Countdown to Lillehamer / ’94 Winter Olympics : Even With Exports, Russia Still Has a Hockey Well

Alexei Kovalev greeted Alex Zhitnik, who was chatting with Sergei Zubov, while Sergei Nemchinov and Alexander Karpovtsev were deep in a discussion, perhaps deciding where they would go after their game.

It was not in Moscow, but in Inglewood, between the Kings and the New York Rangers.

The NHL is home to so many expatriates from the former Soviet Union that nearly every night, the exotic and deep sounds of Russian resound through the corridors outside their locker rooms.

Closely pursuing the Kings’ Wayne Gretzky for the NHL scoring title is center Sergei Fedorov, who four years ago exchanged his Central Red Army uniform for the winged wheel of the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings. As he blossoms into one of the league’s best two-way players and earns consideration for most-valuable-player honors, he has a four-year, $11.7-million contract.

Fedorov’s former linemates, Pavel Bure and Alexander Mogilny, are thriving, too. Bure led the Vancouver Canucks in scoring last season with 60 goals and 110 points. Mogilny, of the Buffalo Sabres, tied for the league scoring lead with 76 goals. He was named the Sabres’ captain this season after Pat LaFontaine suffered a season-ending knee injury.

Also flourishing is center Alexei Yashin of the Ottawa Senators, a top candidate for rookie of the year. The Winnipeg Jets’ Alexei Zhamnov, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Dmitri Yuskevitch, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Dmitri Mironov, the Sabres’ Yuri Khmylev and the Red Wings’ Viacheslav Kozlov and Vladimir Konstantinov are mainstays of their teams, too.

They are merely the more recent arrivals. Viacheslav Fetisov of the New Jersey Devils, Alexei Kasatonov of the Mighty Ducks and Sergei Makarov and Igor Larionov of the San Jose Sharks, who have each played three NHL seasons or more, are old-timers.

The fruits of the Soviet hockey program continue to be harvested by the NHL, and there’s no end in sight to either the outbound stream of talent or the success of the Russian team, heir to the legend of the Big Red Machine.

Hockey players have become a major export for Russia and its neighbors as they struggle with the economic and social upheaval of the Soviet breakup. Transfer fees collected from teams in the NHL, Switzerland, Finland and Germany line the pockets of the factions fighting for control of Russian hockey, instead of supporting local clubs, yet that nation continues to churn out a steady supply of clever puck-handlers and dazzling skaters who will challenge for another gold medal in the Winter Olympics, opening Saturday.

“Yes, they’ve lost an awful lot of players to the NHL, but they’re perhaps one of the best countries at developing talent, and they have a wealth of it,” said Tim Taylor, coach of the U.S. Olympic team. “I still think Russia has to be considered one of the favorites. They are perhaps the best team (at) developing talent and they have a wealth of it. They’ve got an awful lot of excellent hockey players and coaches in that country.”

The gold medal won at Albertville in 1992 by the Unified Team, as it was then known, was supposed to be the last hurrah for the Soviet system and for venerable Coach Viktor Tikhonov. The predicted collapse hasn’t happened, for several reasons.

With a population of 150 million and a spirit that remains fierce in the face of famine and economic hardship, Russia still produces enough players to compensate for its losses. Its coaches still emphasize technique over competition well into players’ teen years, scheduling relatively few games so they can spend time refining skating and passing skills. That combination of sheer numbers, attitude and attention to detail enables Russia to prevail over countries that have experienced similar talent drains.

“As the Russian talent pool has decreased, so has the Swedish pool, the Finnish pool and the Czech pool,” said Paul Theofanous, an agent who represents several Russian players in the NHL and has traveled extensively in Russia. “Bank on the place with the larger reserve of players, and that’s Russia any day of the week.”

So, although the nation’s best players might be skating for NHL teams, the squad that will represent Russia in the Olympics is rated one of the favorites to win the hockey tournament. And that’s even if high-scoring forwards Viacheslav Bykov and Andrei Khomutov aren’t released by Fribourg of the Swiss League, their current employer.

“The Russians still have those skills--that’s part of their game you can’t take away,” said Chuck Grillo, vice president and director of player personnel for the San Jose Sharks. “That and the hockey sense. That part’s fine, no matter what else has happened over there.

“I don’t think you replace the Larionovs, Bykovs and Khomutovs. I don’t think they make guys like that anymore, anywhere in the world. But to measure what kind of talent they have left, look at this: In Izvestia (a major international tournament held in Russia in December), they had two teams and they ended up in the finals against each other.”

