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Hockey's Team Canada back for 1980 Olympics

For 48 years from 1920 to 1968, Canada dominated ice hockey at the Winter Olympics, winning gold six times and failing to earn a medal just once. But a dispute over pros competing in the Games kept Canada out entirely in 1972 and '76. NHL players were finally allowed in the 1998 Games, the same year women's hockey became an Olympic event. In 2002 Canada was back on top as both men and women won our first gold medals for hockey since 1952.

After a break of 12 years and two Olympic Games, hockey's Team Canada is ready to play at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. The team pulled out of the 1972 and 1976 Games to protest the ban on professional players. As heard in this 1980 CBC Radio report, they're back for 1980 and have been training intensely in Calgary, much to the delight of local fans. With the Games just days away, coach Father David Bauer says the team could take home silver - if they peak at just the right time.
• Officials with Hockey Canada first began protesting the international rules of play in 1970. They argued that it was unfair that Canada could not send many of its best athletes - non-NHL professionals - to international tournaments. (The NHL did not release its players to compete in the Olympics 00until 1998.) Meanwhile, players from the Soviet Union were nominally amateurs but were effectively paid by the state to play hockey full time.
  • Hockey Canada began pulling out of international hockey competitions, including the world championships and the Olympics, in 1970. The impasse was unresolved until 1975, when the International Ice Hockey Federation relented to allow professionals. Canada rejoined the IIHF World Championship in 1977. However, many of Canada's best could still not play in the Olympics because their employer, the NHL, would not release them from their contracts.

• No NHLers played for Canada in the 1980 Olympic Games, though at least two of the players would go on to notable careers in the NHL. Among them were Glenn Anderson and Randy Gregg, both of whom played for the Edmonton Oilers.

• Canada finished sixth at the 1980 Winter Olympics. That year the United States experienced what has come to be known as the "Miracle on Ice," when they defeated the Soviet Union in a semifinal match and went on the beat Finland to take home the gold medal. 

Medium: Radio
Program: Sound of Sports
Broadcast Date: Feb. 3, 1980
Guest(s): Fr. David Bauer, Rick Noonan
Reporter: Brian Dance
Duration: 5:03
Photo: Canadian team at the Winter Games opening ceremony, Lake Placid, 1980. Photo by Doug Ball, Canadian Press.

Last updated: February 28, 2012

Page consulted on March 26, 2013

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