Time to play for Wings - on Russian tour
Larionov will lead alumni in seven charity
games
March 23, 2005
BY HELENE ST. JAMES
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
There is no mercy in hockey.
Even a game put on in friendship, between men who used to play for Detroit and
men who usually run Minsk, is, in the end, about having a winner and a loser.
Ergo, anything goes.
Take, for example, Thursday. Igor Larionov will lead Red Wings alumni in a
charity game in Minsk, Belarus, against a team whose roster will include
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko. Before even leaving the United
States, Larionov pulled aside teammate Joe Kocur, formerly an enforcer for the
Wings and now an assistant coach, and singled out their high-ranking opponent.
"I told Joey, the first shift of the game, I want you to get some body-checks on
that guy and get us going," Larionov said, smiling.
"I am looking forward to that game."
Thursday's contest is one in a string of seven that will take Larionov, Wings
coach Dave Lewis, Kocur and more on a 12-day Russian tour that includes an
excursion into Siberia. The group met Tuesday at Ginopolis' On The Grill in
Farmington Hills for a bon voyage breakfast, after which it was scheduled to bus
to Toronto, fly to Moscow and then take a train to Minsk.
"The guys we are going with are great ambassadors," Lewis said. "I think what
Igor wants to do is establish an open liaison between the countries."
Decking Lukashenko is a bit radical as diplomatic moves go, although given
Lukashenko's unpopularity Kocur may get a congressional medal of honor if he
follows up on Larionov's good-natured suggestion. (In January, during
confirmation hearings before the Senate, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
called Belarus one of the "outposts of tyranny" in the world.)
As part of the Minsk experience, Larionov has scheduled a trip to nearby
Baranavichi, site of the Koldichevo concentration camp, where the Nazis murdered
an estimated 22,000 people.
"I want to take the guys there to take a look, and bring some flowers," Larionov
said.
Russia is in the midst of celebrating the 60-year anniversary of the end of
World War II, a conflict that cost Russia and her satellites, then known
collectively as the Soviet Union, an estimated 20 million people total.
The tour next dips into Siberia. Lewis joked Tuesday that he was "afraid to look
up the temperatures," but Siberia is an enormous area (it's larger than Canada)
and Tyumen, Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk all lie in the more temperate,
southwestern region.
Part of the allure for Lewis, who previously has been only to Moscow, was the
exotic nature of the itinerary.
"We're going to places I've never been," Lewis said. "The cities in Siberia
we're going to, I can't pronounce. I'm looking forward to the whole environment,
how the culture there differs from Moscow, from Detroit."
Once upon a time Chelyabinsk was home to political exiles; now, it is a key
industrial city. Yekaterinburg is the Trans-Siberian railway's first major stop
in Asian Russia, and a place rife with past historical figures. The city was
founded under Peter the Great and named for his wife, Yekaterina, and is the
hometown of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. More sinister, it was where,
on the morning of July 17, 1918, Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II.
The places were selected specifically for their remoteness from Moscow.
"For the people in big cities, there are a lot of things happening, but people
away from Moscow, they want to see a good hockey game, too," Larionov said. "That's
why we're going to Siberia."
The last three games all are around Moscow, where former Wings defenseman Slava
Fetisov, now the Russian minister of sport, will join the team. A film crew will
document the experience for an eventual TV special. In each city, Larionov hopes
to donate equipment to youth hockey programs.
Larionov, who retired from the NHL last season, was approached late last year by
a group of alumni teams in Russia about the tour. Ever the good sportsman,
Larionov readily agreed.
"It's all about making some new friends and promoting the game," he said.
With mercy for no opponent.
Detroit Free Press
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Copyright © 2005 "Фонд поддержки и развития любительского хоккея Виктора Кузькина"
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