Ice hockey at the 1972 Winter Olympics
The men's ice hockey tournament at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, was the 12th Olympic Championship. Games were held at the Makomanai Ice Arena and at the Tsukisamu Indoor Skating Rink. The Soviet Union won its fourth gold medal. The United States won the silver, while Czechoslovakia won the bronze. Canada did not send a team to the event for the first time since ice hockey was first competed at the Olympics in 1920, instead competing with and defeating the Soviets in a competition later that year known as the Summit Series. Canada would not send a men's hockey team to the Olympics until 1980.
Ice hockey at the 1972 Winter Olympics
1972 Olympic gold medal
Soviet Union men's national ice hockey team
The Soviet national ice hockey team was the national men's ice hockey team of the Soviet Union. From 1954, the team won at least one medal each year at either the Ice Hockey World Championships or the Olympic hockey tournament.
Vsevolod Bobrov during the 1956 Winter Olympics, the Soviet Union's first appearance at the Olympics.
75th anniversary postage stamp
Image: Boris Petrovich Mikhailov Panini 1979
Image: Vladimir Vladimirovich Petrov Panini 1979