In 2004, I worked the World Championship in Czech Republic out of a refugee camp and was a part of a fight involving the 74-year old Soviet coaching legend Viktor Tikhonov.
This is I, immediately after stepping off the plane in Ostrava, the day before the start of the 2004 Worlds. I have arrived perky and optimistic, safe in the knowledge that nothing can be as bad as 2003. See, I’m happily working already!
By this time, I’m a grizzled veteran, and the story of my misadventures in Finland has become a legend in Russian sports scribe circles. It still is. Just last year, a colleague relayed it to me, with major inaccuracies, without knowing he was speaking to the main character. By now, a decade and a half later, the whole narrative has passed into the realm of folklore, a kind of generic story of Russian journalist fuckups which may or may not have any actual historicity behind it. This is how religion is created, folks. Except, in my case, as you well know by now, it actually happened. Well, this is the sequel…
In Ostrava, I was to work with a new partner. Since this story involves only one incident of dubious legality on his part, and the statute of limitations has long expired, I’ll refer to him by his real full name, Alexei Laputin. I liked Alexei, and still do, so I won’t refer to him by his nickname, La Puta. Alexei was a very competent writer, a nice easygoing dude, an absolutely devoted fan of the Calgary Flames and a pretty decent amateur player who suited up on defense for the Russian Hockey Writers Team.
Back then, the RHW squad had an occasional opportunity to face off against the USSR National Team Veterans. Once the Vets were missing a player and asked Alexei to play for them. Thus, the legendary unit of Makarov–Larionov–Krutov–Fetisov-Laputin was born. It survived for 45 seconds.
Alexei, despite his NHL loyalties, had two very Russian traits: extremely high alcohol tolerance (half a liter of vodka wouldn’t so much as distort his smile) and utter indifference to physical discomfort. Both of these got to be important…
Unlike the infamous Max the year before, Alexei actually did have the hotel booked and the credentials ready. But Alexei’s priorities in the area of lodgings were a little different from most of us. The hotel was called Hlubina, which means Coal Mine in Czech. Czechs, it seems, were still grappling with the capitalist concept of marketing. This was just plain honesty: the hovel was located next to an abandoned coal mine. It wasn’t all of its charm, though. Hlubina’s rooms were utterly bare of any furniture, safe for a couple of mattresses, but were suspiciously full of very non-Czech-looking people with way too many tea kettles and wailing children to be regular tourists. That’s because they weren’t. Hlubina, it turned out, was serving as a camp for Albanian refugees from Kosovo. Its principal tenants, though, were gigantic roaches.
Alexei, of course, wasn’t bothered in the slightest. In fact, this was the way he had planned it all along. That same day he had a handshake agreement with the hotel’s proprietor who wrote out his receipts by hand, one scrap of paper for each day we stayed. The proprietor simply added a zero to the daily room price so that it matched with the amount Alexei was given by the newspaper for half-way decent lodgings. Alexei and the proprietor then split the difference.
Alexei had zero issues with living in jail-like conditions, natch, and even fewer with earning a little extra by skimming off the lodging allowance. Like I said, Alexei was very Russian in every possible way. He came to Ostrava with nothing but his laptop and a tooth brush. He then bought a few t-shirts and underpants at a local market for about $10 and stored them in a trash bag. With his lanky long hair, a soiled baseball cap and a cigarette perpetually smoldering between his lips, he could blend into Eastern European squalor without a glitch. His extremely serviceable English, highly professional writing abilities and encyclopedic knowledge of hockey down to the tiniest minutia were Batman utility belt gizmos that he sort of produced seemingly out of nowhere when they were needed.
Alexei and I weren’t the only Russian journalists sharing the Hlubina with the roaches and Albanians. Two guys from All Hockey Monthly were also there: a writer, Dima (not the Dima from the other story), and a photographer, Vladimir. Dima couldn’t write a thank-you note, let alone an article. So obviously he would go on to became editor-in-chief of Sport-Express a few years later, easily my least competent boss ever. Vladimir, nicknamed The Beard, was a very different story. About 6’2″, with a gray, scraggly beard, he looked and acted like the very personification of all Russian stereotypes. He made grumpy and blunt look warm and fuzzy. He was strong as an ox, drank like a battleship pump and began and ended most sentences with a stream of growled profanities, regardless of whom he was speaking with. Quite often The Beard spoke with people who could grind him into dust with one phone call. They always left him the hell alone.
