The AP story and Larionov quotes. This is the part I really liked.
Larionov — known as The Professor to his teammates — was a thinking man's hockey player who helped make the "Russian Five" fly in Motown.
"Our style was to control the puck as much as we could, make a lot of passes," he said. "I guess that game was accepted in Detroit."
Still accepted and a reason why I'm such a Red Wings fan.
Over at mlive.com George James Malik found these two gems, one from Sportsline and another from ESPN, about Larionov.
Scotty Bowman still chuckles at how Igor Larionov inspired the creation of what became known as the Russian Five.
The unit gained fame and was a central component of three Red Wings Stanley Cup teams in six seasons, and according to Bowman, the initiators of the puck possession type of game Detroit has continued to play with masterful success since. But it came together by chance, after the legendary coach was barking instructions to his struggling power play unit during a practice and not at all happy with what he saw.
That was in late 1995, and normally players didn't approach Bowman in those situations. But Larionov, who will become the fourth Russian inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame Monday, apparently was unaware of the protocol, having helped pave the first road to the NHL for former Soviet players only six years earlier.
So ever the thinker, Larionov went ahead and suggested the coach put him together with teammates Slava Fetisov, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov and Vladimir Konstantinov. The unit spent the next minute and 45 seconds skating and moving the puck feverishly in perfect sync, but never bothered to take a shot.
"I told Igor after that his guys had just killed the penalty for the other team," Bowman laughed. "He said he told everyone not to shoot because he didn't want me to stop them by blowing the whistle."
Bowman had no intention of stopping Larionov. The veteran player was 36 years old when the Red Wings traded sniper Ray Sheppard to San Jose for him, and he wasted little time turning into a leader in the room and a force at both ends of the ice. It helped that Larionov's offensive creativity tended to get him compared to Wayne Gretzky in terms of on-ice vision, and his ability to think the game earned him the nickname the "professor."
"I'd say he was probably the last piece of the puzzle for us," Bowman said. "And the thing that was most underrated about him is that people don't realize how good he was defensively. He was as sure a player as I ever had in the last couple of minutes defending a lead. He knew how to play."
ESPN's Pierre LeBrun:
"He was a special kind of player," [Scotty] Bowman said. "The part about him, really, is how good he was defensively. I hardly ever had a player as good as him in the last five minutes of a game when you were protecting a lead. His positional play was so good. It's like having a playing coach on the ice. I thought because he was battle-scarred from all the big tournaments he played in. He was calm. He just made all the right moves all the time."
For [Sergei] Fedorov, it was a reunion with a player he tremendously admired. As a timid teenager on the Soviet national team in the late 1980s, Fedorov didn't really get to know the legendary Larionov. But he watched and learned.
"When I joined Red Army team, he was one of the most gifted and talented centers in the game, if not the best," Fedorov said. "His stickhandling, the way he saw the ice, for me as a center, that was key to see and work on."
Nearly a decade later, they were teammates in the NHL. It was a dream come true.
"At that point, I felt he didn't mind if I talked to him," Fedorov said. "We were more like friends in Detroit, not work colleagues. That was a fun time. Eventually, we would play on the same line and that was a thrill."
It was Bowman, the NHL's winningest coach, who had the vision to unite his Russian players. The Russian Five was the NHL version of the Red Army's Green Unit, with Fedorov, Vyacheslav Kozlov and Vladimir Konstantinov joining veterans Larionov and Fetisov.
"Huge credit goes to Scotty," Larionov said. "He was a huge fan of Fetisov and the Soviet way of moving the puck and creativity. It was amazing to have that opportunity to play that style of hockey again."
Holland believes the Wings' Russian Five had an impact on the NHL game that's still felt today. "It's a puck-possession game today, and I really think Scotty and the Russian Five had something to do with that."
Though the Wings only won one Stanley Cup with the Russian Five, they made an incredbile impact on the team and game that's still felt today. They also made an incredible impact on me.
Thanks Professor.
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