How the Trail Smoke Eaters won in ’61

When the Trail Smoke Eaters won the world amateur hockey championship in 1961, not only did they have to beat the Soviet Union in the final game of the tournament, they had to do so by a certain number of goals. This is sort of well known. But oh, my shooting stars, until now I had no idea just how complicated it all was! And some of what has been said about the subject is wrong.

The 1961 world champion Trail Smoke Eaters. (Greg Nesteroff collection)

Twenty countries took part in the International Ice Hockey Federation’s tournament at Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland, broken into three groups. Canada was among eight teams in pool A. The winner of this division, as determined by the final standings (two points for a win, one point for a tie), would be declared the world champion.

The first indication a tiebreaker might be necessary appeared in a Canadian Press dispatch on March 3, which casually noted that “if two or more teams are deadlocked in points at the end of the tournament, the title will go to the country with the highest [goal] differential.”

This theoretical concern became a live issue as the tournament progressed. The Toronto Star’s Jim Proudfoot clarified that it wasn’t the goal differential from the entire tournament that mattered, but only in those games involving the top five teams in the standings — which you couldn’t know until the tournament was over, or close to it. I guess the idea was that blowout victories against weak teams shouldn’t count.

There were a couple of supplementary tiebreakers if the primary one did not settle things, but these did not preclude the possibility of double or triple champions being crowned.

Toronto Star, March 9, 1961

At the tournament neared its end, Proudfoot’s “mathematician’s paradise” became what Stewart MacLeod of The Canadian Press dubbed “a statistician’s nightmare.” Canada, the Soviet Union, or Czechoslovakia could take the title in one of seven potential scenarios. (Curiously some newspapers that carried MacLeod’s dispatch only included six scenarios. Perhaps he belatedly added another?)

Nanaimo Daily News, March 10, 1961

The top five clubs turned out to be Canada, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and East Germany.

An additional wrinkle was that East Germany ended up in the top five after being awarded a 5-0 default win over West Germany, which refused to play the match for political reasons. (Why 5-0 and not 1-0? I have no idea.) Heading into the final day of competition, Czechoslovakia held a goal differential of +6 against the other four top teams while Canada was +8.

“We couldn’t know what kind of a goals margin would be needed until the Czechs played the Swedes,” Canadian team manager Jim Cameron wrote in his book The Last Time We Won Hockey.

Czechoslovakia defeated Sweden in its final game 5-2 to improve its goal differential to +9. That meant to win the championship, Canada had to beat the Soviet Union by at least two. The scores in the relevant matches leading up to the final game are as follows:

CANADA

March 2: Canada 6, Sweden 1

March 7: Canada 5, East Germany 2

March 9: Canada 1, Czechoslovakia 1

Total: 12 goals for, 4 goals against, difference of +8

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

March 7: Czechoslovakia 6, Soviet Union 4

March 9: Czechoslovakia 1, Canada 1

March 11: Czechoslovakia 5, East Germany 1

March 12: Czechoslovakia 5, Sweden 2

Total: 17 goals for, 8 goals against, difference of +9

In his book Trail on Ice, Murray Greig presents a different scenario: while he agrees the goal differential was based on the top five teams and that Czechoslovakia held a one-goal edge over Canada heading into the last game of the tournament, he adds:

Besides the one goal edge in for-and-against differential, the Czechs had the advantage of having defeated Russia by two (6-4), which gave them a “combined” cushion of three goals. Therefore the Smokies would have to beat the Russians by at least four goals to guarantee the championship.

That “combined cushion” is not mentioned in any other source I can find. However, the film Trophy Town agrees with Greig on the number of goals required. Narrator Ray Ferraro says: “Because the medals were awarded on a cumulative points basis … the Smokies could only win the gold by beating the Russians by a seemingly impossible four goals.”

I don’t know how many goals the Canadian players thought they had to win their final game by. According to Jim Cameron: “One sure way to kindle fire in Bobby [Kromm, Canada’s coach] was to talk about the goals-for-and-against-formula.” Kromm just told his players: “You just beat the Russians the best you can.”

But people listening to the game in Trail were told the magic number was three.

