News from May 2000
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Larionov could sign with Panthers
The Wings will be saying goodbye to veteran pivot Igor Larionov, who had a chance at midseason to sign for two more years at about $2 million per - a deal the Wings pulled off the table when his game began to look old. One rumored landing spot for Larionov: Florida, where he could help set up countryman Pavel Bure. But that could be more fantasy than fact, especially if the Panthers are successful in signing Czech star Jiri Dopita.
Sexy Anna's second service
OOOH... I say! Tennis babe Anna Kournikova delivers a series of magnificent backhands to her fiance’s baseline on a hotel balcony. And our sequence of action shots prove it’s now game, set and match to hunky Sergei Federov who almost lost the 18-year-old beauty when she began playing naughty doubles. OUT! lands Sergei’s love rival, fellow Russian ice hockey star Pavel Bure who smashed him from Anna’s life three months ago. A player nicknamed the Russian Rocket looked like he had hit a wonder winner after the volatile teen sensation leapt the love net into his arms and agreed to marry him-even though she was already engaged to Sergei. But Pavel, 29, had reckoned without the mum-pire. In the end he couldn’t stand Anna’s interfering mother Alla - and so he lobbed her tearful daughter out of court. Now blonde Anna’s back with forgiving Sergei, 30, and sporting a diamond engagement ring.
An onlooker who spotted the couple’s love play during their sunshine break in Palma, Majorca, said: “They were kissing for ages on the balcony and laughing and joking. It’s very clear they’re so together.
“It looks like the Pavel thing is well in the past.”
French world No 6 Nathalie Tauziat has accused the Russian stunner of playing in short skirts to show off her panties to impress the linesmen.
But former Wimbledon champ Chris Evert said: “That is an insult. The linesmen concentrate on the game - not on Anna.” When the score is love all, however, our pictures show the same can’t be said of Sergei.
Federov back with Kournikova
Word from New York is Detroit Red Wings star Sergei Fedorov and tennis hotshot Anna Kournikova are together again after her brief engagement to Florida Panther Pavel Bure. Fedorov is expected to be courtside when she plays in the A&P Classic in July in New Jersey.
Russian coach fired Just four days after the conclusion of this year's world championships in St. Petersburg, Russia, the country's hockey federation fired the national team coach, Alexander Yakushev, Thursday. Russia expected big things of its Dream Team, that included a number of NHL stars and Florida Panthers' Pavel Bure as its captain. Instead, the team didn't even make the playoffs, placing 11th overall, the country's worst standing in the history of world and Olympic championships. "The Russian hockey federation executive board has unanimously decided to let go Yakushev and his assistants," said federation president Alexander Steblin. "After the performance our team has shown in St. Petersburg, nobody would expect anything else," he added.
Russian media have consistently criticized the team's poor morale and improper preparation, Steblin said, adding: "We have formed a commission to study the national team's problems and, we hope, we will find solutions."
This team does have heart
 A Canuck Place staff member listens as former Canuck Pavel Bure talks with children on a visit to the hospice. Canuck Place is one reason the Canucks are being honoured for community work Like so many of his colleagues with the Canucks, Adrian Aucoin doesn't quite understand the need for an award. You're a professional athlete who's been afforded many blessings. You have a chance to make a sick kid happy. Who wouldn't accept this privilege? Who wouldn't want to touch these young lives? "Anybody in their right mind would do what they could," says the Canucks defenceman. "I honestly think anyone could walk in off the street and make their day a little brighter. Maybe it's just a bonus they can see me on TV and relate to me that way." But these kids get something out of those visits. And in the end, the Canucks' players and management get a little more. It's a special relationship that has been forged between the team and this community, a relationship that goes back to Frank and Emily Griffiths, runs through their son Arthur and Trevor Linden, right to the current organization. It's something you should remember every time you read about the dark side of professional sports. "Really, it's not a big thing," says Aucoin. It all depends how you look at it, Adrian. On Wednesday, the Canucks' charitable efforts in Vancouver and B.C. were acknowledged by an organization called the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame, the offspring of a remarkable man named Myron Finkbeiner. Finkbeiner -- who is not a Mad magazine character but a retired high school and college basketball coach -- grew tired of all the ink devoted to the Mike Tysons of the sports world. He decided to create an organization to honour the under-appreciated contributions of so many athletes. Finkbeiner's foundation, created in 1994, is erecting a $10-million edifice in Boise, Id., that will serve as a permanent shrine to the good works of tennis great Arthur Ashe, Olympian Rafer Johnson, baseball star Dale Murphy and the other saints of of our games. This year, gymnast