Nazarov gets nasty again

Originally published on EuroReport.com in 1999

By Lucas Aykroyd

Ten seconds. That’s all it took for Andrei Nazarov to show the Vancouver Canucks he was fighting mad and ready to live up to his many nicknames in a 26 September exhibition game at GM Place: “The Russian Bear,” “The Mad Russian,” and “The Nazinator.”

At the start of the first period, the 25-year-old Calgary Flames left wing threw down his gloves with Canuck bruiser Donald Brashear, who is widely regarded as one of the NHL’s top five heavyweights when he’s in the mood to go. Nazarov paid the price as Brashear’s flailing haymakers pummeled him to the ice. But the response of Nazarov’s teammates, banging their sticks against the boards in salute, said more about his contribution than anything else. He showed up. That’s what counts in this league.

Since being selected 10th overall by the San Jose Sharks in the first round of the 1992 NHL entry draft, Nazarov has clawed his way to a lengthy rap sheet. And not just for throwing punches of the sort that raucous TV hockey commentator and Russophobe Don Cherry would approve, either.

Nazarov’s most notorious felonies include a four-game suspension for head-butting Stephane Quintal of the Winnipeg Jets (March 8, 1995), a six-game suspension for elbowing linesman Brad Lazarowich during a fight (March 25, 1997), and a seven-game suspension for cross-checking Colorado’s Cam Russell in the face (November 19, 1998).

This is why the towering Russian’s mug shot appeared on the cover of the December 4, 1998 edition of The Hockey News as “The Most Hated Man in Hockey.”

But early in the 1999-2000 preseason, Calgary coach Brian Sutter figured Nazarov wasn’t playing nasty enough. He challenged Nazarov to step his game up, and recent scraps with Brashear, Montreal’s Scott Thornton, and Andre Roy of Ottawa show the coach’s message got through.

Still, Nazarov is equivocal about his performance on the threshold of the new campaign. As soft-spoken off the ice as he is rough on opponents, he admits he has yet to reach his potential. He wants to make his Calgary experience better than his paltry 26 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning last year, hopefully emulating his best season, 1996-97 with the Sharks (12-15-27 with 222 PIM in 60 games).

“I had a few bad games in the preseason,” Nazarov told EuroReport after his team dropped a 5-3 decision to Vancouver. “First couple of games I started kind of slow. I had a couple of good games. So I can say fifty-fifty. I’m not really happy and I can’t say I feel really bad. It could be better.”

Few European-trained players are known as fighters, but Nazarov’s 6”4, 237-pound frame gives him one obvious advantage. He said he has “a lot of things to do” to improve as a fighter, since he didn’t deliver knuckle sandwiches back in Russia as a junior. But he wouldn’t elaborate on where he gets the motivation to take on the more fistically skilled NHL pugilists: “Hard to say. Sometimes you just have to. I can’t tell you.”

Another major adjustment for Nazarov was the move from the southern United States to western Canada when Tampa Bay traded him to Calgary on 19 January 1999. He said he’s happy with the increased amount of ice time he receives in Calgary, and laughingly denied having had any such colorful experiences as now-retired Russian center Anatoli Semenov had during a one-month stint with Tampa Bay. (After being traded to the Canucks in 1992-93, Semenov told Vancouver reporters he was glad to be living farther north since he once discovered a large green snake in his Tampa backyard, and alligators lived beyond the backyard fence.)

A native of Chelyabinsk, Russia, Nazarov grew up idolizing the most talented Soviet forward of the 1980’s, winger Sergei Makarov of the “Green Unit,” who also came from the remote mining town in the Ural Mountains. “He was a really, really big thing in my home city,” said Nazarov. “Everyone looked up to him.”

Nazarov praised Seattle Thunderbirds prospect and fellow Russian forward Oleg Saprykin, who has made a strong bid to stick with the Flames after his first NHL training camp. If Saprykin makes it, there could be four Russians in Calgary’s lineup on opening night, including offensive leader Valeri Bure and up-and-coming center Pavel Torgaev. Nazarov likes the idea.

“I think Oleg is going to be a really good player. He understands the game, which is the most important thing for a player his age. He’s 18 years old, but he knows what he’s doing.”

Youth, enthusiasm, and hard work, backed by the veteran goaltending of Grant Fuhr, will be huge keys to Calgary’s success this year. And Nazarov is confident the Flames can improve on last year’s record of 30-42-12 (72 points), despite sputtering to a 3-5-0 mark in preseason play.

“The team is getting smarter and more physical. We just need to start scoring more goals. I know for sure it’s going to be a different team this year.”