A recording of the radio broadcast survives that you can buy on CD from the Trail Museum. The announcers had surprisingly little to say about the matter as the game unfolded, although the recording doesn’t include between-period discussions, where it might have been addressed in greater detail.

During the first half of the game, play-by-play man Bill Stephenson indicated Canada had to beat the Soviet Union for the championship to be decided on goal differential, but didn’t state how big a spread was required.

When Canada scored midway through the second period to make it 2-0, Stephenson finally said: “The goal average now is even with a 2-0 game for Canada. If they can hold a two-goal margin over the Soviet Union, they can draw even with Czechoslovakia in the goals for and against.”

Stephenson added: “That’s providing East Germany finishes in the fifth spot. And as you have heard, they may not. It could be Finland. So we’ll have to wait and see.” (This suggests Finland’s final match against the United States was being played at the same time. Had Finland finished fifth, it would have been to Canada’s advantage, because Canada had earlier blasted the Finns 12-1. Instead, Finland lost to the US and finished seventh.)

When Canada went up 3-0 soon afterward, colour commentator Russ Taylor proclaimed: “That’s the goal the Trail Smoke Eaters need to win the championship on goals for and against from Czechoslovakia.”

But they were wrong: Canada had already drawn even with Czechoslovakia when it went up 1-0 against the Soviet Union. With its second goal, Canada took the lead in the first tie-breaker criterion. I don’t know why the broadcasters thought Canada needed a three-goal difference, but in their defence, it was complicated!

Canada went up 4-0 early in the third period before the Soviets cut the lead to 4-1.

When only a few minutes remained, Stephenson said: “Our calculations have the Trail Smoke Eaters winning the world hockey championship if they hang on to the three-goal margin they have over the Soviet Union.” He added soon afterward: “One goal could make the difference between the championship and not having it for the Smoke Eaters, that’s how vital the game is right now.”

This was also wrong. Canada would have won the championship had the final score been 2-0, 3-1, or 4-2. So one more Soviet goal once it was 4-1 would not have made a difference.

In actuality, Norm Lenardon scored late in the game to put Canada up 5-1 and seal the victory. It was an incredibly memorable insurance goal — indeed, the most famous goal in Trail hockey history — but it was not actually required to win the championship.

Canada ended up three goals ahead of Czechoslovakia, as confirmed by The Canadian Press: “Against Russia, Czechoslovakia, Sweden and East Germany … Canada scored 17 goals and allowed five for a differential of 12. The Czechs scored 17 goals and allowed eight against the same teams for a differential of nine.”

“I don’t know what would have happened if the Smokies had beaten Russia by one goal,” Jim Cameron wrote. “Perhaps the Czechs, with a two-goal edge on Russia, would have won the tournament … Some of us figured a two-goal edge was needed [for Canada to win], but we sure kept quiet about it.”

Had Canada defeated the Soviets by only a single goal, a second tiebreaker would have been required, as described in the Toronto Star: “Divide goals against into goals scored and the club with the largest average is winner. Again consider only the top five teams.”

Under these circumstances, it would have depended what the final score was in Canada’s last game. Czechoslovakia’s final ratio was 2.125. Below is a chart showing what Canada’s ratio would have been based on different scores against the Soviet Union (in each case, assuming Canada wins by one):

Score	Ratio
1-0	3.25
2-1	2.8
3-2	2.5
4-3	2.29
5-4	2.125
6-5	2

So Canada was actually in pretty good shape in the event of a one-goal victory: so long as they didn’t let the game turn into a shootout, their ratio would have tied or bested Czechoslovakia and they still would have been world champions.

Had Canada won 5-4, another tiebreaker would have been required (“The club scoring the most goals against the other four of the top five clubs”) that would have resulted in another tie! Canada and Czechoslovakia would have each scored 17 goals against the other top teams in this scenario.

At that point, the IIHF would have thrown up its hands and declared Canada and Czechoslovakia to be co-champions. So it was much cleaner for Canada just to win its final game by two goals or more.

My belief that Canada only needed to win by two instead of three or four rested on the Toronto Star and Canadian Press stories quoted above, so I asked the IIHF to vouch for their accuracy. They confirmed that Canada needed to beat the Soviets by two and agreed the second tiebreaker would have resulted in the scenarios I have described above.

