September 15, 1976: The 1st Canada Cup

Left to right: Phil Esposito, Bobby Orr, Denis Potvin, Bobby Clarke

September 15, 1976, 50 years ago: Canada defeats Czechoslovakia, 5-4 at the Montreal Forum, and wins the 1st Canada Cup, taking the Final, 2 games to none. Darryl Sittler of the Toronto Maple Leafs scores the winning goal, 11 minutes and 33 seconds into overtime. Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins, who wanted to sit it out because of his injured knees, but was talked into it with an appeal to patriotism, was named the Most Valuable Player of the tournament.

Unless you count the 1972 "Summit Series" between Canada and the Soviet Union -- in which Orr was too injured to play -- this was the 1st time hockey had had something resembling soccer's World Cup, with the best available players, both professional and amateur, eligible, something that Hockey Canada had been insisting upon.

Hockey Canada also put aside its pro-NHL bias, which led to WHA players like Bobby Hull, Gerry Cheevers and Bernie Parent being kept out of the '72 Summit Series and nearly blowing it for Canada, and included players signed to both leagues.

That was the theory, anyway. In reality, while Cheevers and Parent had both been welcomed back into the NHL, only Cheevers was selected. Parent, having helped the Philadelphia Flyers win back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1974 and '75, had been battling a neck injury in the 1975-76 season, although he did start the regular season in goal in Philadelphia. And the only player actually with a WHA team at the time was Hull, of the Winnipeg Jets.

In the round-robin games, Canada went 4-1, Czechoslovakia 3-1-1, the Soviet Union and Sweden both 2-2-1, the U.S. 1-3-1, and Finland 1-4. In addition to Montreal, games were played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, the Ottawa Civic Centre, the Winnipeg Arena; and one American arena, The Spectrum in Philadelphia (naturally, tying in with the U.S. Bicentennial), hosted 2 games, both of them matches of the U.S. team.

The U.S. team included some familiar names: Rick Chartraw, who was with the Montreal Canadiens team that had just won the 1st of 4 straight Stanley Cups, and Bill Nyrop, the Captain, who won the 1st 3 of those Montreal Cups; Mike Milbury of the Boston Bruins' tough-guy "Lunch Pail Athletic Club"; Lee Fogolin of the Buffalo Sabres; Lou Nanne of the Minnesota North Stars, who would become better known as an executive; Robbie Ftorek of the Phoenix Roadrunners, the Boston area native who had famously become the 1st U.S. high school hockey player on the cover of Sports Illustrated; and Craig Patrick, part of hockey's greatest family, son of Lynn, grandson of Lester, grandnephew of Frank, and also better known as an executive, the GM of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team and the Pittsburgh Penguins' 1991 and '92 Stanley Cup winners.

The Soviet team included some '72 Summit Series holdovers, including goaltender Vladislav Tretiak, Captain Alexander Maltsev, and Valeri Vasiliev. But they were in a transition between the team that scared the hockey world in '72 and the one that would dominate the late 1970s and all through the '80s. And none of them played so much as a shift in the NHL, due to travel restrictions imposed by their country.

Also due to Warsaw Pact restrictions, most of the Czech players did not play in the NHL. The brothers Peter and Marián Šťastný played on the Czech team, as their native Slovakia was still part of the country. They, and their younger brother Anton, would play in the NHL, including together with the Quebec Nordiques. There was also Bohuslav Šťastný on the team, but he was not related to them, and was Czech rather than Slovak. František Kaberle played on the Czech team, and his sons František Kaberle Jr. and Tomáš Kaberle played in the NHL. However, despite the shared surname, Jiří Holík was not related to later NHL star Bobby Holik.

The Sweden team included Toronto Maple Leafs stars Börje Salming, and WHA Winnipeg Jets stars Anders Hedberg, Ulf Nilsson and Lars-Erik Sjöberg. Although many players from Finland have done well in the NHL, only 1 member of their 1976 Canada Cup team played in the NHL: Tapio Levo, a defenseman who was with the Colorado Rockies in 1982 when they moved to become the New Jersey Devils.

The tournament is now called the World Cup of Hockey. Canada won the tournament in 1976, 1984, 1987, 1991, 2004 and 2016. The Soviet Union won it in 1981. The U.S. won it in 1996, after losing the Final to Canada in 1991. With 2016, it was set to be held every 4 years, in September, right before the start of the new season. The 2020 edition was canceled due to the COVID epidemic. A bid to merely postpone the 2020 WCOH to 2021, rather than cancel it outright, failed, leaving the concept in limbo.

UPDATE: The 2024 edition was not held, either. Instead, a "4 Nations Face-Off" was held, with Canada beating the U.S. in the Final in Boston on February 20, 2025, after Sweden and Finland had been eliminated. An agreement has been reached to stage a WCOH in 2028.

