Bruce Dowbiggin
When Russians Were Cool: How Detroit Brought Down The Wall
The Ukraine invasion has caused repercussions everywhere— even in hockey. The NHL, IIHF and the CHL have all responded in different ways to punish the aggression shown by Vladimir Putin. The CHL, in particular, has banned the drafting of Russians and Belorussians teenagers in this year’s bantam draft.
This overreach is all the rage with officials offended by Putin (the Metropolitan Opera fired one of its star soloists, Russian Anna Netrebko, for not condemning Putin enough). Not since the 1980s, when the dying USSR forbade the drifting on players into the NHL, has there been such distrust of Russians for political reasons.
In our new book Inexact Science, my son Evan and I recalled how the Detroit Red Wings, under chief scout Neil Smith, cracked the bias against Soviet (Russian) players in the historic 1989 draft as they poached a Hall of Fame defence man from Sweden and two Russian stars— Sergei Fedorov and Vladimir Konstantinov, in the middle rounds of that draft. And how it could have been much greater with a third Russian who got away.
“In 1986, Smith had been sent on a mission to find a full-time European scout for Detroit. Visiting Sweden, he encountered Christer Rockstrom. Smith was already somewhat acquainted with this scouting whiz, because Christer had been the cab driver who would take him to and from games he was scouting. Realizing he was dealing with a hardcore but perceptive fan who knew the players inside and out, Smith persuaded the Wings to give the Swede some scouting employment on a part-time basis, and then promoted him to the full-time European scout role a couple years after. It was a partnership that paid huge dividends.
The results of the organization’s new dedication to searching deeply into Europe was never more evident than with their third-rounder in the 1989 draft. That pick (number 53) may just be the best mid-round steal in NHL draft history. Rockstrom had put in tremendous diligence to find him, alerting his higher-ups to this thin, wiry kid playing for VIK Västerås HK of the Swedish Elitserien. A teenaged defenceman who had drawn into only 20 games in 1988–89 with just two assists to show for it, this player didn’t get much ice time when he actually did find his way into the lineup. Nonetheless, he happened to catch Rockstrom’s eye. That D-man was none other than Nicklas Lidstrom.
Fearing Lidstrom would be lost to them in the 1990 draft, when he’d be considered a first-round-worthy prospect, Detroit pounced a year in advance. Rockstrom convinced the Wings brass to use their last possible chance to grab Lidstrom—a potential gem who he believed would turn into a top pairing defender. Wary that someone could spill the beans to other teams, only four members of the organization—Devellano, Smith, Holland and Rockstrom—knew the secret until the day of his selection.
It worked like a charm. Lidstrom was still available come round three and was taken by the Wings—to the confusion of many in attendance. Even the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau had very little info on what was considered quite an off-the-board choice (or “project,” as it’s often dubbed today).
As the league scrambled to figure out the Lidstrom pick on the draft floor in Minnesota, the Wings were thinking even further to the east for other delightful discoveries. Once the spring of 1989 rolled around, Soviet authorities had finally begun actively marketing some of their established stars to interested buyers in North America… it was still believed that the Soviets would want to hang on to their elite younger talent for several years to come. This mindset warded off many teams from wanting to “waste” a pick on such an arduous scenario. The Wings were not so easily scared in 1989. Having already passed on grabbing Sergei Fedorov when they had the chance in 1988, they used their fourth-round pick, number 74 overall, to select him the following year.
Devellano certainly wasn’t planning to miss out on Fedorov on this particular occasion. As he told NHL.com in 2015, “My thinking was, ‘Let’s call a spade a spade; how many fourth-round picks who are North American make it big?’ Very few… So what I said to myself was, ‘This is the best 19-year-old in the world, and I’m going to pass on him (again) to probably take a minor-league player?’ Forget about that, he’s coming on the Red Wings’ list, and we’ll worry about it in the future.” A star centre with Moscow CSKA, Fedorov internationally and domestically was featured as the playmaking, defensively responsible force on a line with fellow teenaged phenoms Alexander Mogilny and Pavel Bure—a ridiculously potent grouping that was the equivalent of a 2004 Russian squad icing a line with Evgeni Malkin between Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk.
