Canadian ice hockey legend Phil Esposito, who turned 80 in February, is a titled NHL player and the best scorer of the 1972 Super Series, which were played between the national teams of Canada and the Soviet Union. In an interview with TASS, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Super Series, Esposito recalls how he was initially skeptical about the then-upcoming matches against the USSR team and also compared them with the NHL All-Star games. Esposito also spoke about how he searched for spying devices in his Moscow hotel, about hopes to meet with the players of the former Soviet hockey team and about shooting a documentary on the 1972 Super Series with President Vladimir Putin’s commentary in it.

— Phil, I’m glad to speak with you. The ice is clean, and the puck is frozen, let’s get to the action. How are you doing and what you’ve been up to recently in general?

— I’m fine. I’m doing well. I feel good. I’m still doing what I do. I play golf twice a week and work a little bit. Sometimes three times a week I play golf, and go out at least twice a week for dinner with my wife. We have a good time. 

— So you have swapped an ice hockey stick to a golf club?

— I try. I’m not as good at golf as I was in hockey. 

— But are you close to the level of Tiger Woods?

— No! Not even a drop in the bucket. 

— Do you still play hockey, maybe a little bit, or do you skate?

— I don’t do that very often. The only time I skate really is when I go to Russia. Mostly, I don’t do it here. I go and visit Scotty MacPherson [general manager of KHL HC Kunlun Red Star], who lives in Moscow. Then I see [Vladislav] Tretiak and Yaki [Alexander Yakushev] and other guys. I still remember these guys’ names, I still remember them all…, the guys, who are still with us. I think about my brother [professional hockey goalkeeper Tony Esposito, played in 1972 Super Series, died in August 2021], who has passed away. A lot of that goes through my mind. But that’s the way it goes, if you know what I mean. Life goes on.

— How did you survive the COVID-19 situation? I heard that Canada was hit hard by the pandemic.

— I don’t know. As far as Canada is concerned, I haven’t been to Canada for a long, long time. My sister is still there, and they survive, but they don’t survive very well like I guess. I don’t know what is going on in Canada. I don’t understand that the country is becoming socialistic. I don’t get involved in politics very much…, but I don’t understand why anybody would want that. I mean, would you like to go back to Communism in Russia? 

— I almost missed that time, and Communism wasn’t built in the Soviet Union.

— And the majority of people would not. I mean, Jesus, to live under oppression? 

— It seems that many of the West’s steps are aimed at restricting freedoms. A person cannot say anymore what he wants to say and is forced to say whatever society demands …

— Right, that’s the old way. I just don’t want to see it ever happen. Ever. Anyway, we still have hockey. 

— But I’m sure that you follow the recent developments, when politics interfered in the Olympic Movement and with sports in general, resulting in a ban of the Russian hockey national squad from international tournaments.

— Well, I’m not the fan of the Olympics. Not a fan. I don’t believe in closing your business down and giving your product for nothing. I just don’t believe in it. Basketball plays there in the Olympics in the summer time. There is no reason why hockey could not do that in September, like we did that with the Super Series in 1972 or with the World Cups. Olympics should be for amateurs and amateurs only. 

— Just like boxing in the Olympics?

— Yeah, for amateurs. If they are getting paid by somebody under the table, then that’s a different story. They need to make a living too. But I don’t believe in guys making nine, ten million dollars a year just leaving their jobs and going overseas to play in the Olympics. I do not believe in that. It’s just me. I voted against it in 1998, when it first started, because I was doing the Lightning then [Esposito served the president of NHL club Tampa Bay Lightning at that time], and I never changed my mind about it since then. 

— To be honest, being a Russian, I personally view the 1998 Winter Olympics hockey tournament as the best one in history. It was a great Russian team with NHL players on the roster.

—It was the first place, and it was in Japan. It was not on TV here till three or four in the morning. So nobody watched it. 

— In Russia, it was at six in the morning...