Mary-Lou Retton, baseball's Kirby Puckett and basketball's Tiny Archibald have been nominated as individuals. The Canucks have been nominated in the team category. They are the first Canadian team to be so recognized. "This isn't about people who donate back to their alma mater," said Finkbeiner. "It's about people who make this work a priority. They work hard for these awards and they're proud to receive it." "We can't point to a lot of winning seasons here," said Canucks director of hockey operations Dave Nonis. "But we've always been able to point to our involvement in the community as a source of pride." The Canucks, in fact, can point to a variety of charitable initiatives that have benefitted many. There's a Champions Stay in School program. They support minor hockey through the B.C. Centre of Excellence. Various events raise $1 million a year for the Canuck Foundation, an umbrella organization which funds several local charities. And, always, there is Canuck Place. Canuck Place, for the uninitiated, is the only freestanding hospice in North America for pediatric palliative care. Translation: It is a home where terminally ill children and their families receive treatment and compassion and receive it with dignity. Since '92, the Canucks have raised $8.2 million for the hospice and Canuck Place has treated 325 kids and family members. But you can't measure the club's contribution to this project in dollars and cents. -- virtually all of the Canucks -- are regular visitors to Canuck Place. There, away from the TV cameras and notepads, they spend time with the kids and their families and bring a little light into the darkness. "It's a marvelous, marvelous, magical place," said Canucks GM Brian Burke. "I've got four healthy kids. There are times it's a real gut-check to walk in there." But they do it because there's a more compelling force which draws them there, a force which lies at the very foundation of all communities. Others have recognized the Canucks for this.
We should join them.
Our So-Called Sports Heroes In the late 1980s early 1990s, Russian sports stars were sure to get the sympathy of Russian sports fans. No one rejoiced when the state subsidies were pulled out from under these athletes. But now, at a time when Russian hockey is decimated by a talent drain to the NHL and when Russian gymnasts, tennis players and figure skaters compete for Western endorsement contracts, the sympathy has run out. And, after Russia's recent, disastrous performances at the World Ice Hockey Championship and the Federation Cup for women' s tennis the mood here among fans has turned from disaffection to ire and irritation. Going into the Federation Cup tourney, coach Shamil Tarpischev, pinned his hopes on tennis diva Anya Kurnikova (ranked #14 in the world) and Yelena Likhovtseva (#15). But Likhovtseva won just one singles match, while Kurnikova lost all three of her singles bouts. The much-vaunted Kurnikova (who Tarpishev wooed into participating) ended up bringing her team just 1/2 point in their doubles match against Australia, which Kurnikova and Likhovsteva won with great pain in three sets. Lina Krasnorutskaya (Orange Bowl winner) and the promising Yelena Dementieva (#33) were canned on the eve of the Fed Cup in Moscow . Yet, Tarpishcev placed his bet only on Kurnikova and Likhovtseva. But the most disturbing turn of events (truthfully, it should have been expected) was Kurnikova's nonchalance bordering on indifference at her final press-conference: "I enjoyed playing for the team ... it was a good experience ... my game improved with each match ..." In the end, it was underdog Belgium which qualified for the semi-finals, prevailing over such favorites as France and Russia with one player vowing that they would lose the match, "only over my dead body." Unfortunately, Kurnikova did not express or exhibit such determination. But she did exhibit herself in a tight Adidas tennis outfit The problem with Russia's foreign-resident sports stars is plain. They sound sincere when they claim they want to play for the homeland. But the ardent desire is not there. As Sports Express put it, "their subconscience is set differently. It belongs in a different, parallel world, where there is no room for what we call the 'energy of despair.'" To use another lucky metaphor from Sports Express, some Russian foreign-resident sports legionnaires have simply "changed their blood group." You can't blame them, but our national coaches need to reckon with this fact. To these athletes, Russia is not so much a homeland as yet another exotic place to travel to from time to time. Can we blame them for seeking a better life elsewhere? Probably not. Can we blame them for playing poorly when returning home? Yes, definitely. Which brings us to the hockey match. The sign of things to come should have been predicted in this omen, which few paid attention to. Upon his arrival in St. Petersburg for the tourney, NHL megastar Pavel Bure said, "I heard that St. Petersburg is a beautiful city." Such a phrase should never slip from the mouth of the captain of the Russian national team. Hard-pressed to obtain high results: head coach of Russian ice hockey team, Alexander Yakushev opted for a star-studded team, inviting 14 (!) Russian stars from the NHL, including Bure and Ottawa's recalcitrant striker, Alexei Yashin. To what result? For the first time ever in the history of Russian (and Soviet) hockey