A point worth emphasizing: if the Soviet Union had defeated Canada by any score, neither Canada nor the Soviets would have been the champion. Instead the Czechoslovakians would have spilled onto the ice to collect the trophy. (In fact, they did walk out, “smiling bravely,” to receive the European championship cup.) This scenario happened on a number of occasions (more on that below).

And if the scheduling had been different, Canada could have first defeated the Soviet Union, then been forced to wait await the outcome of the Czechoslovakia-Sweden match to learn whether they were champions (more on that below too).

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Why did the IIHF make things so confusing?

For decades the organization relied on variations of this round-robin format, where the winner was determined based on standings, subject to various tie-breaking criteria, rather than a winner-take-all final, as we are now accustomed to in the Olympics.

Relying on standings and tie-breakers seems like an okay way to seed a playoff round but a terrible (and often anticlimactic) way to determine a champion. As a spectator, I want the tournament’s final game to determine the championship. I also want the winner of that final to be the champion and I want their opponent to finish second. The IIHF’s old system guaranteed none of these things and resulted in outcomes that look absurd to modern eyes.

This seemed like a good exercise to assign to ChatGPT, which searched the IIHF record book so I didn’t have to. First, it found 20 occasions between 1931 and 1991 where the eventual winner of the tournament was not involved in the final game. So that’s about one-third of the time.

As the bot put it: “That is indeed a wonderfully alien feature to modern sports fans. In those cases, the eventual champion could finish its tournament, shower and change, and then have to wait for another game to determine whether it had actually won the gold medal.”

The bot clarified that 20 was its best count under “strict chronological interpretation,” but simultaneous final-round games made it difficult to be certain.

Additionally, it was possible for a country to clinch the championship before it had played its final game. In 1971, the tournament was a double round robin, with each team playing 10 games and the final standings determining the champion. The Soviet Union had already secured the title before it played its final match, a 10-1 victory over Finland. For the Soviets, it was a meaningless contest. For the Finns, it determined whether they would finish third or fourth.

So there were three ways to secure the IIHF title in this era:

1) Win your final game to clinch first place in the standings, with the possibility that you may also need to score a certain number of goals, as Trail did in 1961.

2) Clinch the championship before your final game, then go out and play again to help determine the final standings of the other teams, as the Soviet Union did in 1971.

3) Finish your schedule and then wait for the outcome of another game to decide whether you are the champion.

Weirder still, in the last scenario, the championship team comes down from the stands in their suits to receive the trophy. ChatGPT identified precisely such a scenario in 1977, when Czechoslovakia had to wait for the outcome of the Sweden-Soviet Union match before spilling onto the ice to celebrate. I found photos of that ceremony. Even stranger, Czechoslovakia won the tournament despite being routed 8-2 by Canada in their last game!

The IIHF finally came to its senses in 1992 and switched to a format we recognize today: a playoff bracket where the champion is determined in the last match of the tournament, winner take all. In this way, the best is (usually) saved for last and no arithmetic is required to determine the champion beyond the score in that game.

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When the 1939 Trail Smoke Eaters won their world championship for Canada, it was through a different but still rather complicated format, which did result in a winner-take-all final.

The 14 teams were divided into two groups of four and two groups of three. The top two teams in each group moved on to the second round, where there were two groups of four. The top two teams from each of these groups then moved on to the semi-finals. (There was also a series of consolation matches, which we’ll ignore.)

The 1938 Trail Smoke Eaters, who went on to win the 1939 world championship. (Greg Nesteroff collection)

Heading into the final, Canada had won all seven of its games at the tournament by a combined score of 38-1. (Czechoslovakia was the only country to put a puck past Trail’s Duke Scodellaro.)

But what mattered was the standings in the final round. Canada and the United States both had records of 2-0, so whoever won their showdown would claim the championship. Despite steamrolling the opposition up to that point at both the tournament and in exhibition matches across Europe, Trail still had to win the final game over the US. They did so, 4-0.

But one final twist: the tournament didn’t conclude for another three weeks!

Switzerland and Czechoslovakia were supposed to play each other to decide both third place and the European championship. For reasons I haven’t been able to determine, the game was postponed. Switzerland eventually prevailed.