Mogilny himself had been secured by the Sabres with the 89th overall pick a year earlier, but scouts were salivating that perhaps Bure or Fedorov could be available the next year as well. Fedorov had even been offered the chance to jump ship with Mogilny earlier. Before becoming the first Soviet player to successfully defect, Mogilny revealed his intentions to close friend Fedorov in a Stockholm hotel room they shared. Fedorov rejected the offer to join him, however, figuring it was a lark, prank or some sort of joke that was never supposed to be acted upon. But within 48 hours of the chat, Mogilny bolted the premises in an elaborate escape where he gained contact with the Sabres and the parties enacted a covert flight plan into the USA. While Fedorov stayed put for the meantime, the Wings were undeterred in taking him, even if it made the Soviet authorities keep even stricter surveillance on their prized pupils.
At his team’s drafting table that day (in 1989), Devellano reportedly promised Smith that they could go after at least one more Russian before the day was over. That next one ended up being Fedorov, who many whispered might just have been the best on that line because of his uncanny ability to handle the duties of a two-way centre while the explosive Mogilny and Bure were freed up to earn the glory of scoring most of the goals. Devellano would make his reasoning clear down the road by stating, “As was the case with Petr Klima, my strategy was simple. We would draft the best players, and if they happened to be behind the Iron Curtain, we would use our ownership resources to find a way to get them out.” Such boldness confirms the theory that quality ownership is perhaps the most important element in forging a perennially successful sports club.
Indeed, the Ilitches—who also own the Detroit Tigers—were the polar opposite of what Wings ownership had been under Bruce Norris. Their willingness to use their big dollars, trust their personnel and treat their employees with a degree of loyalty and compassion certainly gave the franchise some incredible mileage in their eventual reign as the model NHL organization from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. The drafting wizardry of 1989 didn’t necessarily begin and end with the Wings, though. And it could’ve been even richer. While Wings personnel in later years claimed they were ready to grab Fedorov’s linemate Bure with their sixth-round pick and deal with any questions of his eligibility later, they never got the chance to add him. Another team’s plans got in the way.
Detroit’s management group had apparently mused about grabbing Bure in the fifth round after already having secured Fedorov. As Holland told the Toronto Star’s Bob McKenzie in 1995:
We (were) at the draft table and Christer tells Neil “Now we should take Bure”… Neil said he didn’t think Bure had played enough games to be eligible. So Neil goes and checks with (NHL vice-president) Gil Stein, and Stein tells Neil that Bure has only played seven games and it has to be eleven (sanctioned games) to be an eligible pick. Neil comes back and tells us that, and Christer says “No, that’s not right. He played eleven. I know he played eleven.” Neil goes back to Stein and tells him our European scout said Bure should be eligible.
Stein still said no. The NHL’s records showed just five games played in 1987–88—figures Rockstrom believed were erroneous. So Neil comes back to the table and it’s coming to our turn. We didn’t think Bure was eligible, so we took someone else (Shawn McCosh)… Finally, Neil said we were going to take Bure with our next pick no matter what and let the league settle the eligibility thing later. We were just about to pick him when the Canucks announced his name.
It was Canucks GM Pat Quinn who swooped in on Bure during that sixth round (overruling his second-in-command, Brian Burke, who at the time thought Bure was too small for the big leagues of North America). Thankfully for the Canucks, their head scout, Mike Penny, agreed with Rockstrom’s assertion that Bure had made the required number of appearances and convinced his boss to turn in the card with Bure’s name on it. With whispers that the Oilers were looking to nab him too, the Canucks stepped up to make “The Russian Rocket” their own at number 113, and did so only three spots ahead of where the Wings ultimately took Dallas Drake—perhaps Detroit’s most successful North American pick that year, but a far cry from a future Hall of Famer like Bure.
As consolation the Red Wing later nabbed Vladimir Konstantinov in the seventh round. To put the finishing touches on their 1997-98 Stanley Cups they added USSR stars Igor Larionov, Sacha Fetisov and Slava Kozlov. The NHL— and Don Cherry— was never the same after the triumph of the Russian Five
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
After rummaging about for two months to no great effect the NHL has now embarked in its traditional Xmas break. Under the NHL’s collective agreement, no one plays any games from Dec. 24-27. This comes after a roster freeze that forbids trading a player during said holiday season. The annual World Junior champions, too, doesn’t crank it up till Boxing Day.