The Beard had rubbed shoulders with all Soviet hockey greats dating back to the early 1980s, and there are legends about him knocking back a shot or ten of vodka with Valeri Kharlamov himself. Vladimir seemed physically incapable of any degree of human warmth. I may have seen him smile once or twice, and folks in the know have told me that this should make me feel pretty fucking good about myself as a human being. Everyone loved The Beard. Everyone. And he was arriving in Ostrava just in time for his 50th birthday.
According to tradition (“prostavlyatsya” = providing the drink for one’s own celebration), The Beard was coming, via train, with a crate of vodka. Predictably, he arrived with three bottles. He didn’t so much drink, he worked to sustain his blood alcohol content at sublethal levels.
An important side note on Russia’s drinking culture. Alcohol, to Russians, is a very important social litmus test. People who do not drink will not be trusted. People who cannot hold their drink will not be respected. Alexei and The Beard were trustworthy, respected individuals.
I’m happy to say that my size and metabolism immediately enshrined me into the pantheon of their friends, but this is not the main point. The Beard’s sad, inadequately supplied birthday, celebrated on Hlubina’s less than sterile mattresses, was a foreshadowing for the tournament. Just as we were imbibing in the Hlubina, Russia’s national team, led by Ilya Kovalchuk (whose own drinking prowess was probably only second to Andrei Nazarov) was doing the same thing in one of Ostrava’s swankier joints. The 2004 Worlds became The Tourney Kovalchuk Drank Away.
To be sure, the stories of Kovy and company’s Ostrava excursions (they allegedly did the same in 2005 in Vienna) mostly come from coach Vladimir Krikunov and were hotly disputed by Ilya. But few people who knew Kovalchuk back then doubt Krikunov. Kovy was quite, quite “trustworthy”… But, it wasn’t just on him. The entire 2004 Russian squad was one enormous fuckup. That was the year Hockey Russia, after more than a decade of Worlds failures, decided to bring back the legendary Viktor Tikhonov to show the new guys how it was done in the glory days.
The 74-year-old legend, however, presented a very sorry sight. Physically infirm (though mentally quite sound), he had zero idea about how to deal with NHL pros without the might of the Soviet military and the Communist Party behind him. He was utterly ignored and disrespected. One Russian player, just before a practice, turned to us scribes and said, “We can’t start. They haven’t carried our coach in here yet.” Another one told me: “Why the fuck is he pacing in front of the bench with his back to us? Doesn’t he know we will spit right on his jacket?” Pacing in front of his players was, of course, Tikhonov’s signature style in the Soviet days, when a mere thought of spitting on his jacket could get a Red Army hockeyist comrade sent straight to the places much colder than any ice rink.
Yes, the times were different. But, funnily enough, this being Russia, the team was accompanied by two FSB officers. After Alexei and I, two days into the tourney, finagled our way into a player’s hotel room for an exclusive, one of them threatened both of us with deadly professional and personal consequences. I told him he could write straight to Washington, DC. Back then, you could still talk to them like that without signing your own polonium-induced-death warrant. Which didn’t mean my life was never in danger.
I was barely in Ostrava for 24 hours when the team’s GM Anatoly Bardin promised to beat me into a bloody pulp for an insufficiently fawning description of Russia’s 6-1 win over Denmark. This, along with a win over Japan, was the extent of Russian triumphs at those Worlds… Fun times.
But, as Russia’s on-ice fortunes dwindled, Bardin became more and more friendly and finally promised (it was this kind of tourney) to have a get-together with the media, me especially, over some vodka when it was all over. Bardin kept his promise. To an extent.
Russia’s hotel was next to the arena, a two-minute leisurely saunter away. The entire walkway was lined, two rows deep, with female groupies, whom players picked up on their way back from practice. Poor old Viktor Tikhonov. How he must’ve longed for the steel fist of the Party. Even reporters weren’t amused. One day, Alexei and I were grilling an assistant coach on the state of Maxim Afinogenov’s health, with The Beard shooting nearby. “Not great”, said the coach. “It’s the groin.”
“He should jerk off less”, said The Beard, never stopping his work. “The doctors are trying to help”, said the coach on autopilot, not quite believing what he had just heard.
Later that day, we ran into our colleague from ITAR-TASS, the Russian state news agency. As such, he had scored a room in Ostrava’s finest hotel. He looked badly sleep-deprived. “You won’t believe what I’m going through”, he said. “I’m in a room next to [a famous Russian player’s] father. Goddamn prostitutes are in and out all night like on a goddamn conveyor belt!” We commiserated, but what can one do? Should’ve stayed in the Hlubina, where the roaches were at least copulating quietly.