— Six o’clock in the morning is better than three. 

— You earlier mentioned that you were going to be a part of a conference attended by members of the Hockey Canada Board of Directors and dedicated to possible events on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Super Series.

— Yeah. It’s about Team Canada ‘72 and what we are going to do to celebrate. And are we going to do something or try to do something with the Russians? I want to, and I voiced my opinion to the Board’s last meeting. I said that I would like to do something with the Russian guys – they can come over here, and we can go over there and vice versa. We will see. Maybe, we can’t and you know why? It’s because of politics. Because of stupid, stupid politics that has no business in sports.” 

— If it is possible to go to Moscow, would you be glad to meet with Vladislav Tretiak and other guys from the national team of the then-Soviet Union?

— Sure, it is possible. I am actually planning on it sometime this year - either in September or sometime in October maybe. I’m planning it. Absolutely. Look, I figure them as my friends. I would like to see them and that’s all. 

— Getting back to the upcoming 50th anniversary celebrations of the 1972 Super Series, what are your expectations, how do you assess them and what impact have they had on the global sports and ice hockey in particular?

— I think that it did change the face of hockey, especially in Canada. I don’t know, but I think, it also changed the face of hockey in Russia. I do. Russians played more of a style that we played in the 1970s and in the 1980s, and we are playing more like the Russians did in the 1970s and the 1980s. That’s a good thing because you get the best of both. When I watch a guy like [Nikita] Kucherov play, I’m amazed at his talent. But sometimes, he outthinks everybody on the ice, you know what I mean, he’s a very smart hockey player, very smart. Then I watched [Andrey] Vasilevsky. My brother and I started talking about Vasi [Vasilevsky], when he first got here, and my brother said that he moves like a cat. And they call him the Big Cat. That’s what they are calling him here – the Big Cat. I really like him. [Mikhail] Sergachev lives not even a block and a half away from me. I don’t get to see them much, because they are younger, they got their lives, plus they make more money than I made in my lifetime - in one year. 

— Aren’t you jealous?

— I am not jealous because that’s the way the time is. I do think it’s more than I ever thought hockey could afford. That’s what I think. But with more television coming into the picture - and they’ve done a great job, the NHL with TV, no doubt about it – with more of coming into the picture - that means more revenue and the players are very important and very powerful. I’m okay with that and think that it’s a great partnership as long as one side doesn’t get too greedy like it used to be in the 1960s and 1970s, when I was one-sided for the owners. But now, it’s pretty much a 50/50 thing, but I now hope the players do not get too greedy and, I hope, the owners do not get greedy again. 

— By the way, I believe that the 50/50 principle seems not to be currently employed in the NBA as its players seem to pose more important roles. For instance, Kevin Durant (NBA’s Brooklyn Nets), had inked a four-year deal but then announced plans to part ways with the club.

— Yeah. If he is making $20 million a year for about 10-15 years now, why the heck does he have to worry about it? 

— Let’s get back again to the 1972 Super Series. Is it true that you initially turned down an offer to be a part of it?

— I turned it down twice. Once, when Harry Sinden [then-Canada’s Hockey Team Head Coach] called me, and once, when Alan Eagleson [then-Executive Director of the NHL Players Association] called me. I turned it down. I didn’t want to go, my brother didn’t want to go. We had a nice hockey school, we were fine, and we were going to a training camp and I thought that it was going to be like an All-Star Game, and I was not interested. Then, Bobby Orr called me, and Bobby asked me to play because he couldn’t [play] because of his knees. And he was my teammate and my friend. And because Bobby asked me - I played. My brother was forced [to play], because with me going, and he could not. Now, if he was not a good goalie, he could have. But he was a hell of a goalie. Then, I was against that being called Team Canada. Because they would not let Bobby Hull play or Gordie Howe play or Gerry Cheevers or Davey Keon, or a bunch of guys playing in the World Hockey Association. They were Canadians, we should have been called Team NHL. Period, case is closed. It’s because we did not have all the representation of the Canadians… As long as you are a Canadian and you are committed to your team, you should play. That’s it. That’s the way I believe, I actually said it at a meeting, and I was told to keep my opinions to myself. Of course, I could not do that, because I’m not just that way. I’ll say what I think, when I think it. I can’t help myself, for 80 years I’ve been doing this. I’m not changing. 

