As a fan of the New Jersey Devils I got to see some of those early Soviet-NHL pioneers up close. Slava Fetisov has always been one of the most fascinating, enigmatic hockey players I've followed. And Sergei Starikov stayed in New Jersey after his brief NHL career ended and later worked as a referee in the men's amateur hockey league I played in. The one thing I always remember about him was: (1) he hardly called any penalties (adult amateur hockey probably seemed so tame to him!), and (2) he had the thickest hands I've ever seen on a human being.
Alexei Kasatonov -- who had been Fetisov's linemate on the famed "Green Unit" (with the legendary KLM Line) for the Soviet National Team in the 1980s -- came over a couple of years later. I was watching the team practice one day and I saw him do something I've never seen before or since: He fired a slapshot from the top of the circle and rang it so hard off the corner of the crossbar that it broke one of the net moorings and pushed the net out of place on the ice.