our team did not even advance to the quarterfinals. The Russian team did win their opening match 8-1 against France (whose players are as adroit with the puck as Pigmies from New Guinea are with a baseball glove). But then followed a humiliating debacle: four defeats in a row: against the US (0-3) Switzerland (2-3), Latvia (2-3) and Belarus (0-1). Never before has the local hockey team ever covered itself with such shame! Actor Oleg Basilashvili, a longtime hockey fan and native of St. Petersburg, summed it up best: "Our so-called stars are too distracted by the sums in their checkbooks. They became great master in earning money and forgot how to play our Russian hockey. They must have forgotten that we won the world title 25 times and that, apart from the dollar, there is also the honor of the country and of the sports flag." OK, Russia is indeed too weak economically for now to match NHL or WTA tour honorariums. This is indeed a serious handicap. Does it mean that from now on the road to the national team should be barred to all Russian stars playing abroad? By no means! But our coaches needn't be dazzled by the titles and honorariums of foreign legionnaires. We should combine the best young local athletes, hungry for victories, reinforced by foreign legionnaires, ones who done see their homeland as yet another tourist destination. Any player should be allowed to wear the Russian national colors only if they are determined to win "over their dead body." This, in the short-term. In the long-term, Mother Russia needs to create better economic conditions at home, to stop the talent drain. I don't know of any other country that has for so long been so careless about its countless talents - and not just in sports. Ballet, chess, applied and fundamental sciences, music, sculpture ... Suffice it to look at the number of US citizens whose names end with an "off" "eff", "ko" or a "sky." If there is anything I envy the West -- and America in particular -- is how high they value (including financially) any talent, whatever the national provenance. But what's to be done in the interim period between long-awaited prosperity and the mixed economic results of the Yeltsin era? Does it all boil down only to the material factor? Suppose the Russian Tennis Association or the local hockey league could afford Western-scale contracts? Would it have made any difference for Russian sports in this early May? Hardly. There are plenty of examples in world sports when overpaid individual stars lose to underdogs who had on their side only one plus -- a much stronger team spirit. Soviet hockey players proved it in 1972 when they whipped the much-vaunted NHL stars 7-2 in very opening match. As TV commentator Viktor Gusev said here: "Historically, Russians are doomed to failure whenever they play for big money. The best things, we have done -- either in science or in sports -- were done for free. It wouldn't have worked otherwise. Why? For the same reason that you need to drink a shot of vodka to the bottom and then smell a piece of brown bread. It's just too hard to explain." Too bad the Russian NHL stars didn't extend their "tourist trip to Russia" to Moscow, popping in at Red Square on May 9. I am sure such VIPs would be given special passes. There they could have watched five thousand Russian war veterans marching in commemoration of the 55th anniversary of our Great Victory. The youngest of them was 72, but they all practiced heavily before the parade to show the best of themselves. Four of the veterans even asked for medical help right after the parade, but none gave up. Giving up is simply not in their habit. As president Vladimir Putin said in his speech for the occasion: "thanks to our veterans, we got used to victories, which are now in our blood." But, like we said, our foreign-grown sports stars seem to have a different blood group by now. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Mikhail Ivanov is Executive Editor of Russian Life magazine_, a bimonthly magazine of Russian culture, history, travel and life. This column is a weekly feature of Russian Life online, a free, weekly newsletter of news and views on Russia. (C) 2000 Russian Life
Russians still reeling over their Dream Team's abysmal performance Not many world championships can compare themselves to the event that has just ended in St. Petersburg. Not only for the Russians - whose failure to even make it to the quarterfinals must have been the shocker to end all shockers - but for the rest of the hockey world, also. Former Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov called the Russians' performance "ugly," but still, he said it's too early to make any real conclusions. Even though he had offered his input, Tikhonov ended up watching the games on TV and what he saw convinced him the NHL experiment was not really what the doctor ordered. "It used to be an annual rite of spring to re-motivate our players so they didn't get bored with winning," Tikhonov said. Considering that in its 46 years in the championships, the Soviets have won 23 times, that must have been a job. Legendary former Soviet goalie Nikolai Puchkov - who now works as a coach in Finland - blamed the lack of teamwork. Besides, he said, everybody is in awe of the NHL but even that league doesn't consist of stars alone. "Why would you invite players who are earning frequent flyer miles going up and down from the top club