A documentary called "The Russian Five" was released in March of 2019. It told the story of Detroit's legendary unit of five players from the former Soviet Union who were instrumental in the Red Wings mid 1990s dynasty and back-to-back Stanley Cup wins in 1997 and 1998.
The film only made less than $500,000 at the box office, but its popularity among hockey fans continues to rise. It enjoys a 100% critic and 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes as well as 8.3 out of 10 on IMDB. The film has also won multiple awards from film festivals.
Strangely enough, Russia is only now releasing the film. A press conference scheduled to advertise its release, due September 22nd, featured some of the Five and yielded some interesting quotes.
Igor Larionov, the last to join the Wings, said that coach Scotty Bowman saw him as the last piece of the puzzle. Having known that Russian teams tended to roll out shift changes in fives, pairing specific defensemen with specific lines, Bowman decided to try the experiment with the Wings, and gave the Russian unit freedom to play the style similar to the great Soviet teams from the 1980s.
"His decision was pure genius," said Larionov. "The Russian soul is different the American or the Canadian one. Scotty's understanding of the masterpiece we were creating on the ice and his appreciation of it gave us great pleasure."
Sergei Fetisov who, along with Larionov, played in the five man unit of the halcyon days of CSKA Moscow and the USSR national team had only fond memories.
"Detroit is in my heart," he said. "They gave us a chance to play hockey, and Scotty Bowman was the catalyst. Our coach was a great psychologist and he always knew the right words. Before our first game [together] he told us not to change anything."
"We never liked the word "Machine" that many used for us," Fetisov continued. "A machine is soulless. Many still try to understand the secret of our success, but they never will. It is simply that our hearts beat in unison."
"All of us came at different times," reminisced Sergei Fedorov. "But we won together. I learned the game in the USSR from guys like Fetisov and Larionov (Fedorov defected to the U.S. in 1990)honed it in Detroit with [Slava] Kozlov and [Vladimir] Konstantinov. When the first Russian players won the Cup with the 1994 Rangers, and then we followed with two more in the same decade, we received some surprising criticism. Don Cherry especially, said a lot of nonsensical things, and all it did was fire us up."
(It should be noted that Don Cherry has had negative words for many a Russian player. He criticized, among others, Nikita Zaitsev to the point where Zaitsev called him a "clown" in an interview in Russia given back in May of 2019, and wondered why people put any stock in his opinions.)
"The Russian Five" is available in North America on DVD as well as through streaming services such as Amazon and YouTube. The film's producer, Jenny Feterovich, said that the movie has been submitted for Oscar consideration.
Source: sport-express.ru (Alyona Grebenkova, Yevgeny Belousov)
