[TheSwami]

Michael Friscolanti
National Post


Saturday, September 27, 2003

CREDIT: Andrew Vaughan, The Canadian Press

Vancouver Canucks fans are abuzz over rumours a billionaire plans to buy the team and stack it with Russian players only.


Fourteen years ago, as the Berlin wall crumbled under the weight of capitalism, Russia's five most talented hockey players -- the so-called "Green Unit" of Russia's Red Army team -- packed their skates and made the move to North America.

For two of those men, Igor Larionov and Vladimir Krutov, the final destination was Vancouver, where they joined the Canucks for the start of the 1989 National Hockey League season.

The signings sparked a full-fledged media frenzy. Until then, only two other Russians had played in an NHL game and neither approached the calibre of the new arrivals.

Today, more than a decade after that historic season, Canucks fans are once again buzzing about the possible arrival of another high-profile Russian, an eccentric Russian billionaire who is reportedly negotiating to buy the franchise and, if all goes according to plan, fill the dressing room with countrymen.

The team's current regime vehemently denies it is even talking to Roman Abramovich, a self-made oil tycoon believed to be worth more than $18-billion.

But the rumours alone have triggered a flurry of debate among hockey lovers trying to imagine what it would be like if an entire NHL team was made up of Russians: How could anyone stop a first line of Ilya Kovalchuk, Sergei Federov and Alexander Mogilny?

If there is a person who could turn that fantasy into reality, it is Mr. Abramovich, widely considered the world's wealthiest man younger than 40.

A rags-to-riches story, the 36-year-old has gone from selling plastic ducks out of his apartment to sitting atop Russia's oil industry. He is also the Governor of Chukotka, a remote Siberian region where residents know him as the man who drives around in an armoured Mercedes with a crew of bodyguards.

Sport, however, appears to be his favourite pastime. He already owns one hockey team -- Avangard Omsk of the Russian elite league -- and this summer he sent ripples through the soccer world when he purchased Chelsea of the English Premier League for $313-million.

In the ensuing weeks, he spent another $248-million wooing star players to the team.

"He is a boy who wants to enjoy himself," Sergei Markov, a Moscow-based political analyst, recently told the London Evening Standard. "He's got all his money and now he has decided to buy a lot of toys."

Whether one of those toys ends up being the Vancouver Canucks remains to be seen, but the idea of an all-Russian NHL team has already piqued the interest of many of the league's more than 50 Russian players.

Even Canadian hockey czar Don Cherry -- a vocal critic of European players -- said he welcomes the idea.

"He sounds like my type of guy," Mr. Cherry said of Mr. Abramovich. "He sticks up for his own and he's paying. It sounds OK to me."

During his short-lived tenure as coach of the Mississauga IceDogs, Mr. Cherry did his best to draft and recruit only Canadian players. It would be hypocritical, he said, to criticize Mr. Abramovich for wanting to follow a similar policy.

"It would be a great draw around the league, I tell you," Mr. Cherry said yesterday. "And I know what colour their sweaters would be."

Ron MacLean, Mr. Cherry's sidekick on Hockey Night in Canada, said an all-Russian club would not only be entertaining, but successful -- both on the ice and in the pocketbook.

"I think people would accept it and probably find it as a novelty or an attraction," he said yesterday from Red Deer, Alta. "What's wrong with that? We're in the business of providing slants and stories and it would have cach?."

The Canucks, however, are already quite a story. Led last season by Marcus Naslund, Todd Bertuzzi and Trevor Linden, the team tallied a record 104 points, advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs and enjoyed 37 regular-season sellouts at G.M. Place.

The thought that the team can be torn apart at the drop of a ruble does not sit well with some hockey fans.

"It's really, really frustrating that entrepreneurs have so much power, that the people of Vancouver have to be on tenterhooks about one of the most visible teams in the city, that some guy can come in and entirely change the composition," said Bruce Kidd, a member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and dean of the Faculty of Physical Education and Health at the University of Toronto.

"It's basically saying, 'This is your team and you've got to like it.' "

Helena Borne, president of the Vancouver Canucks Booster Club, was more reserved. She said as long as the team stays in Vancouver, it really does not matter who is on the roster. "I think the fans cheer for the sweater, not who is in the sweater," she said yesterday.

As Mr. Cherry put it: "If they were winning, I don't think it would make a difference."

Dave Bidini, a well-known hockey writer and member of the band Rheostatics, said in the end, the make-up of a team comes down to cash. If someone has the money and the desire to hire only Russian players, he said, that is his business.

"Why not?" he asked. "There's a guy in my fantasy hockey league and he only drafts Swedes -- and he won last year."

mfriscolanti@nationalpost.com

? Copyright 2003 National Post

[Jlg-28]

interesting , lets see if it happens or not