to the farm and back?," he questioned. The Russians played well in the exhibition schedule, but were a different team at the championships proper. "The coaches' main mistake was they refused to use the team they'd been preparing all season long," said Puchkov. American coach Lou Vairo had another observation: "When (Vladislav) Tretiak was in the Soviets' goal, they had fewer problems. It's the goaltending that can win or lose you games these days." The Russian failure has remained (and will, obviously, remain) a sore point with the fans and the media. But are the NHLers on the roster or the hockey federation to blame? Nobody seems to understand the reasons for the Russian squad's failure. After all, that was almost the same team that won silver in Nagano in 1998. But, considering, the Canadians, with their Dream Team, placed only fourth at the Olympics, this, it seems, can't be explained away. Most observers agree Russian NHLers underestimated the competition, feeling they were coming just for a walk in the park. Besides, they were tired from their long NHL season (but so was everybody else). And the mass hysteria didn't help, either. Yes, they did want to win, but they lacked the needed fire in their collective belly. Many, too, focus on the question of coaching - and here the situation is turning ugly. Faced with criticism that last year's coach, Alexander Yakushev, stayed with the team even though last year's edition of Team Russia didn't cover itself with glory, either, Russian federation president Alexander Steblin countered Yakushev was head coach only on paper, while Zinetdula Bilyaletdinov had taken over his duties. This statement has provoked angry responses from all sides. But the team was poisoned. One of its better players, Avangard Omsk's Maxim Sushinski, originally declined to speak on record. But when he finally did, a very disturbing picture emerged. It turns out that many players felt they weren't coached at all. Sushinski said he would find out what line he would be on by the colour of his jersey in practice. He wasn't getting much ice time, either. Besides, he said, it hurt many of his teammates to see players from the Russian Superleague go home right on the eve of the championships just because another NHLer had expressed interest in coming. "That," he said, "was almost insulting for us, to feel we were just patches to fill holes if an NHLer changed his mind." Sushinski had a hat trick in the game against France and nobody, not even the team's captain Pavel Bure, would congratulate him. "We had nothing to talk about with the NHLers," Sushinski added. Of course, the political situation had an impact, too. After the former Soviet Union fell apart, many of Russia's best players moved elsewhere. Many felt that would mean the end of hockey in Russia, but that hasn't happened. Unfortunately, Russian hockey officials haven't noticed. There was another sensation in St. Petersburg, and it was called Team Slovakia. These guys had to work their way from Pool C to the top, after their country had split into two to form the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reunification these two teams - albeit on opposing sides - in the final game was something to cheer for. You can safely say Czechoslovakia won the championships. Good for them. Marina Joukova is a Russian hockey statistician who has worked on European statistics for the Total Hockey publications.
Pros Can't Stop Dream Team Meltdown< When they opened the World Ice Hockey Championships in St. Petersburg on April 29 with an 8-1 thrashing of France, they were the new "Dream Team." Boasting 14 players from the National Hockey League and led by Pavel the "Russian Rocket" Bure, the Russians were hot favorites for the gold medal. But local dreams of glory soon turned into a sickeningly real nightmare. As Russia strung together four losses in a row, the effusive welcome that Bure and his fellow NHLers had received from the nation's success-starved hockey public turned rancid with bitter grief. After a 0-3 capitulation to the United States, the home side shambled its way to increasingly embarrassing defeats against ever-lowlier minnows. Once losses to Switzerland, Latvia and then Belarus were out of the way, Russia rallied to a 4-2 win Tuesday night that allowed them to pip Italy for 11th place. For the first time since the Soviet Union debuted at the 1954 championships, the country's team missed the quarterfinals, a result that left Swedish coach Stephan Lundh perplexed. "The Russians played as good as their team is," Lundh said after Tuesday's game. "When they play as well as they did tonight, it is strange not to see them going through to the next round." The St. Petersburg fans who had cheered, whistled and screamed to the rooftops for the opening win were soon greeting the home side with toilet paper rolls and bottles on the ice, relegating their heroes to the status of jeeroes as the star-studded line-up turned the latest chapter of the nation's storied hockey history into a series of bad jokes. "Peter[sburg] hasn't seen such a disaster since 1917," groaned national daily Sport Express in a front page lament on Saturday, a day after the team practically lost all hope of making the last eight with a 3-2 loss to Latvia. "Our national team has managed to do the impossible," wrote Vladimir Mozgovoi in Sport Express when humiliation was completed Saturday, with a 1-0 loss to