1978 Team Canada Juniors, Rare Photos

 I received an email about the 1978 World Junior Championships stemming from something I wrote about a while back. The sender let me know he had a bunch of photos he took at one of the tournament games in Cornwall, Ontario. He also had a program from the game which is pictured above.
The game between West Germany and Canada took place before 2,100 fans and was predictably won by Canada 8-0. 16 year-old Wayne Gretzky notched 3 goals and 2 assists as his line with Tony McKegney and Wayne Babych led the way. Gretzky was quoted afterward, "I have two pretty good line mates. They know where to go and where to be." He added, "I should have had six or seven."

Canada out shot West Germany 61 to 25 and the German goaltender Mathias Hoppe was good enough to earn their player of the match. McKegney opened the scoring at 8:37 of the first on a perfect feed from Gretzky. 15 seconds later, The Kid himself banged in his own rebound for a 2-0 lead. One shift later McKegney returned the favour as he set up Gretzky to make it 3-0 at 11:22 of the period. Three minutes later Babych continued the line's domination on a goal assisted by Gretzky.

In the second period, goals by Rick Vaive, Ryan Walter, Gretzky and Mike Gartner pushed it to 8-0.
Below are the awesome, rarely seen photos from that game.

Mike Gartner and Steve Tambellini in front of Mathias Hoppe

LW Pat Daley of Laval National


Wayne Babych charging the net

Paterson beside goalie Tim Bernhardt

Mike Gartner

'The Kid' Wayne Gretzky

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

WHA Ottawa Civics, The Two Week Franchise

Team Canada 1972, What Might have Been

Ron Hextall and the stolen Conn Smythe Trophy