1972 Summit Series Player Ratings

Pictured above are three magazines that covered the 1972 Summit Series. These are among my favourite items regarding the Canada Russia battle. I also have a Game Program, a Home TV Viewing Program, all of the books commemorating the series issued just after it completed, an unused postcard made to send good wishes to the players in Russia as well as three of the Commemorative coins issued for the series. All I really need is a game used ticket stub, I've seen the odd one around, but they usually go for at least a hundred bucks. Even I'm not that crazy.

I decided to use the rating system I made for the 1976 Canada Cup to rate the players from '72.
Once again, weight is given for each point scored depending on it's importance, and time of game it happened. The only change I made was to count each and every game form 1972 as a Final Round game, there were no preliminary games involved.

Below are the results for the top players from both Canada and Russia, with the rating points they garnered for each game as well as totals. The results are somewhat suprising in that Esposito beats Henderson by such a margin. The truth is though, Espo was far more consistent throughout the series. Henderson gets 15 points for each of his game winners in games seven and eight, his game six winner was however worth only 3 points as in actuality it was a goal to make the score 3-1, scored early in the second period. Espo really lit it up for the last two games, scoring two goals in game seven and ripping off four points in the finale including points on the last three goals. A true example of putting a team on his back and saying "follow me boys".

Cournoyer proved to be consistent as well with 15 rating points in the Canadian games and 15 in Russia. For the Russians, Yakushev proved to be valiant in defeat tallying five goals and an assist in the last three games earning 37 rating points nearly equaling Esposito's 42 over the same period.

The results also show that the Russian contributions were more spread out among their forwards than Canada. They had five forwards gain at least 28 rating points to Canada's three forwards. Perhaps this just illustrates the more 'team game' that they were known for as opposed to Canada relying more heavily on a core of players.