Henderson’s Summit Series goal frozen in time

Henderson and Tretiak, who became friends as their paths crossed during four-plus subsequent decades, met at a reception in Moscow after Game 8, with Tretiak telling the Canadian through an interpreter that his winning goal was the product of luck. Henderson’s terse reply was best left without translation.Celebrating back in Toronto, babysitting Paul and Eleanor Henderson’s three young daughters, were future Toronto Maple Leafs forward Darryl Sittler and his wife, Wendy, who both had moved into the Henderson home.Fast forward 41 years to Stockholm and Henderson’s 2013 induction into the IIHF Hall of Fame.”Who walks out to introduce me but Tretiak,” Henderson said. “Unbelievable. It surprises everybody. Tretiak is priceless, classy. Of course, he had to say some nice things about me, so he did.”But then he looked at me and said, ‘Paul, I know how you were able to score that last goal. I’ve looked at the replays over and over and I know the reason you scored.’ There was a long pause, he probably waited 20 seconds even, looking at me, and said finally, ‘Paul, the reason you scored that goal was … very bad goaltending.’ Honest to God, he brought the house down. They gave him a standing ovation. And then Tretiak told me that my goal was divine-intervention, that God was on my side, not his, that night.”That claim gave Henderson pause; he had become a Christian in 1975. During the 1980s, with the Soviet Union still behind the Iron Curtain, he brought Russian-language Bibles there on a tour, a half-dozen grateful players asking for copies for their mothers.”Because I’m a Christian, people ask me whether God had anything to do with that goal,” Henderson said. “I say that when I get to heaven, that’s going to be my first question to God: ‘OK, did you have anything to do with this? And if you did, why didn’t you let me one-time it into the top corner?’ They’d have been saying, ‘Henderson, what an incredible goal.’ I scored seven goals in that series and six of them were really nice. The only garbage goal I scored was the last one.”It was the most beautiful garbage Canadian hockey had ever seen.