Poland's Best In Brandon

In my search for fun hockey stories, I stumbled across the newspaper advertisement you see to the left announcing that the Polish National Hockey Team would be playing the Brandon University Bobcats on December 10. That advertisement was run in The Brandon Sun on December 8, 1978, and it wasn't something I was looking for when I was hunting through newspaper archives, but it certainly grabbed my attention. Whenever there's a reference to old Canadian university games that feature something unique, I'm interested. Mix in a rarely-seen national team and a defunct university program? Well, that's a story I had to investigate as it likely contained something great!

According to all accounts, the Polish National Hockey Team was visiting Canada for an six-game exhibition tour through western Canada during December of 1978. Brandon would be the only stop in Manitoba that the Polish team would make as Doug Steeves, chairman of the organizing committee of the tour, also worked as an assistant coach with the Brandon University Bobcats. Needless to say, getting a little international action for the Bobcats was something head coach Andy Murray hoped would draw people to see university hockey in a different light.

It seems that Canadian university hockey faced the same challenges it does today based on what Murray said to The Brandon Sun, noting Poland's promotion to the upper-tier of teams at the IIHF World Hockey Championships for 1978. People seem to ignore how good Canadian university hockey is at the best of times, so it makes sense that the Bobcats were banking on the idea that playing one of the top international teams might bring a few fans down to the Keystone Centre to witness how good the Bobcats were. Of course, playing well would also help their cause.

As the game neared, the Sokol Club in Brandon got involved to assist in welcoming the Polish National Team as they organized a traditional dinner and social get-together for the team on the Saturday night before the Sunday game. The club also was able to have the usherettes in the arena dressed in traditional Polish clothing, and they did a lot of work in helping Brandon University make the Polish players feel at home during their stay in the western Manitoba city.

So what happened in the game, you ask?

The first thing that the Bobcats learned as the game got underway is that Poland didn't play like usual European teams did - working as a system rather than operating as individuals - as head coach Andy Murray noted to Ken Coleman of The Brandon Sun. Murray also tossed in a comment about how the Polish squad was weak in their own zone, but I'm not certain the Bobcats should have been surprised about that considering that Poland was playing second-tier international hockey one year earlier. In any case, those observations from a coach of Andy Murray's stature should have been taken as constructive criticism on how the Poles could improve.

The Bobcats, for their part, rolled four lines against the Polish team while trying to prevent the Poles from playing as a unit by emphasizing speed. Defensively, Murray was pleased with his team standing up the Polish team and forcing them to make decisions before they hit the blue line while preventing them from setting up in the offensive zone. The coach seemed happy as Murray told Coleman, "That's probably our most consistent effort of the year."

The Polish squad did jump out to a 2-0 lead through the first period on goals by Stephan Chowaniec and Wieslaw Jobczyk who beat Kent Coey in the Brandon net, and, after killing off a 5-on-3 advantage for the Bobcats late in the second period, they made it a 3-0 game off Mieczylaw Jaskierski's goal past Tom O'Hara. The Bobcats would finally dent twine late in the frame when Jeff Taylor scored to make it a 3-1 game, but Poland seemed in control through two periods of play. If things seem way off compared to what Murray was describing, there were still 20 minutes to play. Would Poland hold their lead?

The Bobcats made their adjustments during the break, and they opened the period with a Gord Kaluzniak goal to make it a 3-2 game. They followed that up with goals by Kevin Melnyk and Rob Smith as the three-goals-in-six-minutes swing in momentum had the Bobcats up 4-3 before the midpoint of the period. Just past the 12-minute mark, Poland struck on the power-play when Andrzej Iskrzycki beat Ralph Bradbury to tie the game up at 4-4.

As time wound down, Poland began to exert more pressure on Brandon, but the Bobcast would weather the storm as the final horn sounded. The 4-4 game was a solid night of hockey for the 1068 fans who were in attendance, and Murray was proud of his team for how they showed against one of the world's top-ranked teams. As he said, in his mind, this was a good showing for university hockey when it came to the final results as Brandon scored four times on 35 total shots - three on 31 shots against Henryk Wojtynek and once on four shots against Henryk Buk. The Bobcats' goalies stopped 33 shots combined as each played one period.

Poland head coach Slamovir Barton didn't have a lot to say after the game, but he didn't seem pleased with the defensive lapse in the third period that allowed Brandon back into the game. Some of that may have due to his Eastern European background as Barton is Czechoslovakian, but he noted that he was teaching the Polish team to play more aggressively, stating, "One of the reasons we came here was to learn how to play aggressive. You have to play that way."

I'm not saying that Barton was forecasting anything, but the Polish team faced off against the Western International Hockey League's Calgary Stampeders on December 18, and they played extremely aggressively in building a 5-2 lead in the first period against Calgary before locking down a 6-4 victory over the Alberta team. Jobczyk, Chowaniec, Leszek Kokoszka, Andrzeh Zabawa, Jan Piecko, and Walenty Zietara all scored for Poland in that game, so Barton's plan seemed to work in both games by getting leads early. This time, however, they held that lead and took the win.

Finding information on this western Canadian set of games for the Polish National Team has proved a little tougher than I thought it would, but the big thing here is that the a university men's team coached by the legendary Andy Murray was able to skate with a World Championship-calibre team. I know there's still more-than-enough apathy towards university hockey in Canada, but having more exhibition games against emerging countries might help both sides.

No one is saying that the Brandon Bobcats men's hockey program were world-beaters in 1978, but they showed they could skate with one of the world's better teams for one game. And that's a cool story.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!