Igor Larionov and Hockey’s Rink of Dreams
In honor of Igor Larionov’s induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame tonight, I offer the second installation of my “Oh Eight” series on the life of The Professor himself
Its 1968, maybe 69. Full blown Cold War Era. Snow falls softly from a grey sky, shrouding a line of tiny little “men” carrying bags far too large for their pee wee shoulders trudging past the fertilizer plant, up the long drive to the Voskresensk (or Воскресе́нск, if you prefer) Ice Palace. From this small, fertile hockey obsessed city whose name means “resurrection” came one of the greatest Russian talents to ever play the game.
One child, one tiny boy carrying his gear into the rink with the other kids would learn to skate and shoot and pass in the Ice Palace. A boy who would grow to be the most accurate passer and puck possession specialist in all of hockey. A soft spoken child who would grow only to the height of 5’9” and never weigh more than 175 lbs but would be instrumental in changing the face of North American and Soviet hockey.
Igor Nikolayevich Larionov (Игорь Николаевич Ларионов), born on December 12, 1960. Talented beyond measure, Larionov was groomed to play professional hockey for the Russian elite league. He would become one of Russia’s most legendary and heralded centers.
At age 16, growing up in a small industrial city obsessed with hockey, his life goal was to play center for the hometown team, the Khimik Voskresensk. An unimaginable chain of events would take him further from his home and the Voskresensk Ice Palace than maybe even he ever dreamed.
Rink of Dreams
Constructed in 1953 by Nicolay Epstein, the Voskresensk Ice Palace was built to give the local fertilizer plant workers a place to play hockey. With his own hands, Epstein is said to have fashioned its stained-glass windows and poured the water to make the ice. Along with the Ice Palace, Epstein was also responsible for founding the Khimik Voskresensk, (the “Chemists”), now one of the oldest hockey clubs in Russia.
Epstein’s Ice Palace is truly a hockey Field of Dreams. Or a “Rink of Dreams”, if you will so indulge me.
Considered a provincial team, the Khimik was never initially expected to compete with the likes of Dynamo Moscow and CSKA Moscow. But from Epstein’s efforts, the Khimik quickly grew to be a serious national contender.
From 1957 to 1989, the Khimik had great success, winning national championships, 3 bronze and one silver championship, with its own homegrown talent. Due to these historic feats, Khimik is well established amongst the best Russian teams of the Soviet era. Over the years the Khimik has consistently produced unparalleled local talent that garnered its team great national success.
Beside Larionov, Russian talent like Andrei Markov, Valeri Kamensky, Vyacheslav “Slava” Kozlov, Alexander Ragulin and German Titov came from this city and the Khimik organization. Vasilyev, the much lauded and revolutionary coach from the Khmik, is credited with creating the trap defense called “the sack of Voskresensk,” (Yes, created the very same trap D so effectively utilized by teams like New Jersey Devils). Coach Vasilyev was also famous in Russia for developing well-balanced teams with an even mix of gifted veterans and young guns, much like the system so perfectly exhibit by the Detroit Red Wings of the past 17 years.
The symbolism that some of the greatest Russian players came from a town defined by fertilizer and hockey is not lost on this blogger.
As a teenager it was Larionov’s dream to play for the Khimik. The lessons learned from hours of observation and play in that arena would carry through his entire career. However, because of his immense talent the Red Army would ultimately (and over his protests) force him to play for CSKA Moscow where he would earn an international reputation as the “Russian Gretzsky”.
More than a Hockey Player
Incredibly, Larionov’s legacy to the sport of hockey is much greater than his role on the ice. Because of his tireless efforts and an unwavering commitment his ideals, No. 8 would forever change the face of professional hockey. Larionov is responsible (along side Slava Fetisov) for opening the doors of Russia and convincing the Soviet government to allow Russian players to leave the country and play hockey in the NHL.
Russian players would not have made it into the NHL in the late 1980’s as they did without Larionov’s efforts. No. 8 was instrumental in fighting for years and years to convince the cold war Soviet government to permit it professional players the right to leave the country and play elsewhere. Without Larionov, many Russian players might have been forced to defect, risking their lives, as well as the safety of their families and loved ones, just for the opportunity to play in the NHL.
Only an incredibly valuable player, one with that rare combination of awe inspiring talent, intellect, diplomacy and ideals could have succeeded in so quietly bringing about the change that heralded in the Russian era of NHL Hockey. The Game as we know it today, a game where skilled, slick puck handling is revered, where puck possession and trap defenses produce amazing successes, well such incarnation of the sport might not exist without the strength of Larionov’s convictions and commitment to his ideals.