— Back then, did you think that it would be an easy walk for your team against the Soviet hockey team?

— No, I didn’t have a clue. Not a clue! I had never watched them practice. I remember the first time I saw them with what they had - skates were old, the gloves were ripped and equipment was bad – and I was saying what the hell is going on with these guys. And then that first game, everything was new. They got beautiful stuff. Reminds me of all these immigrants coming from Venezuela to the United States, when they cross the border they have new sweat suits on, new sneakers. How did they do that?! 

— Like a ‘Cinderella’ fairy tale.

— Jesus, that’s right, mate. If I was younger, I think they would try to shut me up, but I am too old now. 

— So there was no underestimation of the Soviet ice hockey players on behalf of the Canadian team?

— I was led to believe that this was going to be like one of the NHL All-Star Games that they are playing now – a bullsh** thing, a bullsh** exhibition series. I had no idea. After that first game, when we got three penalties in the first period, and clearly they blitzed us, I remember that in the dressing room, when it was 93 degrees [Fahrenheit, almost 34 degrees Celsius] in Montreal and there was no air conditioning – we didn’t train properly. We didn’t train properly at all, and we were not ready to play. At least I know that I was not, and I am sure that a lot of the other guys weren’t either. After that first game I remember saying to Harry Sinden ‘You better pick a team of 20 guys and let us play. I know you promised all these guys to play a game’ and we had 35 guys. I don’t know whether they… I think they thought it was going to be more like an exhibition series. Because why would you get 35 people and promise every one of them to play if you knew? But, then I found out something, and I make jokes about it all the time. The scouts that scouted the Russian players back then were the two scouts that scouted for Toronto Maple Leafs. Then I realized why the Maple Leafs were always in the last place. Their scouts were terrible. It was crazy, Holy Christ, how they could not see it, I mean come on! Then, one of the scouts, said ‘Oh I did not know that Tretiak got married the night before I watched them play… But, after that first game we realized that this was not going to be easy – Holy Christ, this is not going to be easy, how do we get ourselves in shape. How? That’s when I said to Harry pick 20 players, but he didn’t. We changed [players] in Toronto, then we changed again in Winnipeg. But then he kept my brother in the net in Winnipeg. Tony wasn’t in shape to play two games in a row, he just wasn’t. He had no shots, he had no practice – nothing. So, they should’ve alternated there. But they ended up tying. Then in Vancouver it was just a complete fiasco, because we changed all of the players again. I played every game, and Brad [Park] played every game, we had certain guys playing every game. But it still wasn’t right putting guys in and out of the lineup. Honestly, when Vic Hadfield, Jocelyn Guevremont, I believe, and Gilbert Perreault left and went home, I had no problems with it. Some of the players didn’t like it. I said ‘are you kidding – if I wasn’t playing do you think I would stay here in Moscow at this hotel’, and you couldn’t even venture out, there wasn’t a restaurant around. It was called the Intourist Hotel, and now I think it’s a Ritz Carlton. We were not allowed to walk across Red Square and certain places. Now, I got on my phone - my page you know when you open my phone there’s me with a Team Canada jersey in the middle of Red Square, with the Kremlin behind me. That’s the truth, I took the picture there. Right in Moscow we were playing out in Red Square and, boy, was it a big rink. But we were playing, and I got my picture taken there, that’s my favorite picture and I have it on my phone, whenever you open it up and whatever that’s called.

— It’s called a screensaver.