hockey nonentities Belarus, another first. Belarus ended up ninth, just beating out Norway, who finished 10th. When the wheels first started to come loose against the U.S. team, a motley of NHL mediocrities cobbled together 10 days before the tournament began, there was little sense of panic. As Bure said after the match, the 3-0 loss "was only a game." Sport Express commented that the team had played beautifully and that there was plenty of time for them to actually win games. Even though the team kept those beautiful hockey moments coming, the results kept on getting uglier and uglier. Four defeats and only four goals sent the team tumbling out amid a wailing postmortem that overwhelmed even the lamentations that accompanied the hockey side's medal-less performances in the past seven World Championships. Even the national football team's failures to qualify for either this year's European Championships or the 1998 World Cup in France, did not meet with this level of disillusionment. But memories of the all-conquering Soviet teams of the 1960s, '70s and '80s are still too fresh for anything less than victory to be acceptable. With 22 gold medals, the team is one ahead of Canada on the all time medals list. On Monday the whole of the Russian team — dollar millionaires and home-based ruble millionaire players alike — lined up to say sorry. "I want to apologize to the fans and to Russians in general for the miserable performance and this year's tournament," said head coach Alexander Yakushev. Few could offer any explanation as to what went wrong. "It's one thing to play for a club and another to play for one's country," said Bure, who managed just four goals in six games at the championships, a far cry from his 59 NHL goals this season for Florida. "I know you are disappointed, but we're also disappointed. We came here to play and win for Russia." Others were more than happy to provide explanations, with the NHLers taking the brunt of the blame for playing for themselves and not for the team. Fans laid into the players on the Internet discussion board set up by the The St. Petersburg Times (www.times.spb.ru), sister paper to The Moscow Times. "The Russian team (the NHL players) is nothing but a joke," wrote one anonymous contributor. "Next championship they should not get any NHL players." Indeed the team's best play came not from their stable of NHL talent, but from their domestic stars: Avangard Omsk's Maxim Sushinsky, who battled ferociously every second he was on the ice and had a hat trick in the 8-1 win in the opener against France. The five players from Dynamo Moscow, including Alexander Kharitonov, Alexander Prokopiev and Alexander Khavanov, played so well compared to their colleagues from across the Atlantic that they had the prestige of making up the first line in Tuesday's win over Sweden. "There is no way that we are not a team," said New York Rangers left wing Valery Kamensky, responding to accusations of individualism. "Everyone believes in us but this is hockey, one team wins and one team loses." Alexander Steblin, president of the Russian Hockey Federation, said Sunday that the championships showed that the NHL players were not worth having, though he later backtracked. "The stars have their own approach, their own game. We should use our own boys for the worlds championships," said Steblin, as reported by the AP. By Monday, Steblin was declining to stand by his earlier criticisms, placing most of the blame on Lady Luck. "There was an impression our team was cursed," Steblin said. "The puck just wouldn't go into the opponent's net. There are high points and low points in sports."
Others were both more detached and a touch more whimsical. "I understood that for all our bright
NHL hockey — it's not sport. Sport is not a beautiful thing. It's a tough fight," wrote Sergei
Rodichenko in Sport Express. "The NHL-based players have begun to believe in Hollywood hockey ...
not the dry, Chekhov hockey of their childhoods."
Red Wings' Larionov may join Pavel Bure in Florida DON'T BE surprised if Detroit has a new logo next season -- one modified to display just its wings. Why? Because the wheels are coming off. Second-round losers each of the last two seasons, key players such as Steve Yzerman, Chris Chelios and Larry Murphy are not going to get any better, they're just getting older. This is not meant to bash the Red Wings, a team that has had consistent success others can only dream of attaining. But many around the game have been waiting for this. Until now, Detroit has almost been defying logic with its consistent winning. "The last three or four years, we made a lot of moves to keep our team together and be the best team for the present to contend for a Stanley Cup," Detroit GM Ken Holland said. "We traded away prospects and draft picks. We have to think about the future. We are getting older." With a team payroll approaching $50.million, expect a few of those familiar Red Wings names to be elsewhere in the fall. Players including Igor Larionov, Doug Brown, Slava Kozlov, Pat Verbeek, Kris Draper, Brent Gilchrist and even Murphy may be gone. The other big change to expect is the probable departure of Scotty Bowman, the 66-year-old coaching icon who would rather continue his pursuit of a record ninth Stanley Cup than retire, it would appear. Bowman has already put feelers out for possible bench openings with teams that have up-and-coming talent.
