King of Russia A Year in the Russian Super League

PART 1 SUMMER July 5, 2005 Some people told me I was crazy to do this, and at this precise moment I'm not sure I would disagree. I am standing on the ice surface at the Magnitogorsk Arena, in the heart of Mother Russia, my new home away from home for the next ten months. I am jetlagged and sleep-deprived and fighting a lot of warring emotions. Thirty-six hours ago I was half a world away in Saskatoon, preparing for the adventure of a lifetime. Midway through last spring I'd been contacted by Serge Levin, a Russian hockey agent, to see if I was interested in becoming the first Canadian to coach a team in the Russian Super League. At the time, he didn't mention which team it might be. He only wanted to gauge my interest in coming to Russia in the first place. During the past quarter of a century, the flow of hockey talent between Russia and North America has mostly gone in one direction. The nhl's appetite for more and better players saw them recruit heavily in Russia, and over time there have been Russians who've led the league in goal-scoring, Russians who've won the rookie of the year award, and dozens of Russians who've seen their names engraved on the Stanley Cup. More recently, as a result of the political and economic upheaval that has characterized Russian life since the fall of Communism, there has been something of a reverse migration. Salaries have become more competitive there and a handful of teams, with dollars to burn, have lured some of their homegrown talent back. Then, in the year of the nhl lockout, even some of our best-known Canadian players (Vincent Lecavalier, Dany Heatley, and Brad Richards, to name three) came to play in the Super League. But coaching? That was different. That had never been done before. There have been Russian assistant coaches in the nhl and a few European-born coaches in Russia, but no team had ever been willing to turn the keys over to a Canadian . . . until now. Two days before I left Canada, I was in Eston, Saskatchewan, for a family get-together. And since training camps open here in early July, I flew from Saskatoon to Toronto to London to Moscow, arriving in the Russian capital at 3:45 in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the departure time of the final leg of my journey from Domodedovo Airport in Moscow to Magnitogorsk had been pushed back five-and-a-half hours, from six to eleven-thirty p.m., thanks to the new summer travel schedule. As Russia hiccups its way along the path towards capitalism the airlines are constantly short of planes, and as a result they need to be in service virtually twenty-four hours a day. On the smaller, less-travelled routes, they commonly cancel some flights and add others based on aircraft availability. So the last thing I needed was the first thing that happened to me a lengthy layover in the Russian capital. Factoring in the two-hour time change from Moscow to Magnitogorsk, by the time Siberian Airlines Flight No. 12 touched down, it was three-thirty in the morning. One hour later, in the pitch dark, I surveyed as well as I could my new home, where my wife, Linda, and I would live until the end of the hockey season. My new team wanted me on the ice bright and early that same day, so I had a choice sleep for ninety minutes or stay up and plod through without sleep. I opted for a quick catnap and then walked from my apartment to the arena, wondering for the first time (but probably not for the last), What am I doing here? I'm fifty-seven years old. I've coached Canada's national team through three Winter Olympic Games. I've had two turns as a head coach in the nhl (with the CKing, Dave is the author of 'King of Russia A Year in the Russian Super League', published 2007 under ISBN 9780771029127 and ISBN 0771029128.