Vladislav Tret’yak: ‘The United States Is Playing Soviet-Style Hockey’

The legendary goalkeeper of Russian hockey speaks about how, at the Olympics, there are no weak teams.

On the Feb. 13, the Russian national hockey team is going to play the first match in the group tournament against Slovenia during their home Olympics. But on the eve of the game, fans are all thinking ahead — ahead to the match against the U.S. team.

The famous Russian hockey player Vladislav Tret’yak, goalkeeper for the “red machine,” speaks about how he, and the entire Soviet hockey team, were taught by players from the U.S.

The “American Lesson”

A year ago, the Americans taught us a very important lesson: Respect your opponent. The exact same thing happened in 1980. The U.S. didn’t have a very strong team, and we believed that we’d beat them pretty easily, especially because we’d beaten them 12-3 just two days before. We even rooted for them to get to the playoffs when they had their match against the Swedes, so that we’d end up playing a weaker team. And we lost. At the Olympics, there are no weak sides. Even in the women’s matches you might think that someone like Japan might be a weak team, but our girls just barely scraped by. You have to respect every team. It was because we didn’t respect the opposition that we lost the Olympic gold — which was quite a big deal for us.

The Mistake of 30 Years Ago

It’s still a big deal now. These days, it’s not just the silver and bronze; every medal is a great result. That’s why in this tournament we’ve got a number of strong teams, such as the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Finland and the Czechs. I think that the fact that I didn’t play in the second half was a mistake on the part of the coach. If I had been on the ice, it might have been a bit different — who knows. However, after the United States’ win in 1980, the sport saw a lot of development, such that now the U.S. has a strong team on every level. Really, they’re playing Soviet-style hockey.

The Coming Matches

The match between the U.S. and Russia is going to be one of the toughest before the finals. The American team has a very strong side, which we respect. As to who will win, well, I don’t want to really speculate, but it will be a really interesting and high-level hockey game. We’ll see what happens later, but it’s never easy. In the match against the U.S., there’s not going to be an atmosphere of having to get payback. Still, we have to think of Slovenia first and foremost. We have to respect them as well. We can stop and worry about the U.S. later — everything needs to be done one by one.

How Even the Walls Help at Home

Russia will be playing with the support of its own fans. In some places, the attention and pressure from the press and fans is going to help, but in others … Well, everything will depend on the coach. The crowd will always want the team to keep pushing forward, so it’s an issue of being able to keep his boys’ heads in the game. So they’ll have to play it cool. Up to the finals, the team won’t be talking to any other teams. Should they win gold, we’ll go nuts, but once that’s done, we’ll put everything back together.

Malkins of the Future

Hockey in this country is a very popular sport. We need to build as many arenas as we can, and run a lot of tournaments. The more of it we have, the more likely it will be that we’ll get ourselves more Malkins and Ovechkins.