The ex-Shark Larionov is an unrestricted free agent after the season. Don't be surprised if the 39-year-old winds up in Florida where he would be an ideal set-up man for Bure, as well as a strong positive influence on young Russian players such as Viktor Kozlov, another ex-Shark, and Oleg Kvasha.
Home team Russia goes home
 Russian Rocket Pavel Bure (top) is checked by Sweden's Mikael Magnusson NHL goal leader Pavel Bure wasn't enough to keep Russia in medal contention at the World Hockey Championship. The Russians rallied to beat '98 gold medallists Sweden 4-2 before making their exit. The Russians took advantage of a string of Swedish blunders to score three breakaway goals -- including two short-handed ones.
"It was our last chance to justify ourselves, at least a little bit," said Alexander Prokopiev who scored one goal.
The return of the Swiss watchmakers More than a hundred years ago, a Swiss watchmaker named Bure came to St. Petersburg to produce Swiss watches for the Tsar. The rulers of the Russian Empire needed to know exactly when their time would run out. One of the descendants of this family is the famous hockey player Pavel Bure. The Swiss watchmakers are back in town, more than a hundred years after the Bures. They are not exactly the same kind of watchmakers as the Bures were in the old days. They are hockey players. But their game functions with exactly the same precision as a Swiss clock mechanism. Also, because of this Swiss hockey clockwork, the time of the Russian superstars ran out early in this tournament. And guess what the best player of each team gets after the game? Yeah, it's a Swiss watch. The Swiss "clockwork hockey" is not a new secret weapon. It is just a good copy of the well-known Swedish trap. For years, I complained about the boring defensive game of the Swedish National Team. Just now, the Swedes have started to play a more open, spectacular system, and the Swiss are starting to play like the Swedes in the past. But they have to. They don't have the size to play like the Finns, Swedes, Czechs, Canadians or Americans. They are still small, light, but fast and smart. If they think they can play carnival hockey and not work with the precision of a clock, they are lost. Like in the game against Belarus. After an early 3-0 lead in the first period, the defensive clockwork stopped, the Swiss played freestyle carnival hockey and in less than 25 minutes, the Belorusssians made a 4-3 out of a 0-3. But "clock work hockey" will be needed for the Swiss if they want to move on into the semi-finals. What do the Swiss do best beside producing watches? No, I will not talk about banking and producing cheese or chocolate. The Swiss are also very famous for their involvement in politics. There is no need for Swiss politicians to read the books of the famous Italian plotmaker Macchiavelli. They know better. They have to. Over more than 700 years, the Swiss learned to live in peace with four different cultures and languages in life and in today's sports business. It is more difficult to become the president of a Swiss sports federation than to be elected the President of the IIHF. Rene Fasel, the former president of the Swiss federation and now president of the IIHF, proved it again. In an press conference Tuesday, he announced that the players from the National Hockey League will take part in the next Olympic tournament in 2002 in Salt Lake City. That is as difficult as bringing Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky together in peace to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I am sure that only a sports politician well-versed in Swiss sports plots would be able to do that.
World's most conceited woman?