At Izvestia, in which Canada, the United States, Sweden and the Czech Republic entered virtually the same squads that will compete in the Winter Olympics, Tikhonov’s team trounced a team coached by former Soviet star Boris Mikhailov. However, Tikhonov, who has coached three gold medal-winning teams, would not declare it an omen of Russian Olympic success.

“I am not in favor of forecasting the future,” he said. “However, I always try to develop the psychology of a winner in my players.”

He seems to have no trouble doing that.

“Granted, Tikhonov is getting older, but he’s still got his marbles,” Theofanous said.

But Tikhonov, who is in his late 60s, can’t keep his players from leaving home to earn American or Canadian dollars or Swiss francs to buy the luxuries unavailable to them in Russia.

Gone are the days of players who competed in two Olympics or even three, as defense partners Fetisov and Kasatonov did when their team won the silver medal in 1980 and the gold in ’84 and ’88. The legendary goaltender, Vladislav Tretiak, also helped win the gold in 1972 and ’76 and the silver in ’80. Gone are the days when a trio of forwards would skate alongside each other so long, their line would earn a nickname that brought instant international recognition, like the K-L-M line of Vladimir Krutov, Larionov and Makarov.

“You look at it, and they were always able to keep their superstars together,” Grillo said. “That’s why we think there’s a drop-off in the quality of their play, because they don’t have the same units for as long as they used to and they have to replace people. But no one’s been able to do it here, either. There’s never been a group kept together at one level--an NHL team or an Olympic team.”

Of the 27 players on the preliminary Russian roster for the Olympics, only two played at Albertville in 1992--and those two, Khomutov and Bykov, probably won’t be released by their professional teams for these Games. A blend of the two squads that competed at Izvestia, the Russian team has two defensemen who are 23 and two who are 22, including Andrei Sapozhnikov, a fifth-round draft choice of the Boston Bruins last June.

Otherwise, it has mainly players who have experience in the World Championships, although few have been drafted by NHL teams.

Notable among the forwards are Valeri Karpov, a 22-year-old left wing chosen 56th overall by the Mighty Ducks last June; 20-year-old left wing Andrei Nikolishin, who was selected 47th in 1992 by the Hartford Whalers, and right wing Ramil Gusmanov, picked 93rd last year by the Jets. Not drafted but sure to grab the attention of NHL general managers is center Georgy Yevtyukin, 23, who was voted the most valuable player on the Izvestia Cup championship team.

Another difference from past Russian teams is the diversity on the roster. Moscow Dynamo and the Central Red Army teams used to supply the majority of the Olympic players, but there’s now a mix from outside Moscow. Many play for Chelyabinsk and Spartak, but Chimik, Togliatti and Krylja Sovetov also contributed players.

“There’s an incredible amount of hockey talent over here,” Mark Kelley, a scout who is part of a partnership between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Central Red Army team, told the Ottawa Citizen. “They have some tremendous players. I don’t see any falling off in ability at the junior level from 10 years ago.”

The Russian junior team was third in the World Junior Championships in December, but it went to the unusual extreme of asking two players to come back from North America for the tournament. Right wing Valeri Bure, brother of the Canucks’ Pavel Bure and a second-round pick by Montreal in the ’92 draft, and left wing Maxim Bets were playing for Spokane of the Western Hockey League when they were invited to play for Russia. Bure was named to the tournament all-star team.

It’s a measure of the talent Tikhonov believes he has that Bure and Bets aren’t on the Russian Olympic squad. Nor is Oleg Tverdovsky, a dynamic 17-year-old defenseman whom the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau rated the best European player available in the June draft. Nor is left wing Alexander Kharlamov, son of the late Valeri Kharlamov, who was ranked behind Tverdovsky on Central Scouting’s list. Of the bureau’s top 20 Europeans eligible for the June draft, six are Russian.

Those players will skate for Russia in 1998, if not before, and they promise to continue the great Soviet-Russian hockey tradition. That’s unless the economic crisis battering Russia eats any further into the hockey program. Teams are drawing few fans and are having difficulty meeting day-to-day operating costs since the political system collapsed and government funding evaporated, and Kelley, who is based in Moscow, noted players using old, hand-me-down equipment.

“It’s like a crop,” Kelley said. “You can always have great seeds, but you’ve got to water it and care for it or it will just wither away.”