The National Hockey League isn't generating much enthusiasm these days. It's a good product in many ways but it's currently missing two essential ingredients: exceptional scorers and a supreme team. There are no skaters who can score at a clip near the rate of the great record setters of old. And there is no dynastic team, no unquestionably superior club to command our attention. Parity is tedious.

There isn't much drama at the international level, either. The clash of civilizations isn't what it used to be in the old Cold War days, although perhaps we just need to give Russian President Vladimir Putin, with his Iron Curtain mindset, a little more time.

We're reminded how it used to be with the release of Gabe Polsky's hockey documentary Red Army. It focuses on the Soviet Union's supreme team of that name with its fab five, a unit who some rank as hockey's best ever.

In its prime in the 1980s, the unit was a symphony on ice. It blended the power of Vladimir Krutov, the artistry of Igor Larionov, the precision of Sergei Makarov. Rearguard Slava Fetisov was the conductor, along with Alexei Kasatonov.

The Red Army team, which also formed the backbone of the Soviet national team, played in a slave-driver system under a slave-driver coach. Players spent 11 months a year in quarantined training camp conditions, shut off from the world. As draconian as the regimen was, you have to wonder if it's what made that team so masterly.

Stationed in Moscow, I watched them for years. It was hockey at its most aesthetic. They were used as a propaganda weapon of the state, but Mikhail Gorbachev was declawing the totalitarian system at the time, leaving the players of two minds. Their hearts were with the homeland; their spirits were with freedom.

They had many memorable clashes with the best Canadian players, none better than the 1987 Canada Cup, the greatest series next to 1972. All three games in the Soviet-Canada finale ended in 6-5 scores, with two going to overtime. Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux combined to score the series winner in the final moments of the deciding game.

When the Cold War ended, the players dispersed and their camp training system was dismantled. The Russians never iced a team like Red Army again.

The Canadian side was special then as well. To get a measure of how superior scoring talents were in those days, consider that in one season, Gretzky scored 215 points. That's about 100 points more – 100 points! – than the leading NHL scorers of this era. Lemieux sometimes posted numbers close to those, and several players might score 50 goals or more in a season. By contrast, modern superstar Sidney Crosby has had one 50-goal season and is averaging just a goal every three games this season. Counterparts such as Alexander Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos could get to 50 goals, but neither will reach 100 points.

Well, they say, the goalies have bigger equipment now and the defences are better at blocking shots, which is all true. But it's also true that the two-line pass wasn't allowed in the Gretzky-Lemieux days and the rules permitted far more defensive clutching, grabbing and hacking than we see today.

The problem may be that NHL coaches lack imagination. There is no great hockey mind like the Soviets had in Anatoli Tarasov.

After the Wall's fall, many of the best Russian players ended up with the Detroit Red Wings, who won three Stanley Cups between 1997 and 2002. They were a stellar club, but for hockey fans, it was better in the days when the Cold War raged and the Russians were so different and so much was at stake.

A combination of more international competitions and the bellicose rule of Mr. Putin promises to sharpen the rivalry. A new Cold War would be bad for the world, but good for hockey.

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