June 20, 1976: The Panenka Penalty

June 20, 1976, 50 years ago: The Final of the 1976 UEFA European Football Championship is held at Red Star Stadium in Belgrade, Yugoslavia -- now the Rajko Mitić Stadium in Belgrade, Serbia. This was the only time UEFA the Union of European Football Associations, ever held a tournament, or the Final of a club tournament, in a Communist country. (It has since held them in former Communist countries.)

England did not qualify. Nor did France, nor Italy. Under the format then in place, only 4 teams did, including Yugoslavia, who did so only because they were the hosts, although they usually had a good team. In one Semifinal, Czechoslovakia beat the Netherlands, 3-1. In the other, West Germany, who had won the last 2 major tournaments, the 1974 World Cup and Euro 72, beat Yugoslavia, 4-2. Both games went to extra time.

The Final also went to extra time. Czechoslovakia led, 2-0 after just 25 minutes, but West Germany came back, and the game ended, 2-2. So it went to penalty kicks. Stereotypically, Germany usually win those. With the Czechs up, 4-3, Ivo Viktor, goalkeeper for Dukla Prague was ready to try to stop Bayern Munich star Uli Hoeneß, but he missed his shot completely, sending it over the crossbar.

It was now up to Antonín Panenka to face the best goalie in the world at the time, Bayern's Josef "Sepp" Maier. Taking a short and stuttering run-up, he gently struck the ball in an arcing parabola up the middle, while Maier had already dived and was resting on his knees. The Czechs had won, 5-3.

It remains the only major tournament ever won by either a united Czechoslovakia, or by the Czech Republic (a.k.a. Czechia) or Slovakia separately, although they reached the Final of the 1962 World Cup, and finished 3rd at Euro 1980.

Such a penalty attempt has been known as a "Panenka" ever since, but a stuttering run-up is almost a giveaway that this is what the player is going to do, and it gets stopped more than most shots.

A midfielder, Antonín Panenka played for Bohemians Prague from 1967 to 1981, never winning a major trophy -- except Euro 76 for his country. He then went to Rapid Wien, and helped the Vienna club win the Austrian Bundesliga in 1982 and '83; and the Austrian Cup in 1983, '84 and '85. He continued to play professionally until 1993, at age 44. He later served as team president for Bohemians. As of June 20, 2026, he is still alive.

Stan Mikita, 1940-2018

Michael Wilbon of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, formerly of The Washington Post, called Stan Mikita "Scottie Pippen" to Bobby Hull's "Michael Jordan." As a Chicago native, he should know.

Stanislav Guoth was born on May 20, 1940, in Sokolče, in what was then the Slovak Republic, a "client state" of Nazi Germany. The country no longer exists: After World War II, it was reintegrated into Czechoslovakia. That country also no longer exists: In 1993, it was split into the Czech Republic (sometimes "Czechia") and the Slovak Republic (usually written as "Slovakia"). The town no longer exists: It was evacuated in 1975, and inundated by a reservoir.

And the boy's name wouldn't exist for very long: In 1948, to escape the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in St. Catharines, Ontario Canada. They gave him their surname, and he became Stanislav Mikita. He was never "Stanley," although, like a lot of Eastern Europeans whose names start with "Stan," he would be nicknamed "Stosh."

Slovakia has gone on to produce several good hockey players. Before the 1993 "Velvet Divorce," Slovaks who starred for the Czechoslovakia team and then in the NHL included the Šťastný brothers, Peter, Anton and Marián; and Róbert Švehla and Žigmund Pálffy. Since 1993, there has been Peter Bondra, Miroslav Šatan, Jozef Stumpel, Zdeno Chára, Michal Handzuš, Marián Gáborík, and the Hossa brothers, Marián and Marcel.

But it was in Canada that Stan Mikita learned how to play hockey. He starred for his hometown team, the St. Catharines Teepees of the Ontario Hockey League. In 1959, he was promoted to the Chicago Blackhawks. In 1961, he scored 6 goals in the Playoffs, helping the Hawks win the Stanley Cup.

It was a team laden with stars. Captain Eddie Litzenberger led Mikita, defenseman Pierre Pilote, goaltender Glenn Hall, and a young left wing who would become the most exciting player in the game, Bobby Hull, whose long blond hair -- eventually replaced with a combover and finally a toupee -- and speed gave him the nickname the Golden Jet.

Mikita was placed on what became known as the Scooter Line, centering right wing Ken Wharram and left wing Ab McDonald, with McDonald sometimes replaced by Doug Mohns. Like Hull, Mikita used a stick with a heavily curved blade. While Hull used his "banana blade" to fire the fastest shot in the game in that era, Mikita found success as the NHL's best faceoff man. In 1970, with both Hull and Mikita still roughly at their peak, the NHL passed a rule limiting the curve of a hockey stick's blade to half an inch. Violation meant a penalty, as Marty McSorley of the Los Angeles Kings found out to his dismay in the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals

Mikita was also one of the top defensive forwards in the game, although the Frank Selke Award for the season's best defensive forward had not yet been established. Among the awards that had been established: He was named to 9 All-Star Games; he won the Hart Memorial Trophy as NHL Most Valuable Player in 1967 and 1968; he won the Art Ross Trophy as leading scorer (goals plus assists) in 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1968; and the Lady Byng Trophy as "most gentlemanly player" in 1967 and 1968.