Russians face the music Team Russia that was expected to win the gold at home and didn't even make it into the quarterfinals action appeared in full before journalists Sunday in St. Petersburg to answer a simple question: "What happened?" Head coach Alexander Yakushev said he didn't have an answer. "I want to apologize to Russian fans for the ugly performance, for the emotional downs they had to suffer, watching our untalented play. It's tough to find an answer while the hurt is still hot." Russian hockey federation president Alexander Steblin is still in shock. "Even in these difficult times in our country, all levels of government pitched in to build extraordinary venues, and we hoped our team would be a part of this celebration, going for gold. It didn't happen. I went to Moscow, and even people from the president's office were asking questions," he said. "I don't want to get into individual personalities, there are also objective reasons, even some that sit in our subconscious. I mean, such great players, and they only score four goals. It's as if they were jinxed." Yakushev defended the team's decision to rely upon players from the NHL. "This was an important tournament for the team that hadn't managed to win a single medal in the llast seven years. We put great hopes on players from the NHL because we know how experienced and skilled they are. When they agreed to come, we were happy. But it seems that, for whatever reasons, there wasn't enough time for them to become a team. We hoped they would be in good shape. We wanted originally to have a fifty-fifty split between NHL-based and Russian-based players but, I have to admit, we had more NHL players than those playing at home. Still, I am convinced even now that players who'd come from overseas had enough time to adapt, even though the NHL variety of hockey differs so much from the game as it is played here." The coach also denied that the fact there was no practice after his team's loss to Latvia meant the coaching staff had just given up. "The state the players were in, practice on ice would have made no sense. We had a practice off the ice and then had a game-day skate before the game with Belarus (Russia lost, 1-0)." But Yakushev finds it difficult to apologize to players who were let go, to be replaced by NHL stars. "These players had a three-week training camp with us and some of them played well in exhibition games against Canada. Talking to each and everyone of them was really tough. But this is life in sports. We had hopes for our most experienced players from the NHL because they have mastered both our and overseas systems of hockey." One of the problems the Russians faced was their opponents' goalies beat their Russian counterparts. Russian goaltending coach Vladislav Tretiak was also dumbfounded. "It seems our players are to be blamed for making the other teams' goalies look good. We would be so much better than the opposition but it seems our players missed that little touch, that little something, to beat them. It looked as if God was on their side, not ours." Ottawa Senators' renegade ex-captain Alexei Yashin said he was very disappointed. "I haven't played all year and I wanted very much to show what I can do. I will always be willing to come back, if I'm invited. But I must say we did all we could." Pavel Bure and Valeri Kamensky defended the participation and contributions by players who had come from the NHL. "It's a big difference, to play for your country rather than for your club. Only those who wanted to come were here. You can blame us for the lack of result, but you can't blame us for the effort. We had a good team. May we did something wrong, but I don't know what it was," said Bure.
Kamensky echoed Bure's view. "Pavel said it all, and I would just add that perpahps we weren't lucky on occasion, too. We wanted to play beautful hockey but, sometimes, beautiful hockey doesn't give you the result you've been striving for."
Russia wakes up to beat Sweden 4-2 The Russian Bear woke up. Too little, too late, but very entertaining all the same. Alexander Kharitonov scored two goals and added an assist as Russia beat Sweden 4-2 in its final Qualifying Round game at the Ice Palace Tuesday night. The loss leaves Sweden in third place in Group E with five points. They play Finland Thursday in quarter-finals action, while Russia is out of the hunt. "We didn't have the speed we had in other games," said Swedish Coach Hardy Nilsson, who benched Michael Nylander in the third period for indifferent play. "It was our individual breakdowns that led to Russia's goals." Russia put in its best effort of the 2000 IIHF World Championships, and the victory was largely due to its non-NHL players. Interestingly, Alexander Steblin, President of the Russian Hockey Federation, suggested Sunday Russia would have done better sticking with domestic talent. This night, the Russians showed "checking," "hustle," and "determination" are not necessarily dirty words in their vocabulary. "In the previous games, we had tough luck when we tried to score," said Russian defenseman Igor Kravchuk. "Today we didn't. We changed our strategy and played defense first." Alexander Prokopiev and Pavel Bure had the other goals for Russia. P.J. Axelsson and Peter Nordstrom replied for Sweden. Swedish goalie Mikael Tellqvist got his first start of the tournament in goal for Sweden before a noisy capacity crowd at the new $84-million arena. "I only found out I would play this afternoon because Tommy Salo was feeling queasy," said the 20-year-old Tellqvist, who is participating in his first World Championships. The game was only 3:27 old when Kharitonov raced in alone on Tellqvist and fired a shot into the top corner to open the scoring. Just 26 seconds later, Bure coughed up the puck in the Russian zone to P.J. Axelsson, who cut to the net and beat Egor Podomatski to tie the game 1-1. On a late first period power play, the Russians worked hard in the Swedish zone, but were unable to muster anything against the opposition's disciplined defense. Four minutes into the middle frame, a stickless Alexei Zhamnov tried a soccer-style pass to Maxim Souchinski that almost worked, but Souchinski couldn't get a good shot on Tellqvist. Kharitonov notched his second of the game at 6:24, racing down left wing and beating Tellqvist short side along the ice. Sweden's Jonas Ronnqvist narrowly missed tying the game in the 16th minute, breaking down on a 2-on-1 and flipping a shot just wide of the right post. As it often has in this tournament, Bure's temper flared after he was stoned by Tellqvist on a rush at 0:43 of the third period, and he took a penalty for elbowing. But it didn't matter, as Kharitonov swept down on a 2-on-1 with Alexander Prokopiev and fed his mate for a beautiful goal at 2:21. Tellqvist looked sharp picking off an Alexei Yashin wrister with his glove at 8:57. At 16:06, Bure exploded down the ice on a breakaway and zapped the puck through the Swedish netminder's legs, making the score 4-1. Fifteen seconds later, the Swedes got their second of the game from Peter Nordstrom on a quick shot from the point. They did not come close in the dying seconds. Russia outshot Sweden 27-15. This was the second time the Russian national anthem has been played after a game at the Ice Palace, the first being after Russia's 8-1 win over France to open the tournament April 29.