It’s a throwback to a more tranquil time when most of the Western world went home to eat too much and fall asleep on the sofa for three days. Then go shopping. So props to Gary Bettman’s NHL for keeping to their family stance. In such frenetic times there’s something to be said for pausing to sniff the frozen roses.
But catching your breath in the sports world is now an anachronism, driven by the massive dollars paid by networks and digital providers to sports leagues. In a time when the NFL rakes in $105 B ($2.1 billion a year) from its broadcast partners while the 32 teams collect a tidy $300 million each it’s no wonder the equity in NFL franchises has soared of late.
And that means using every minute of the calendar to schedule games— especially on days like Christmas when hundreds of millions are sitting at home after opening the prezzies, itching for something to watch besides It’s A Wonderful Life. So the Xmas break this year features two games on the day and another on Boxing Day. Followed by a full weekend of games on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
In doing so it big foots the NCAA CFS’s new 12-team playoff and bowl-game format which also uses every day but Sunday this time of year. On the past Saturday FS games were given a head start before the NFL stole eyeballs with its own games an hour later. Tough luck college boys. It’s unlikely to change as the CFS is eager to expand the playoffs in the future.
The NFL is not the first to exploit this previously virgin calendar break, of course. Th NBA broached the prohibition against Xmas Day in 1947, first placing a single high-profile game that day. Later it expanded to an all-day menu of games. Anything sacred about the family day went bye-bye as folks either went to the TV or the kitchen for the rest of the day.
The reason that pro sports is creating also many windows for their product is the sudden arrival of so many new outlets for games. Where legacy TV/ cable networks had exclusive dibs on buying rights for decades, cable cutting has now exploded the bidders. As GTM expert Rhys Dowbiggin told us in our July 29, 2024 column the model was UFC. Yup. UFC. “ESPN+ (Disney) has been working directly with the UFC for a number of year and packaging their events on the streamer.
And let’s not ignore the monkey in the room: YouTube, which dominates all the streamers for eyeballs – YouTube (Google) has more live sports than any of the other streamers. Just for context, there is a massive amount of money in these deals: the recent NBA media rights deal is going to be 70B+ – split across a number of media partners. All the streamers took a similar GTM strategy – and they’ve led us back to 2001.”
Disgruntled consumers dumping cable/ satellite carriers sought other outlets for their spots viewing for NFL, NBA, NHL and NCAA. Leagues responded so we now have special placement games for YouTube, Amazon Prime, Apple, Disney and Google. And the Xmas season cornucopia of games. Watching whatever you wanted. The strategy was to compete on bidding for original content to bring in the subscribers.
Then a funny thing happened. It was now only some of what you wanted. The expansion of carriers pissed off viewers just as much as the arbitrary cable companies. the magic solution of cable cutting is now the tragic solution. Explains Dowbiggin, “The original product fit for streaming was the promise of all the content you could need was in a single place, on-demand. You only needed Netflix (in a sense) and you never had to wait or choose what to watch. Once the market fragmented into multiple players, the fit evaporated. Half the problem that was solved by streaming was now gone:
Watching whatever you wanted. It was now only some of what you wanted. The streamers GTM strategy was to compete on original content to bring in the subscribers. But creating content and not consolidating content exasperated the issue.”
The latest strategy is to bundle services across outlets to give consumers easier packaging. Says Dowbiggin, “Will bundling partnerships change things? It can’t hurt. But unless it drastically shrinks the numbers of players at the top to 2-3, the problem of ‘watching whatever you want’ won’t be solved, because I’ll still need Disney for my Star Wars.
All I know is, I’ve kept my library card for years, because I always saw this coming. And I don’t plan on getting rid of it anytime soon.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
This Ernest Hemingway gem from The Sun Also Rises has gotten a workout in this time of progressive economic policy. But it’s worth repeating in the case of Justin Trudeau’s Canada where the F word is fiscal. The “gradually” part of Liberal fiscal policy has now passed. Leaving the “suddenly” of $60 B deficits with no plan for recovery
You’d think that missing your deficit estimate by $40B might have cost the finance minister Chrystia Freeland her job. But no! In Trudeaupia it was the failure of Freeland to embrace even more wack-a-doodle spending plans by the prime minister and his brain trust of former groomsmen and climate acolytes. Yes, the cratering of finances is the ideal time to award a GST holiday and $250 cheques to much of the nation. It has been noticed.