In those seasons, he became the 1st player to win the Hart, the Ross, and the Lady Byng in the same season, doing it twice. To this day, no other player has won it, even once.

Mikita winning the Lady Byng Trophy, donated in 1925 by Evelyn Byng, the hockey-loving wife of Julian Byng, the World War I hero who served as Canada's Governor-General at the time, would have seemed odd early in his career, as he racked up a lot of penalties.

One day, he came home from a roadtrip, and his wife Jill told him that daughter Meg (they also had daughter Jane, and sons Scott and Christopher) had been watching the 'Hawks on TV, and asked her mother, "Mommy, why does Daddy spend so much time sitting down?" The camera had just shown him sitting in the penalty box. So Stan cleaned his game up, and reaped the rewards.

But despite having plenty of stars on their roster, the Hawks couldn't win another Cup. They lost in the Finals to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1962, and to the Montreal Canadiens in 1965, 1971 and 1973. It would be 2010 before they won another Cup.

In 1967, an errant shot hit Mikita in the ear, and actually tore a piece off. It was stitched back on. Afterward, he became one of the earliest players, and certainly the biggest star among those who did, to wear a helmet full-time. The NHL would later make helmets mandatory.

In 1972, Mikita, despite being born outside Canada -- and in a country still effectively controlled by the Soviet Union -- was named to Team Canada for the 1972 "Summit Series" against the Soviet national team. But injury limited him to just 2 of the 8 games.

It's worth noting that Hull and goaltenders Gerry Cheevers and Bernie Parent had been declared ineligible, because it was a team of NHL players, and those 3 had jumped to the new World Hockey Association. The goalies were Ken Dryden of the Canadiens and Hull and Mikita's Blackhawk teammate, Tony Esposito. It's also worth noting that Bobby Orr of the Bruins was injured. If either Hull or Orr was available, it would have been a very different series. Instead, Canada won it in the last 30 seconds of the last game, 4 games to 3 with a tie.

In 1976, Mikita was named Captain of the Blackhawks, and was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy for contributions to hockey in America. Despite a back injury, he played 22 seasons, all with the Blackhawks, retiring after the 1980 season, playing into a 4th decade. At the time, only Gordie Howe and Phil Esposito had scored more NHL points, and only 6 players had appeared in more games.

The 'Hawks made his Number 21 the 1st they retired, as they were still feuding with Hull. They would make peace in 1983, and Hull's Number 9 went into the rafters. Also in 1983, Mikita and Hull were both elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Their retired number banners, although with the 1 of Hall and the 35 of Esposito, were taken down following the last regular-season game at Chicago Stadium in 1994, and presented to their honorees. New banners went up at the opening of the United Center. In 2011, statues of Mikita and Hull were dedicated outside the arena.

Mikita was inspired by the deaf son of a friend to establish, along with fellow Sloavk Irv Tiahnybik, a Chicago businessman, the American Hearing Impaired Hockey Association (AHIHA). And when he heard that the Special Olympics had been established in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of the late President John F. Kennedy, and were set for Chicago's Soldier Field, he jumped at the chance to be involved.

He became an avid golfer, and ran the company that make the little plastic containers for the sauces that McDonald's uses for its Chicken McNuggets. He also owned a restaurant in the suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois, named Stan Mikita's Village Inn.

A business he did not own was Stan Mikita's Donuts. That was an inside joke in the 1991 movie Wayne's World, based on the Saturday Night Live sketch set in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, and patterned after real-life donut chain Tim Hortons. (Horton was a defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1950s and '60s.)

In 1998, The Hockey News ranked him 17th on their list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players. In 2017, he was named to the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players, which were not ranked.

Although he survived cancer, in 2015 he was diagnosed with dementia. He died this past Tuesday, August 7, 2018, in Chicago, at the age of 78.

Blackhawks President William Rockwell "Rocky" Wirtz: "Stan made everyone he touched a better person. 'Stosh' will be deeply missed, but never, ever forgotten."

Former teammate Dale Tallon, now general manager of the Florida Panthers: "His preparation was impeccable. His style of play was unique. He had great skills and drive and passion. He was hardworking. He was unselfish. He was a superstar."

(Tallon was also the 1st player to wear Number 9 on the Blackhawks after Hull. He joked, "The only thing wrong with it is, they left off the decimal point.")

Hull: "Pound for pound, Stan had to be one of the greatest who ever played, and he was a player who always came to play."

If Hull was the Golden Jet, then Mikita was a Dark Glider, but there was plenty of lamp-lighting when he was on the ice. And he will always shine brightly in the minds of hockey fans.

UPDATE: Mikita's final resting place is not publicly known.