— Yeah, a screensaver. Thank you. That’s my screensaver. But let me put it this way – when we got to Moscow, we were so taken back. I was. Not we, I’m gonna talk, for me, from my point of view. I was so taken back by the restrictions for the people. People lined up outside of a grocery store. They opened a store at 10:00 o’clock and if you are lucky enough to get bread and milk or whatever you needed – fine, but at 12:00 they closed. And I was like ‘Wow, imagine living like that.’ I felt sorry for the people. I did. I mean, we did not see anybody, just at the hotel. But I can tell you this. When I went back there in 2012, and it took me 40 years to really, really go back and look, and I’m sitting there in a restaurant outside, in Moscow, and the most gorgeous women in the world were walking by. I said, where were all these broads when we were here in 1972? Gorgeous women, gorgeous! 

— You mentioned the game in Vancouver and after that game you delivered a speech on TV. Was it a pre-arranged speech?

— I didn’t know what the hell I was saying, and I never saw it for ten years. Ten years later I saw it. And honest to God, there were a bunch of kids, they were in their twenties, early twenties, and three or four of them yelling: ‘Communism is better’. That really got me and everyone else. I don’t know how I kept going on without swearing, but I came close to it a couple of times to tell you the truth. 

— But it was a turning point in the series?

— Yes, and all of a sudden for the [whole] country… If we [Team Canada] go over there and beat them and the Russians booed their people like you guys booed us, I’ll come back and apologize. But the Russian people didn’t do that. Maybe they were disappointed, but they did not say a word. Maybe they could not, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. I think they respected the fact of hockey, they respected the games and these games could not have been any closer. 

— Is it true that while staying in a Moscow hotel at that time you did something that sent a chandelier in a room one floor below you crashing down? 

— Oh, let me put it this way. There is an old story about that. It’s not exactly true. It’s not, but people love it when you say there is ‘a banquet, as a speech’ they laugh. There was a marine base or something, somewhere close to Moscow. Where we had one American on our team – one - and that was our trainer John Forestal. When that happened, they would go over to – and he was an ex-Marine - so they would go over to the marine [base] and come back plastered drunk, drunk, drunk… Seemed that we found them, microphones, we found some in our bedroom and found one behind the mirror. Then we were sitting on floor and found a lump under the rug. Of course, there were five little screws. Now here is where the story takes the change, right. I casually got a pen knife and unscrewed the five screws and then there was a metal box with four screws and we unscrewed that and we heard a huge crash and when we looked through - we unscrewed the chandelier in the ballroom. Now, that did not happen. But it was a funny story that would emphasize it… The phones we picked would keep me calling at three-thirty, four in the morning waking me up. I remember pulling the phone out of the wall and they came up and knocked on the door trying to fix the phone right there. I said – do you realize that trying to get this phone fixed in Canada immediately even now would take at least three days? Even now! That was an unbelievable experience! 

— Indeed unbelievable. Just like in the movies.

— Yeah. I do know a lot of people who done books, they tried to do a movie about it… but they didn’t do the movie justice. They did not do the movie justice. No doubt about that. Unfortunately, when it was produced by CBC, they don’t put any money in there. There are the cheapest, tightest people I’ve ever met in television. So that was supposed to be government-controlled and I could understand that. If it’s government-controlled, they don’t want to spend a damn penny. So, I never saw the movie, but other people have told me that it was not very good. I saw excerpts of it, and I didn’t think it was very good either. So, consequently, I think they missed the boat on really doing a great movie. 
Now I did a documentary called Espo’s Russia. We were going to bring it out this year and I was up on ahead of one more segment to do and we wanted to do it with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. He agreed to do it. But then COVID struck and we couldn’t come over there. We didn’t come over there. He and I got along pretty well – Putin and I. I think he respected the fact that I played hard and everything else. He did ask me one time: ‘didn’t I feel embarrassed when I fell down’ [at an exhibition match in Moscow] when I got introduced. I told him that ‘you can either laugh or you can cry about that.’ I chose to laugh about it. He put his thumb up like OK. 