You know how Canadians are always bitter that America pays no attention to Canada? (Doug Ford appeared Tuesday on @CNN which identified him as Premier of “Ontaria”.) Well, the Collapse By The Canal in Ottawa has brought much attention to the nation. Specifically, president-elect Donald Trump, the Shecky Green of presidents, has noticed the chaos. ““The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau,” Trump wrote, using his barb that Trudeau is not a PM but a lowly governor.
Adding for good measure, that Freeland’s “behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada… She will not be missed!!!” Three exclamation points if you get that far.
Certainly no-one with a memory longer than two weeks will miss the deputy PM who gleefully wiped out the personal finances and freedoms of the Freedom Convoy truckers. Or the cabinet minister who promoted a standing O in the Commons for a former Nazi soldier. Or the senior government official who demanded legal restrictions against voters shouting at her in public.
Or the feminist who stood aside while her boss Trudeau expelled an indigenous female finance minister for allowing the RCMP to investigate PMJT’s nefarious activities on behalf of his donors. Or who… never mind. Just look up Blackface.
No, the current version of Freeland is the plucky woman who was fired on a Zoom call by a man. A woman of integrity who then sent off a stinging letter of resignation in which she revealed she was being pushed aside for a Trudeau buddy Mark Carney. A fiscal warrior who resisted going $60B in the red (she was cool at $40B, however). And, BTW, could she please deliver the government’s financial statement before she’s fired?
See how it works? She’s now a victim. “She didn’t just quit. She said ‘f**k you’ to Trudeau on the way out.” This is another case of somethingvblogger Melissa Chen calls Schrödinger’s Feminist, defined as a woman who is simultaneously a victim and empowered. Until something happens and she collapses into one of either states, whichever is politically expedient for her circumstance.
Chen expands on the notion. “A major component of the angst that characterizes much of the modern dynamics between men and women today comes down to the fact that women have demanded equal rights but also wish for preferred treatment.” A week’s viewing of The View will serve to illustrate this concept.
One of The View’s textbook cases of Schrödinger’s Feminist was Kamala Harris. The treatment of the defeated Democratic Party presidential candidate was guard-railed between her brave quest to become America’s first menstruating president and, on the other side, her victim status as a woman, the unfair way she was treated. It was enough to make Joy Behar’s head spin.
Forget that everyone in the mainstream media from pollsters to networks to Hollywood stars was all-in on Kamala as a “joyful “warrior. Even though they knew she was losing they cooked the polls the whole way for her. She was a victim, the kind Hillary Clinton meant when she said all women should be believed if they’re trying to destroy Justice Kavanaugh. Or, like serial fabulist E. Jean Carroll, waiting 30 years to bankrupt Trump and disqualify him from the presidential race, with a Law & Order script. How could a woman ever invent a story about getting trapped in a change room at Bergdorf Goodman with Trump?
Oh, Kamala played the brave front as she blundered to her record defeat. (Still called “a perfect campaign” by her apologists.) But underpinning it all was her status as a woman, a woman for whom her followers on The View demanded a double standard. In the end, only the Schrödinger feminists in the Dems coalition stayed loyal to Harris, (Kamala Harris Did A Good Job!) explaining away her failure to tell the world that Joe Biden was koo-koo for Coco Puffs as her innate decency.
And so Freeland, too, is being gifted with Schrödinger’s Feminism. Having Justin Trudeau, the Trust Fund twit, as your antagonist sure helps. So does the Woke media corps now in Ottawa painting sympathetic portraits of your sacrifice. Your dubious resumé since donning Liberal colours is forgotten. You will receive the get out of jail free card .
Hell, even the leader of the opposition will give you a tongue bath. “Instead of taking responsibility, the prime minister told her that she should take all the blame,” Pierre Poilievre said. “The good old boys in the back room would protect themselves and make the then-finance minister take all the blame.” Trudeau, who rejects bankers in favour of poets, will take the fall.
Which summons up this nugget from F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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