While the fans hoped for a Canada-Soviet Union final, analysts ranked the Soviets as only the fourth best team entering the tournament. They chose to leave most of their elite players home for reasons that remain unclear. The potential of defections, or losing stars to North American professional hockey, are two possibilities. Officially, Soviet officials said many of their players were suffering from fatigue, though goaltender Vladislav Tretiak later claimed the omissions were the result of a power struggle between Olympic coach Boris Kulagin and Canada Cup team coach Viktor Tikhonov and that the former sought to undermine the latter by forcing him to coach a weaker team.