You're obviously not much of a historian if you can't remember the Detroit Red Wings "Russian Five" who literally turned the Red Wings from a cellar dweller to a Stanley Cup contender and ultimately winner in the 1990's.........
As a side note, the way the Red Wings were able to obtain them was worthy of a James Bond novel.
Out of that Russian Five, Fetisov, Larionov, and Fedorov were inducted into the NHL Hockey Hall of Fame.....
And Vladimir "The Gladiator" Konstantinov will forever live in the hearts of all Red Wing fans.........
Panarin is killing it for the Rangers. Maybe DeBlasio reached out to Putin.
My Rangers Facebook group is going to be lit up tonight.
“As a side note,the way the Red Wingswere able to obtain the was worthy of a James Bond novel”
Except for Alexander Mogilny ;-)
1. There's no such thing as the "NHL Hockey Hall of Fame." It's the Hockey Hall of Fame (in Toronto), and some of the players who have been inducted never played in the NHL.
2. Of the Russian players you mention, only Fedorov was inducted based on his NHL career. Fetisov and Larionov were long past their primes by the time they got to Detroit, and were inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame based on their previous careers in the Soviet Union for the Central Red Army and the Soviet National Team, and as pioneers in the migration of Russian players to the NHL.
3. Both Fetisov and Larionov ended up in Detroit after they each played several fairly ordinary seasons elsewhere -- Fetisov in New Jersey, and Larionov in Vancouver and San Jose.
4. I remember Fetisov well in New Jersey when he played for my beloved Devils. He was ordinary at best, after showing some flashes of brilliance in his rookie year. I remember a game against Philly when he had a goal and five assists in a 6-2 win. I think that may still be a New Jersey record for points in a game. His on-ice intelligence and breakout passes out of the defensive zone were Hall-of-Fame superb, though I honestly think it took him a long time to get acclimated to the narrower NHL ice surface. He would occasionally make a boneheaded pass up the middle of the ice that works in international hockey but not in the NHL. The team was a perpetual underachiever for most of his time there (not his fault). He was traded to Detroit in the middle of the team's 1995 Stanley Cup run and played (ironically) on the losing team in the finals that year. One of his unfortunate legacies with the Devils was his misplay in the defensive zone that led to the infamous "Matteau! Matteau!" goal in double overtime of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals against the Rangers -- still the greatest NHL game I've ever seen, even though my team lost!
5. I sometimes wonder if Fedorov was injured in those 1995 Finals. Getting swept by a New Jersey team that finished in the bottom half of the Eastern Conference playoff bracket must have hurt. Some of those players -- Fedorov and Paul Coffey in particular -- looked very soft to me in that series and seemed to wish they weren't there.
6. Were any of those Russian Red Wings irreplaceable? Would the Red Wings have won all those Stanley Cups with other players on the roster instead of those guys? Maybe Fedorov was a star among them, but that was it. Those Red Wings were a very deep team. Konstantinov obviously wasn't irreplaceable after his unfortunate situation in 1997; the team won several more Stanley Cups without him.
P.S. — I actually met Slava Fetisov years ago. He is one cold, stone-faced guy. LOL.