To work within a government seeking change where the individual was not granted a voice, where a belief in freedom was punished and to successfully challenge such a system is unfathomable. The idea that one individual could sway a system as oppressive and controlling as the Soviet government during the height of the cold war is almost incomprehensible. These are the things Igor Larionov accomplished off the ice.
You have to wonder how such strength of conviction and lifetime commitment to seeking change evolves. How does a slight 5’9” son of a factory worker, soft spoken and bespeck-ed, from a small industrial town 88 miles outside of Moscow come to so unwaveringly uphold the idea that people should be free and then fight for such rights?
Convictions and Ideals
Igor Larionov’s convictions and ideals were born from a childhood and family tradition that, despite living and directly suffering at the hand and sickle of a brutal Stalinist regime, still firmly entrenched notions of freedom, political participation and free will into the mind of the young hockey player.
The Larionovs were a family of free thinkers, radical and revolutionary during the Stalin era and at a time when paranoia was incredibly heightened by the Cold War. His entire family history is filled with stories of the horrors of an oppressive government with no regard for individual rights or liberties.
Larionov’s grandfather, Ivan Larionov was sentenced and banished to Siberia at the height of the Stalin regime, punished for his dissidence and outspokeness. In the middle of the night, the year 1937, KGB agents hauled Ivan Larionov away while his wife and their five sons slept. The family woke the next day to find their father gone and spent the next 14 years struggling to survive.
Igor Larionov’s father Nikolai, had been a boy at the time he lost his father to Siberia, and he grew up knowing nothing but the most abject poverty and fear. Nikolai was only 14 when he began full time work at a munitions and bombs factory. There were many occasions when the five boys nearly starved, sometimes sharing “one sugar cube a week." Larionov has said in interview with USA Today.
Ivan Larionov spent 14 years in the Gulag. Only after the death of Stalin in 1953 (the same year the Ice Palace was built), was Ivan finally able to return home. In interview, Larionov has said: "My grandfather was lucky, most people were either executed in the gulags or died there. … It’s the saddest part of our history.”
I don’t know how much the reader knows about Stalin’s Siberian gulags, but the stories that come from those times are as horrific as any genocidal story you can find coming out of Rwanda, Darfur or Bosnia. Tales of torture and cannibalism, only melt the tip of the iceberg.
As if one Siberian gulag story weren’t enough, Larionov’s maternal grandfather, Fedor Barankin, wounded during World War II, was taken to a labor camp in Norway. He was released at the end of the war, returning home, expecting to be recognized a hero. However, but the Soviet government decided he was a German spy and imprisoned him for several years.
“I still get goose bumps, comparing my life to theirs,” Larionov has said. “I can’t even imagine what it was like for them.”
A government that punishes you for speaking out, a government who wrongly accuses a war hero of being a spy. Here in the States we think nothing of finding such a circumstance abhorrent and unconscionable. We speak out on such things all the time and hopefully will never be able to imagine fearing death or prison for speaking our minds.
You might be tempted to think that one would be inclined to suffer at the hand of the Soviet government in fear and silence. Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the Soviet government had punished his family for its radicalism, Igor Larionov made his voice count. Larionov’s family legacy for questioning authority and strength of principle and purpose was firmly ingrained in the young Igor.
Larionov has often told the story of his family listening clandestinely to Voice of America radio broadcasts each night. “There was a fear of the KGB, so you had to be careful not to tell anybody you were doing this” he told USA Today,
“At 12 years old, I was already asking, ’What is really happening in the world?’ I was being taught something very different from what I was hearing on Voice of America. I was hearing songs by the Beatles. I wanted to know the truth, to taste freedom, to experience all that life had to offer.”
It was this background and system of principles that would guide and drive Igor Larionov to stand up for basic freedoms and civil rights. To bite the hand that fed him for the better of his comrades on skates. A strength of conviction and absolute courage that propelled him to take on the same government that tortured and nearly killed his grandfathers that which punished his family for ideals we North Americans take for granted. Larionov never let go of the ideals and principles bestowed by his grandparents and father and his actions honored their lives.
Funny, Voskresensk means “resurrection”, and is translated as “New Jerusalem”. I wonder if Epstein knew his Rink of Dreams would in fact create hockey’s second coming.
I know I know,- that is TOTALLY over the top, but come on, how was a character like me really gonna be able to ignore such symbolism? I’m only human you know, not like The Professor…
Still. Perhaps its not its taking it too far to say that in the year 1953, a year in which both Stalin died and a Rink of Dreams was built, a true “resurrection” of sorts took place in Voskresensk Russia, heralding an era that would eventually produce a man and player who could change an entire system.
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