many of today’s biggest NHL stars are of
Russian descent but there was a time
that none of them could have played in
the National Hockey League
hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’ll be giving
you our top 5 trivia facts about hockey
in the soviet union and today’s KHL
Petrov is starting up Petrov is coming
down to the Canadian it was a completely
different world from what we see today
in hockey you see players they come into
the league they eventually qualify for
free agency and they can pick and choose
which team they want to play for based
on any number of factors and that was
not the case then you basically were
owned in perpetuity in the Russian
league the best players were reserved
for certain teams one of the things that
was kind of interesting about the
Russian leagues during the Cold War is
that there was this strong central
government and the labor unions were
very powerful and all these teams were
connected to a specific union or trade
union so central Red Army for example
which is the Big Red Machine everyone
knows about that was the official hockey
club of the Russian army
as far as we know with the Russian
national team this was a minimum 11
month a year job there was no offseason
usually their training would be held in
these very isolated out-of-the-way
barracks style grounds they’d be
separated from their their family and
their friends from what I’ve seen the
number of hours that the average Russian
player would dedicate to training and
games would absolutely dwarf at an
average North American player at least
five six times more hours per year than
what the typical North American player
would dedicate to training practice and
games that’s how important it was to to
the government so that when they did go
into these international tournaments
they could dominate and they did they
were the best team of the world as the
cold war service slowly started winding
down you could see the cracks starting
to develop with with these teams there
were stories about players escaping
their training camps and and trying to
find a way to get back to their family
just to spend an extra moment with their
family they’d be tracking where you went
who you spoke to how much money you
spent because if you suddenly had more
money than you should be having on these
trips that would arouse suspicion these
players were a huge asset to their
government and they were not going to
let them go
there are all these sort of folktales
these mythological figures about
athletes who had tried to defect and
thought they were about to make it and
then all of a sudden plans went awry and
next thing you know they’re back in
Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain
and their lives have just completely
been changed the biggest name and it’s
still the biggest name we talk about and
it’s one of the better stories so I like
talking about it too is the stassney
brothers you have these three brothers
from Slovakia they’re all incredibly
talented they have this synchronicity
together on the ice that no one had ever
seen and just the way they came to North
America they way they were coveted by
every team really in the National Hockey
League it eventually led to all kinds of
very secretive clandestine
cloak-and-dagger meetings trying to
figure out a contract trying to just
find an opportunity to see when or if
these players could could have five
minutes alone so they could prop try and
bring them to North America and when
they finally did one of the brothers was
left behind they knew his brothers had
defected so he was stripped of his
livelihood basically he was kicked off
the national team kicked off his club
team and would rejoin his brothers a
year later but it was a very difficult
year for him and then as you go on down
the line you get into into players
especially near the end of the Cold War
the players started getting very young
much younger than anyone had ever seen
in terms of defectors so you see guys
like Sergei Fedorov Alex and guilty
Peter net but guys who became pretty
pretty productive players and big stars
in the National Hockey League
the general consensus was that these
players were star players and they came
to North America and once they were in
North America they were they were made
they were they were it was done they
were stars they were gonna make money
and life was gonna be so easy for them
for a lot of them that’s just where the
struggle kind of started the transition
was so awesome for these these players
especially the ones who are pretty young
they were they they made the decision to
be there they were there voluntarily but
they were in a situation I think a lot
of them may not have been prepared for
different country different culture
different language different everything
these were people who had never had a
credit card who had never had a checking
account who when they went to a grocery
store you had to snap up as much as you
could because the supply was so short
that it might not be there the next day
and then all of a sudden they’re in the
North America and they walk into a
grocery store and they they can’t
understand they can’t process how how
much supply there is and that’s
something that NHL teams started to
learn more and more about as they
started bringing players over they
needed a bit more of a grooming they
needed someone who could sort of
chaperone them through the process of
learning the language learning about the
culture and just getting themselves
grounded in it was a completely
different world for them
I think there was sort of a debate at
one point about whether players from
Europe and particularly Eastern Europe
had a preference in terms of the NHL or
the cage and I think a few years later
we now know that the NHL is the standard
and that’s the league that the best
players in the world want to play in
there is kind of a precedent here
obviously and what we saw during the
last work stoppage was that the top
option for a number of players
especially the most talented ones was to
go to Russia and play there it’s
probably the most competitive league
after the National Hockey League and the
money obviously wasn’t bad you’d see
players in Germany or Switzerland or
sweet and Finland other other leagues in
other countries but I think the
understanding is that the KHL is that’s
the next level after the National Hockey
League
