Hockey on Maltsev

He was first recognized as the best striker of the World Cup at the age of 20. Today, the great Alexander Maltsev turned 70

Alexander Nikolaevich refers to the conversations about his greatness with undisguised irony. From him you will not hear stories in the spirit of “We are with Valerka” (and this, by the way, Valery Kharlamov, who was the best friend of Maltsev). There is little from it in general, both because of natural modesty, and simply because Maltsev absolutely does not need PR. And of course, he could tell the world a lot, because for more than a half decades, playing for the metropolitan “Dynamo” and the national team, was a world -class star. From the stars of Soviet hockey - perhaps the most unusual and not like anyone.

I'm not talking about titles and records, although there are more than enough of them. Two-time Olympic champion, 9-time world champion. 319 matches for the national team, 212 abandoned goals. At the Olympic tournaments, world and European championships - 128 matches, 93 goals. Statistics are crazy and far from complete. With assists, it would be even more impressive. But there are very special numbers.

In the national team, Maltsev played in 68 versions of attacking links. The exact amount to say the exact amount to say thank you - the work is considerable.

Such records are not fixed, and what to fix them after Maltsev?

He played with almost all the great, and none of them, even if Maltsev was included in the established link by a strong -willed decision, objected. Here Sasha Maltsev immediately and for many years ahead turned out to be a lifesaver for the national team. And for himself, it seems, there was no difference with whom to go on the ice.

In the form of the national team, he first went out in the link with the Armyman Vladimir Vikulov and the teammate Anatoly Motovilov. The last time his partners were Vyacheslav Bykov and Andrei Khomutov. Between these two exits to the ice is a whole era and the impression of the number of partners.

There is no such thing as the “Troika of Maltsev”, even if it was included in the symbolic team at the world championships twice as a center forward (as an extreme striker - three times). He could well become a three-time Olympic champion, but Maltsev was unhooked from a trip to Sarajevo-1984 because of some little things. He never became the champion of the country, despite the fact that hits into the prize -winners are a dozen. At the club level, he has only one title-for the Cup of the country-1972. He could not show off on the first legendary super -series, although Canadians appreciated his talent very highly.

There is some kind of lack of nothing in a brilliant career. Which, perhaps, would not have been if Maltsev played all his life for CSKA. Anatoly Tarasov, I suppose, would not mind. But Maltsev is devoted to Dynamo all his life. Maybe this "individual" helped him to remain himself. About the same story of the strongest (before the advent of Vyacheslav Fetisov) defender of domestic hockey and also Dynamo Valery Vasiliev.

Vasiliev in the judgments around me did not go. He believed that by natural talent in domestic hockey there were no equal ones - Vsevolod Bobrov and Alexander Maltsev. However, this was the first to notice exactly 50 years ago by the then President of the International Hockey Federation John Achaern, who called the 19-year-old Maltsev “second Bobrov”. I will add about him and the textbook Tarasovskoye:

"Yesenin of Russian hockey."

However, Konstantin Beskov himself believed that in the person of Maltsev the country lost a large football player. And the current coach of the Moscow Dynamo hockey and the countryman Vladimir Krikunov, who is only a year younger than Maltsev, once said that his partner in children and youth competitions could reach heights in any playing sport: “He was the best everywhere.”

Today, a player who has a village on the place of birth cannot be found during the day with fire. This is also an indicator of what happened to the Russian depth. True, three years after the birth of Sasha, the large family of Maltsevs from her native grids of the Prosnitsky district of the Kirov region moved to the nearest working village, which was about to become the city of Kirovo-Chepetsk. Due to the fact that he had already given the first secret products of the chemical plant under Litera “F”, built and worked for the Soviet nuclear project.

Father Nikolai Mikhailovich passed two wars, wounded the eighth under Berlin, had a modest locksmith, but the highest qualification. Mother Anastasia Stepanovna raised children. The morals of the Maltsev family were simple and correct, it was laid in all eight children, including Sasha.

If there weren’t a chemical plant, who had been striking for almost four decades on a defense industry with irreversible consequences for the environment, Kirovo-Chepetsk would not have thundered as a sports city, such a paradox. There would be no hockey “chemist”, which in the mid-60s became “Olympia”, and we would not know such a hockey player as Alexander Maltsev. Which was not accepted into the hockey section due to small stature. And by the age of ten he really played better, and at the gate - the role he easily changed after. It was not the section that the section was brought up by a unique player - all nature and yard did everything, then it was enough only to grind the talent carefully.

All his absolutely unique manner of strokes and finites, which were bought even the most experienced - from there, from childhood.

And the insidious cystic from there, and the speed, and the hidden pass, and the possession of the club, like a bow, and fanatics - from there.

At 17, Sasha Maltsev became the champion of Russia and brought his native Olympia to class “A”. This was already after he and the “chemist” (not Kirovo-Chepetsk, but the famous Voskresensky) at the Aherna Cup in Sweden beat the team of the hosts. In the "Chemist" he was sleeping and saw the inimitable Nikolai Epstein and even came to Kirovo-Chepetsk to agree with his parents. But the related “chemistry” did not help Semenich - the Dynamo arguments, then not yet great Viktor Tikhonov, were stronger.

On the brisons in Dynamo, a smart little girl for starting playing the “section” of the most double Olympic champion Vitaly Davydov. Arkady Chernyshev did not have to explain anything about the beginner to their mighty peasants - they all understood. A year later, Chernyshev included him in the national team. Where the 19-year-old could break through only if he played the best.

And where was it without Maltsev after his second Stockholm championship, at which he played, how he sang a song? I saw.

He was 20 years old. Life in Bolshoi Hockey was just beginning. Alexander Nikolaevich Maltsev told everything about her. On the ice. In one of the rarest interviews, he formulated the credo: “I think that I did not make enemies with my most important achievement.”

And now, probably, you can be silent.