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Outdoors in Red Square
by Alanah McGinley on 12/12/07 at 02:45 PM ET
Comments (3)
From Dan Rosen at NHL.com,
“All the stories I heard about (Russia) weren’t true,” Smith told NHL.com. “I guess back 10 to 15 years ago I remember some of the guys that played on those Canada Cup teams were saying the food was no good, this and that. Even the interpreter that was with us was saying if you were in Russia three years ago you would not believe it was the same place. The people couldn’t believe how much it had changed.
“I went there and was like, ‘Holy Geez, why did everyone lie to me?’ ”
Like the country itself, the game played in Red Square on Dec. 9, 2006 was a must-see-it-to-believe-it spectacle.Conceived by former CSKA Moscow and Soviet national team stars Slava Fetisov and Igor Larionov, the outdoor game—the first of its kind in Russia’s most spectacular setting—was put on to benefit for former Russian players who have fallen on hard times.
more reflections from Billy Smith and Scotty Bowman
Filed in: Non-NHL Hockey, International Hockey | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: billy+smith, russia, scotty+bowman,
Comments
Thanks PJ. Speaking of Igor, his daughters will be on American Idol in January and all he could say was they made it to the judging area, whatever that means, never watched the show.
Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 12/12/07 at 04:49 PM ET
Smith is in St. Petersburg, and the gulf between St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the rest of Russia is extraordinary. St. Petersburg represents its geographic location in that it’s a very European/Baltic city with an extremely cosmopolitan atmosphere balanced with the strong influence of Russian imperial (Tsar/Czar) history. If you head outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow, you do end up face to face with places where the food is strange at best, basic services are hard to find, cops set up roadblocks to extort from the general public, and medical care is something to be avoided at all costs. Russia is in the process of rapid change in its urban centres, and as Putin is a Moscow prime minister who basically brought all his “peeps” from St. Petersburg with him, there’s tons of money pouring into both cities, but if you were to, say, end up as the coach of the Ak Bars or Salavat Yulaev, you’d find that you’d be living in a city where the second language (if not the first) is Arabic, not English, and culture is very much so different from the images of European Russia that are so prevalent in its two biggest cities.
Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 12/12/07 at 07:31 PM ET
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Igor Larionov’s two daughters sung a tribute song during the tribute game intermission for the Russian players and coaches who had passed away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJbeQwYDrcg
And there are a few more links and photos related to the game here:
http://www.sharkspage.com/2006_12_01_archive_history.html#116755772418691039
Posted by PJ from San Jose on 12/12/07 at 04:46 PM ET