Unhappy hosts The Russian ice hockey team made a public apology to their fans Monday for their dismal showing at the world championship. The host nation were eliminated in the second round after suffering four successive defeats by the United States, Switzerland, Latvia and Belarus. "On behalf of the entire team I want to apologize to all our fans for such a terrible performance at this championship," head coach Alexander Yakushev told a packed news conference. Russian media accused the team, which included many top NHL players, of lacking effort and the will to win. However, captain Pavel Bure dismissed rumors of poor team morale. "You can accuse us of a lot of things, say that we didn't perform to our ability, that we made mistakes defensively and offensively, but one thing is for sure -- you can't accuse us of not trying our best," said Bure, the NHL top goalscorer this season. "We gave it all but apparently it wasn't enough." New York Rangers forward Valeri Kamensky said: "In front of our home audience we wanted to play exciting and attacking hockey but it often happens that such hockey fails to produce the needed results." Alexei Yashin, who has refused to play for his NHL club Ottawa Senators in a contract dispute, said he had no regrets about participating in the championship. "I have never regretted my decision to come here and be with these guys and in the future, if I were ever called upon to play for the national team, I would not hesitate to come," said Yashin, who won an arbitrator's hearing to play in the tournament.
"Of course it is very painful that we did not succeed. Probably we suffered a similar fate to what happened to Canada at the Nagano Olympics."
Russia offers apologies but few explanations Team Russia held a 40-minute press conference at the Ice Palace Monday afternoon to apologize for the squad's poor showing at the 2000 World Championships and offer explanations for what went wrong. The entire team, plus Russian hockey officials, sat before the glare of TV lights and outstretched microphones, their faces as glum as their 1-4 record. Russian Head Coach Alexander Yakushev said: "On behalf of the team, I apologize for the pain caused by our miserable performance. As for the reasons why, it is hard to pinpoint. Hopefully, through your questions and our answers, we will hear reasons and not excuses." But there just wasn't much to say. Alexander Steblin, President of the Russian Hockey Federation, said: "We would have hoped to compete at the highest levels. It's sad to see fans cheering and not be able to respond with goals and victories." "We will of course draw our conclusions after Sunday's game against Sweden," Steblin added. "Hopefully we have learned our lessons." Team captain Pavel Bure said: "It's one thing to play for an NHL club, another thing to play for the national team. We came here because we wanted to play for Russia and provide a great victory for our country. "I know our fans are disappointed, but we are disappointed as well." Steblin addressed one journalist's complaint about limited access to the Russian team by saying: "I don't know what limited access you are talking about. Under IIHF regulations, any player on the team is available right after every game." Russia has posted its worst-ever results in World Championships action here in St. Petersburg, losing four straight to the USA, Switzerland, Latvia and Belarus. This year marks the first time Russia will miss the quarter-finals since it began competing at the World Championships in 1954.
Russian officials: better off without NHLers
As far as the Russian Hockey Federation is concerned, the NHL players can stay away from the world hockey championships.
Russian players under microscope
The entire Russian hockey team, including NHL superstars Pavel Bure and Alexei Yashin, was grilled mercilessly at a news conference today about its dismal showing at the world hockey championship.
Russian coach apologizes for team performance
The Russian hockey coach apologized and the players faced a barrage criticism on Monday for Russia's dismal performance at the world hockey championship.
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