Russia’s losses mounted. Tikhonov screamed at everyone, amusing the older players and scaring the bejeezus out of the 18-year-old Alexander Ovechkin, on his first national team call-up, and the squad was utterly schooled by every opponent, including the rough and tumble team USA led by Chris Drury and Mike Grier.
In the end, Bardin did indeed have an alcohol-fueled pow-wow with the press. “Bring us Sliwowitz!”, he shouted at the hotel waiter. “Of course”, said the Czech waiter in flawless Russian. “And, perhaps something to eat?”
“No, food just takes space in the stomach”, said Bardin. “But beer will be good.” After drinking three shots of Sliwowitz and chasing it down with a pint of Czech beer, Bardin told us a filthy joke involving Little Red Riding Hood and a very rapey-feeling wolf and immediately left, leaving us with the check. That was the extent of the press conference… Bardin really earned his GM paycheck.
Tikhonov’s final presser was more constructive. The first (and last) question was asked by Gazeta.ru, a Russian news site. It went like this.
“Viktor Vasiliyevich, will you resign now?”
“Which publication are you with?”
“Gazeta.ru”
“DOT? DOT WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK IS A DOT?”
Tikhonov was immediately escorted out of the room before he could tear the reporter to shreds. I don’t think anyone ever explained to him what “a dot” was. The old man loved his papers… Alexei and I knew better. We met him at the hotel and politely introduced ourselves. Tikhonov knew Alexei by face, but upon hearing my name, he said: “Ah. Nice to finally see what you look like.” This, by the way, is still one of the proudest moments of my life. It was to be followed by one of the scariest.
As we talked, a Czech TV crew approached us. They probably had purely benign intentions, but they made the mistake of turning a camera on him and sticking a microphone into his face without warning. Tikhonov was immediately overcome by the kind of fury he was legendary for circa 1980. Before we knew what’s what, he lunged at the camera man with an agility that would make any Soviet Army colonel proud. However, since Tikhonov was a 74-year-old Soviet Army colonel, his punch missed. It took the combined efforts of myself, Alexei, and Tikhonov’s son Vasily to prevent a bloodbath. This was the last day Viktor Vasiliyevich Tikhonov spent as the head coach of a Soviet/Russian national team. The fight was all out of him. You could touch the sadness in the air. The epoch ended with a whimper and a missed right hook.
But we, the writers, still had the tourney to finish. Saying goodbye to Ostrava, Alexei, The Beard and I downed a couple more bottles and went into the bowels of a local pub to chase them down with the magnificent Czech beer. The pub was full of local working class.
“Rusove?”, asked us a 300-lb man nursing a pint in a spectacularly huge fist.
“Russkiye, russkiye”, answered The Beard who never bothered with silliness like foreign tongues.
“Ruski novinari (Russian newsmen)”, I added. The Czech started saying something about Russian hockey, but The Beard had none of it.
“What the fuck do you want with us?”, said The Beard in Russian, draining a pint in one gulp. “What can you ever know about the Russian soul? Even Gogol couldn’t make sense of it, so what the fuck are you hoping for?” This, by the way, should be the first line of the Russian national anthem.
PS. The Beard is in his 60s now. I last met him in Minsk in 2014 and he told me he doesn’t drink as much anymore. We met over coffee. He seemed sad. Said his son was eager to go defend Russian-speakers from “all those Nazis” in Ukraine. I preferred not to argue. TV propaganda is a terrible force.
Alexei left Sport-Express and worked for the KHL for several years. When I visited him in league offices, he immediately pulled out a jug of moonshine from under his desk. He went suddenly and completely bald, which gave him a much more professional appearance, but his character hasn’t changed a bit.
Bardin died in 2017 at the age of 61 “after a long and difficult illness”, which in Russia usually means alcoholism. He is a legend in Siberian hockey circles.
For me, the tourney ended badly. Dima (the editor from the last story) came up with a topic for the final “obituary” that I knew nothing about. The article, which I slaved over for 20 hours subsiding on nothing but vodka, was pure shit. Several Russian hockey legends wanted to kill me for it. After I filed it, Alexei and The Beard grabbed me and took me to a famous Prague restaurant for authentic Czech grub. It consisted of half a roasted pig and a mound of mashed potatoes.
“Fuck Dima”, said The Beard. “Fuck Team Russia. Fuck the lockout. Fuck everything but honeybees.” He paused, downed his beer and added:
“On second thought, fuck the honeybees, too.”
Fin.
