MOSCOW -- Former Team Canada hockey star Rod Seiling says he realized just how much times have changed in Russia when players were greeted by a military band on an airport tarmac this week. In 1972, they were also greeted by the military - but it was a bit different.

"When we got to the airport 30 years ago, the army was there - with machine-guns," recalled Seiling. Four members of the original 1972 Team Canada hockey squad returned Friday to the Moscow arena where they won the most famous hockey series in the country's history.

Serge Savard, Frank Mahovlich, Seiling and Yvan Cournoyer sat down to lunch with four former members of the 1972 Soviet squad in the aging Luzhniki Sports Centre where Canada won the world hockey Summit Series.

"It's my greatest souvenir in my life in sports," recalled Savard.

"It's just a great feeling (to return), it's hard to describe - it has been 30 years."

The players dined with Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the covered ice surface of Luzhniki.

The group was ringed by the dingy wooden seats where fans erupted on Sept. 28, 1972 after Canada's Paul Henderson scored the winning goal to take the series.

The Canadians were pretty confident as the eight-game series began, recalled Mahovlich.

"The first five minutes, we thought it would be a cakewalk," said Mahovlich, now a Canadian senator.

"We scored two fast goals and I thought we would walk right over them. And then we took some penalties and they scored and it changed quickly."

The strength of the Soviet squad was surprising, added Cournoyer.

"Maybe they weren't very big, but they were so fast. They were strong, too."

The series, coming at the height of the Cold War, represented a battle of political ideologies, said Savard.

"That was more than a hockey series in those years, it was two systems that were playing against each other.

That seemed to motivate the Canadians, said former Soviet player Alexandre Ragulin.

"They needed this victory more than we did," he said through a translator.

Chretien, who has borrowed the Team Canada title for his global trade missions, exchanged hockey jerseys with Putin at the lunch which included hundreds of businesspeople fresh from signing $337 million in business deals.

Chretien said the roots of his trade missions lie in the example set by the 1972 hockey squad.

"(In 1972) Team Canada became a lasting symbol of Canadian team work, of our best doing their best at the highest level on the world stage," Chretien told the business audience.

The players toured the arena, where the series climaxed, looking at memorabilia and old photos from 1972.

Former Soviet player Alexandre Maltsev said the importance of the series in shaping the history of hockey can't be underestimated.

"Without matches of this calibre, it was impossible to develop hockey."