Russia’s Prowess with the Puck

Originally published in Prospects Hockey in 2004

By Lucas Aykroyd

For decades, beating the Russian national hockey team was about as difficult as wrestling with a brown bear.

Despite triumphing frequently in best-on-best competitions, Canadian teams faced their stiffest challenges against the Soviet senior squads, who posted an international record of 725 wins, 110 losses, and 65 ties (1953-92, including World Championships, Olympics, Canada Cups, other international tournaments, and exhibitions). The junior talents produced by the Soviet system were similarly intimidating, capturing ten gold medals at the World Junior Championships (1974-92).

Back then, the Russians possessed a clear edge over their rivals in skating and physical conditioning, due to their intensive training 11 months each year. They iced extraordinarily disciplined teams committed to systems play, well before those trends gained vogue in North American hockey.

But other hockey powers have now caught up with Russia in most of these departments. There’s been a synthesis of the Canadian and Russian approaches to hockey. Since the 1972 Summit Series, Canadian teams have incorporated more criss-crossing passing plays into their offense, rather than constantly relying on going up and down the wings and firing heavy shots. Today’s Canadian teams move the puck around during power plays in a manner that would have looked very Russian to a 1970’s Canadian observer.

Really, there are no more secrets in today’s game. Russian prospects frequently join CHL clubs to learn a more physical brand of play. And another change: Russia is no longer a prime first-place threat in every single international tournament it enters.

However, the Russians can make a strong argument that they still reign Czar-like over the competition in two specific areas: stickhandling and passing. And we just might see evidence of that during this 2004 CHL Canada/Russia Challenge.

Watching international junior play, it’s clear the Czechs are subtle, swift puck-movers. The Swedes can execute both one-on-one and in a group with great precision. Canada has developed its share of stars who can dangle and dish with the best of them, from Wayne Gretzky to Eric Lindros to Sidney Crosby. Yet the Russian teams, virtually to a man, are flat-out scary with their stick skills.

Igor Kuperman, who has worked as a Russian hockey journalist, director of hockey information for the Phoenix Coyotes, and assistant GM for the 2002 Russian Olympic team, explains how these peerless puckhandlers are produced: “It’s like a factory. It’s all in the methods, the way they train players over there. If you bring in certain materials, the product will always be the same. They have about 10 or 15 professional coaches at a typical hockey school. And out of thousands of Russian boys, there are always going to be 20 who will play at the World Juniors.”

So what exactly are these methods the Russians use? Typically, their kids have a three-to-one ratio of practices to games, and plenty of that practice time is spent skimming the puck back and forth and dipsy-doodling around pylons. But it’s not all structured, Kuperman points out: “They just let them stickhandle as much as they can. They really let them play with the puck. Until they’re a certain age, nobody teaches them how to hit or check. The emphasis is always on the stickhandling and passing, the handwork.”

Playing on the larger 200-by-100-foot European ice surface encourages young Russians to handle the puck more, since they’re not as likely to get hit as soon as they start skating with it. Some of them also use exceptionally short sticks, enabling them to pull off tricky feints more easily.

Of course, all this can have its downside. “Some of them can only stickhandle in open ice, when there’s nobody really hitting them,” says Kuperman. “When push comes to shove, they disappear. It’s so easy to stickhandle, for instance, on a penalty shot when nobody’s there and you can show all your tricks. But how often do you get that chance in a game?”

The top Russians have generated their own chances in junior tourneys many Canadians still recall. There was the tic-tac-toe play that Igor Grigorenko finished off to tie the score versus Canada in the final game of the 2003 World Juniors in Halifax before Yuri Trubachev’s opportunistic 3-2 winner. Russian skill also dashed Canada’s hopes in 1999’s gold medal game in Winnipeg. That featured an incredible goal off the rush by Maxim Balmochnykh, who flipped the puck high past Roberto Luongo with one hand on his stick. Russia went on to a 3-2 overtime win.

Going back further, there was Igor Viazmikin’s nifty solo dash for the final tally in a 4-1 USSR victory over Canada at the 1986 World Juniors in Hamilton. And to many observers, Alexander Mogilny looked poised to become the best player in the world when he stickhandled his way to a natural hat trick versus Canada in a 7-2 Soviet romp in Anchorage, Alaska in 1989.

Interestingly, spectacular individual efforts were not encouraged in the early days of Russian hockey. Passing the puck was emphasized much more, and it’s still an inherent part of their style of play. An entire book could be written about how that style developed beginning in 1946, but there are several basic elements that influenced it.

The Russians took their playmaking cues from soccer and bandy, the latter a hockey-like game played on a huge sheet of ice. They were influenced by the Czechoslovakian national team coached by Mike Buckna, a Trail, British Columbia native who favored a skating, passing game much like that of the 1940’s New York Rangers. They tapped into the insights of Soviet hockey thinker Anatoli Tarasov, who inculcated a collectivist style that dovetailed with Communist political ideals: “The puck carrier is the servant of the other players.”

“Passing reflected the way the country lived together,” Kuperman says of the Soviet era. “Everything had to be done together, whether it was collective farms or hockey.”

Even though the USSR is no more, Russia has clung to its passing style. “I’m pretty sure that with the right coaching and right direction, they could maintain what they thrived on before and they could win with it,” adds Kuperman.

And that’s a healthy thing. International hockey is most exciting when we witness a clash of different styles. The Russians will undoubtedly continue to add Canadian-style grit to their game, just as Canada has increased its focus on skill development and conditioning. But the dangles, dishes, and dashing of the Pavel Datsyuks and Ilya Kovalchuks will remain fundamental to Russia’s hockey future.

Kuperman’s Stickhandling Kings

According to Russian hockey expert Igor Kuperman, these are his country’s top six stickhandlers of all time:

Pavel Bure: Explosive speed and quick dekes gave him nickname of “Russian Rocket”
Anatoli Firsov: 1960’s Soviet star forward invented “skate to stick” move
Valeri Kharlamov: Always dazzled versus Team Canada with his artistry in 1970’s
Vladimir Krutov: “The Tank” confounded defensemen with his choppy fakes
Sergei Makarov: The 1980’s heir to Kharlamov, he perfected puck control
Alexander Maltsev: Silky moves made him all-time top goal-scorer with Soviet nationals

Decades of Dominance

From the 1950’s to the 1980’s, set Russian forward lines emerged as their country’s top stickhandlers and passers. Here are those trios, decade by decade, including one that might have dominated the 1990’s if the Soviet Union had not ended:

1950’s: Vsevolod Bobrov-Viktor Shuvalov-Yevgeny Babich
1960’s: Veniamin Alexandrov-Alexander Almetov-Konstantin Loktev and Boris Mayorov-Vyacheslav Starshinov-Yevgeny Mayorov
1970’s: Valeri Kharlamov-Vladimir Petrov-Boris Mikhailov
1980’s: Vladimir Krutov-Igor Larionov-Sergei Makarov
1990’s: Pavel Bure-Sergei Fedorov-Alexander Mogilny