— Speaking about Putin, what do you think about his ice hockey skills because he started to skate and play late in life?

— He is not that good of a skater but he likes to shoot the puck. I remember the guys saying that ‘you’ve got to move away from the president’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m going to go stick-by-stick to stop him from shooting, to lift his stick up and steal the puck from him and he said Phil no, no. I did and he smiled and he laughed. 

—Russians talk about how President Putin plays hockey. When I spoke earlier with (former IIHF President Rene) Fasel about this, he said that he had nothing but respect for Putin because he made such a brave move to start playing hockey at his age.

— I think it was great for Putin. I did. I thought it was great that he goes on the ice. I didn’t play against him a lot, but I think it was [Alexey] Kasatonov, who said ‘Phil, let him go, let him shoot.’ But I said, ‘Are you kidding if I’m out there I’m not going to allow it, if I can get the puck I’m going to take the puck and he goes on ‘let him just shoot’ I said okay relax, I did a couple of times and a couple of times I’d hook the puck away from him. He’d smile, actually smiled, and I say ‘Not now!’ Look, you gotta have fun on the ice, you gotta have fun, and he was having fun. You could see it. He was having fun. 

— You mentioned films about the 1972 Super Series. We have a very popular movie in Russia about the hockey series and it particularly focuses on Valery Kharlomov. The movie is titled ‘Legend No. 17’. But you were portrayed as ‘the bad guy’ in this movie, almost like a real animal.

— Look, I was not afraid of anything. My feeling was: they can get me, but could they keep me here – probably – would the government allow it? But who cares if you can’t live your life the way you want, then it’s gone to hell. I see things like this happening in the United States right now. It is sad and it really is. Politically, it’s getting worse. We’ve got some very crazy people that are very greedy in politics. It’s my opinion and nobody is going to change it… I became an American citizen in 2008. I’m a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. The first time I voted I think was in 2012 maybe for the presidential election. 

— I think it was when Barack Obama won the presidential election.

— Yeah, Obama won, but I didn’t vote. I didn’t vote for Obama and I couldn’t vote for the other guy, too, I can’t remember who he was. Isn’t that awful, but I couldn’t vote for him either. So, I voted for other things. My wife asked me how come you’re not voting for president. I said, well, I don’t care for Obama and the other guy is too weak. Way too weak. And that’s to me what [US President Joe] Biden is. He is weak. It’s okay, he kept trying, and trying, and trying but finally he won. But my thing is, why do you want mess with people that are in, what we call, the middle class? What is the middle class? Does anybody know what the real middle class is? I don’t think so. Is it somebody making $100,000, is somebody making $50,000, or somebody making $200,000? I don’t understand it. I don’t make a lot of money, I never have, player or not, but I live fine, I live more than fine. I’m pretty happy with the way I live. I would not change. If I had a billion dollars the only thing I would change - I would fly my own airplane. That’s the only thing I’d change. Because flying commercials sucks. Oh, they are bad, all the airlines suck. 

— I just love what we’re talking about! Were your fans vociferous when you were on the ice in Moscow or quiet as mouse?

— We played four games there [in Moscow]. I don’t know what game. I know they were loud in some games. Very loud. And I thought that the Russian people could not understand why was there all of this yelling, why all of the screaming. I didn’t think they did that over there, I guess. They whistled. Most Canadians and Americans cannot whistle. 

— Did they put their fingers in their mouth [to whistle]?

— They like [whistling] through their fingers, so it’s loud. Really loud! But look, honestly, I’ve found and I told people back here in the States that people in Moscow, people in Saint Petersburg, in Ufa, I’ve been to Belarus, I’ve been all over the place, all over Russia, people are the same everywhere. The people are the same as we are here. The only difference is the freaking politics and the people that are greedy. And the people that want power – it’s all about the freaking power. I believe that if the United States and Russia are not together – we are both doomed. We should be together and it goes back to World War II… Young people – they don’t have a clue. I say that if you want to go on a nice vacation, go to Russia. Moscow is like being New York on steroids. St. Petersburg is beautiful, it’s got inlets and lakes, lots of water, it’s great, like being in Boston basically. And the people are so nice. By the way, we have been talking for almost 50 minutes. 

