> 1980 hockey was no exception and featured "amateurs". Where the definition of "amateurs" differed wildly depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you were

> 1980 hockey was no exception and featured "amateurs". Where the definition of "amateurs" differed wildly depending on which side of the Iron Curtain you were from... Up to about 1985 the ice hockey World Championship was mostly about who would come second after the Soviet Union (usually Czechoslovakia). The Soviet Union's national team was largely identical to CSKA MOCKBA[1], whose players were all officers[2] who probably didn't do much else while on the clock than play, practice, or exercise for playing hockey. ___ [1]: Club Sport Krasnaja Armija, the Red Army Sports Club Moskva (Moscow) [2]: Long-time goalkeeper Vyacheslav Tretyak ended up a full colonel, IIRC.