The 62nd anniversary of the USSR's first World Championship victory

62 years ago on the 7th of March, the USSR national team won their first ever World Championship gold medal.

The tournament took place in Stockholm, Sweden, and eight teams competed. Canada were the main favourites - they were already 15 times world champions, and during the course of the competition they won six out of six matches with a goal difference of 57:5. However, the USSR team were only one point behind in the group.

No one really believed in the USSR, and to be honest, it was quite understandable. In the past 34 years Canada had only lost two games at the Olympics and World Championship, and the Canadian head coach stated that his team would win easily by a minimum of four goals. People were so sure that Canada were going to win, they even began ticket sales for a USSR - Sweden match that would decide who are the European champions.

Over 16000 fans came to the stadium for that match between the USSR and Canada, and they were in for a huge shock. The USSR players came flying out of the blocks, and took their Canadian rivals completely unawares. It was already 4:0 just after the first period, and our team went on to thrash their opponents 7:2!

After the match, USSR forward Vsevolod Bobrov was named the IIHF's best player of the tournament.

USSR - Canada - 7:2 (4:0, 3:1, 0:1)

7th of March 1954. Stockholm, Sweden. Attendance 16726.

Members of the World Championship winning squad:

Goaltenders: Grigory Mktychan, Nikolai Puchkov.

Defencemen: Alexander Vinogradov, Pavel Zhiburtovich, Genrikh Sidorenkov, Dmitry Ukolov, Alfred Kuchevsky.

Forwards: Evgeny Babich, Vsevolod Bobrov, Alexander Komarov, Viktor Shuvalov, Mikhail Bichkov, Alexander Guryshev, Nikolai Khlystov, Yury Krylov, Valentin Kuzin, Alexander Uvarov.

Senior coach: Arkady Chernyshev.

Coach: Vladimir Egorov.

Russian Ice Hockey Federation