— Unbelievable, but the last question to wrap it up – is there a chance for another edition of the Super Series that can change the world and the current situation?

— Another Super Series? I don’t think you can do that again because the Russian hockey players, the Canadian players, the Swedish, the Finns, the Czechs, the Americans – they all play in the NHL and we get to see them… You don’t remember because you are not old enough, I can tell you this. You don’t remember the way it was. People don’t remember in 1972 the way things were. Over the political span of the thing. We still had the Berlin Wall, we still had Communism… It does not make sense [organizing another edition of Super Series]. The thing is I am surprised at is all these years no one, the United States nor Canada, has tried to take the other one over. But it happened in Europe. Why? Because Europe is older, much older place than North America. That’s what I tell about to people in Tampa Bay Lightning. We’ve been in existence for 30 years, we have already won three Stanley Cups and we don’t have the tradition that they have in Toronto, Boston, New York, Chicago, Montreal. We don’t have that tradition. We just have what we have and we won’t have that tradition for another 30 years, because you have to build this tradition. 
I do know we have over 10,000 people on a wait list against a ticket to get season tickets. It’s successful, we’ve sold out every game for the last three or four years amounting to over 20,000. But still, up north in Toronto, New York, Boston, up in Canada they say how do you play hockey in Florida. You know what I tell them? 

— What?

— You dumb-dumbs, we play indoors! We don’t play outside, you dumb-dumbs. How stupid and what a dumb thing – no hockey in Florida? My Foundation just gave a kid $10,000 scholarship to pay for some tuition to go to school to play hockey. He is 14 years old, he lives across the street from me and he is a really good player, he’s only 14. He can’t go to Canada because he hasn’t been vaccinated. I said don’t go – screw ‘em! He was supposed to go to a tournament in Winnipeg in September. Nobody should be forced to do something that you don’t want to do. Nobody. If you do that with a woman it’s rape. [If] you do it to a human being what the hell is that?

— Some kind of slavery?

— Yes, slavery! That’s it. There are so many things great about the world, but there are so many things bad. And it’s getting worse because you’ve got these ego-maniacs, son-of-a-bitches that get trillions and billions and billions of dollars that nothing that happens in the world will ever affect them. Do they give a damn? They don’t give a damn about you or me, they don’t care. Like over here they want to pass another bill to raise taxes again. When I think of that I think – Okay, you want to raise taxes again, how many people would go down the tubes? We are in a recession. The United States is in recession, so is Europe in a lot of ways. We are going to be looking for food, all of us soon, soon. 
We’ve got more oil and gas here than you have in Russia but we don’t dig for it, we don’t do it. [Former US President Donald] Trump did it and that was great. It was great. That’s why I like Trump. He didn’t give a sh**, he was a goddamn politician, he never took a penny from them, he never ever took his salary. 

— Such a shame how they hounded ex-US President Trump about the alleged Russia collusion?

— Come on, what the hell? And I mean it’s all about hating the Russians again. I don’t agree with that. I’ve been all over there, I’ve been with you people. They [Russians] are beautiful, nice people. I’ve been over to China and I’m not crazy about them, to tell you the truth. Andrey, this has been very pleasurable, but it’s been 56 minutes and counting on my cell phone. I enjoyed talking to you and when I come over there I really want meet you… Listen, if we can’t get [Vladimir] Putin to get this little thing with me [for the documentary] we just have to figure out a different ending, that’s all. I appreciate it, Andrey, and you take care!

This interview was conducted by TASS correspondent Andrey Kartashov