Russian descent but there was a time
that none of them could have played in
the National Hockey League
hi I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’ll be giving
you our top 5 trivia facts about hockey
in the soviet union and today’s KHL
Petrov is starting up Petrov is coming
down to the Canadian it was a completely
different world from what we see today
in hockey you see players they come into
the league they eventually qualify for
free agency and they can pick and choose
which team they want to play for based
on any number of factors and that was
not the case then you basically were
owned in perpetuity in the Russian
league the best players were reserved
for certain teams one of the things that
was kind of interesting about the
Russian leagues during the Cold War is
that there was this strong central
government and the labor unions were
very powerful and all these teams were
connected to a specific union or trade
union so central Red Army for example
which is the Big Red Machine everyone
knows about that was the official hockey
club of the Russian army
as far as we know with the Russian
national team this was a minimum 11
month a year job there was no offseason
usually their training would be held in
these very isolated out-of-the-way
barracks style grounds they’d be
separated from their their family and
their friends from what I’ve seen the
number of hours that the average Russian
player would dedicate to training and
games would absolutely dwarf at an
average North American player at least
five six times more hours per year than
what the typical North American player
would dedicate to training practice and
games that’s how important it was to to
the government so that when they did go
into these international tournaments
they could dominate and they did they
were the best team of the world as the
cold war service slowly started winding
down you could see the cracks starting
to develop with with these teams there
were stories about players escaping
their training camps and and trying to
find a way to get back to their family
just to spend an extra moment with their
family they’d be tracking where you went
who you spoke to how much money you
spent because if you suddenly had more
money than you should be having on these
trips that would arouse suspicion these
players were a huge asset to their
government and they were not going to
let them go
there are all these sort of folktales
these mythological figures about
athletes who had tried to defect and
thought they were about to make it and
then all of a sudden plans went awry and
next thing you know they’re back in
Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain
and their lives have just completely
been changed the biggest name and it’s
still the biggest name we talk about and
it’s one of the better stories so I like
talking about it too is the stassney
brothers you have these three brothers
from Slovakia they’re all incredibly
talented they have this synchronicity
together on the ice that no one had ever
seen and just the way they came to North
America they way they were coveted by
every team really in the National Hockey
League it eventually led to all kinds of
very secretive clandestine
cloak-and-dagger meetings trying to
figure out a contract trying to just
find an opportunity to see when or if
these players could could have five
minutes alone so they could prop try and
bring them to North America and when
they finally did one of the brothers was
left behind they knew his brothers had
defected so he was stripped of his
livelihood basically he was kicked off
the national team kicked off his club
team and would rejoin his brothers a
year later but it was a very difficult
year for him and then as you go on down
the line you get into into players
especially near the end of the Cold War
the players started getting very young
much younger than anyone had ever seen
in terms of defectors so you see guys
like Sergei Fedorov Alex and guilty
Peter net but guys who became pretty
pretty productive players and big stars
in the National Hockey League
the general consensus was that these
players were star players and they came
to North America and once they were in
North America they were they were made
they were they were it was done they
were stars they were gonna make money
and life was gonna be so easy for them
for a lot of them that’s just where the
struggle kind of started the transition
was so awesome for these these players
especially the ones who are pretty young
they were they they made the decision to
be there they were there voluntarily but
they were in a situation I think a lot
of them may not have been prepared for
different country different culture
different language different everything
these were people who had never had a
credit card who had never had a checking
account who when they went to a grocery
store you had to snap up as much as you
could because the supply was so short
that it might not be there the next day
and then all of a sudden they’re in the
North America and they walk into a
grocery store and they they can’t
understand they can’t process how how
much supply there is and that’s
something that NHL teams started to
learn more and more about as they
started bringing players over they
needed a bit more of a grooming they
needed someone who could sort of
chaperone them through the process of
learning the language learning about the
culture and just getting themselves
grounded in it was a completely
different world for them
I think there was sort of a debate at
one point about whether players from
Europe and particularly Eastern Europe
had a preference in terms of the NHL or
the cage and I think a few years later
we now know that the NHL is the standard
and that’s the league that the best
players in the world want to play in
there is kind of a precedent here
obviously and what we saw during the
last work stoppage was that the top
option for a number of players
especially the most talented ones was to
go to Russia and play there it’s
probably the most competitive league
after the National Hockey League and the
money obviously wasn’t bad you’d see
players in Germany or Switzerland or
sweet and Finland other other leagues in
other countries but I think the
understanding is that the KHL is that’s
the next level after the National Hockey
League
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