With the recent talk about the Olympics here on HOCKEY-L, I thought some
people might find this interesting. Stan Zausmer, past president of the
Cornell Hockey Boosters Association, spoke with Dan Ratushny before Ratushny
left for the Olympics and asked him if he would provide the Boosters with a
chronicle of his experiences practicing and playing with the Canadian team.
I got a copy of Dan's first letter from Stan a couple weeks ago, and an
excerpt from it is below. I'm glad to see Dan keeping in touch with Cornell
in this way, and we're hoping he will be able to give us more of his per-
spective in the coming months.
Before you ask, I don't know who Matti is...
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Well, as I look back on our first month, I'm amazed at how much
hockey we've played. We arrived in Calgary on the 7th of August
and immediately began two-a-days. We would practice for 2 hours
in the morning, and either practice or scrimmage for 2 hours at
night. This lasted to the 18th of August, when we left for a tour
of Finland and Germany in which we played 13 games (half of the
regular season at Cornell) in 17 nights. We started the tour in
Lahti, Finland, where we beat Reipass 5-2, and went on to Kuopio
to play Kalpa. Both were exhibition games against Finnish elite
division teams.
We then went to Tampere, Finland for the Tampere Cup. Tampere is
Matti's hometown. After our 3rd game, I went to Matti's house and
had dinner with Matti, his wife and son. We won the bronze medal
by virtue of our 4 wins and 1 loss, which came at the hands of the
powerful Moscow Dynamo.
From there it was on to Dusseldorf, Germany for the Epson Cup. We
lost our first game to the host Dusseldorf team in front of 11,000
screaming German fans. The intensity inside the building was
unbelievable. Kent [Manderville] skated up to me during warmups
and said "it kinda reminds me of Lynah!" We bounced back to beat
Djurgardens the next night. This was probably our biggest victory
of the tour, as we beat the defending European Club champions.
I've never seen a team use the type of forecheck that they used.
It was incredible. They never went into our corners. They just
laid back around the blue line and intercepted our passes. It
took me a period to figure out how to break out.
The rest of the tour consisted of exhibition games in cities like
Munich, Mannheim, and Bayreuth to name a few. We finished the
tour with a 10-2-1 record. Of course, it was the Germans and Fins
that we had mostly played. Future tours against Soviet and Czech
teams will not be as easy.
Kent played extremely well. He played on a line with Joe Juneau
and Todd Brost for most of the trip. Juneau played at RPI last
year and Brost graduated from Michigan a few years ago. Kent
averaged about a point a game, and was, in my opinion, one of our
top 5 forwards.
As for myself, I felt that I learned a lot during this tour. It's
a little more difficult to mentally prepare yourself when you're
playing 5 games in 5 nights, and to be able to do this is some-
thing that must be learned. I felt that on nights when I played
well offensively and carried the puck a lot, my defense suffered.
I've got to work on playing a complete game -- good, physical
defense _and_ opportunistic offense.
Coach Dave King made some cuts at the end of the trip and will
probably be bringing in some new players as NHL teams cut down
their rosters. For now, it's back to Calgary for practice and
some exhibition games against AHL and IHL teams.
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Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86
LET'S GO RED!!
"What will happen to this man's father?"
"This man's father will go to Shanghai."
"Ah, there I've got you, my friend. My father died ten years ago."
"The man your mother MARRIED died ten years ago -- your father will go to
Shanghai."
-- The Benny Hill Show
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