Canada’s Lost Decade

======================================================

The 1970s were the lost decade for CANADA in terms of ice hockey at the Winter Olympic Games.

Canada had been given assurances by the International Ice Hockey Federation that at least a limited number of minor league professionals would be allowed to compete at the 1970 IIHF World Championships, which were slated to be held in both Montreal and Winnipeg that year.

When the IIHF later reneged on the agreement, the country that had founded the sport withdrew from international ice hockey altoghether and the World Championships were hastily relocated to Sweden.

As part of the negotiations to stage the inaugural Canada Cup, it was stipulated that professional players would become eligible at the World Championships starting with the 1976 IIHF tournament in Poland.

Canada, who agreed to return to international competition as part of the deal, sent its first contigent of professional players (all from the NHL) to the 1977 World Championships held in Vienna, Austria.

After having skipped the Sapporo and Innsbruck tournaments, the Winter Games in 1980 would mark the first Olympic entry of an ice hockey team from Canada in a dozen years.

The captain of the Canadian squad at Lake Placid was none other than 39-year-old defenseman TERRY O’MALLEY, who was making his third Olympic appearance. O’Malley skated for Canada at both the 1964 Innsbruck and 1968 Grenoble Games, respectively. Easily the oldest Canadian player at Lake Placid, O’Malley had already collected a bronze medal for his country in the French Alps.

O’Malley later spent seven seasons in the 1970s as a player-coach in Japan for the Tokyo-based Seibu Tetsudo and Kokudo Keikaku clubs before rejoining the Canadian national team program.