July 17, 2021

Russians Play Crucial Role in NHL Championship


Russians Play Crucial Role in NHL Championship
The star of the NHL this year, Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevsky. Wikimedia Commons user Michael Miller

The Tampa Bay Lightning just won the NHL championship for the second year in a row. As always in the NHL, Russians were involved. In fact, the Stanley Cup championship-winning and playoff-MVP-trophy-winning goaltender is a guy from the Siberian city of Tyumen: Andrei Vasilevsky.

Only a year and a half ago, Vasilevsky was featured on the cover of The Hockey News as "the NHL's new crease king" – the crease being the blue semicircle in front of the net. His father of the same name was a goaltender in the Russian Superleague.

During these four-round playoffs, Vasilevsky was accused of having more-than-regulation goaltender padding in what the New York Post called "the NHL's dumbest controversy." The publication concluded that it was just a matter of the camera adding 10 pounds. Actually, it is a pretty hilarious photograph and Twitter conversation, here. Extra padding or not, Vasilevsky is recognized by many as the world's top goaltender at the moment.

Living in coastal Florida as they do, the championship-winning Lightning scheduled a celebration boat parade. During the parade, 26-year-old Vasilevsky put his playoff MVP trophy (the Conn Smythe) on his head, and one sports reporter called it the "lasting image of the 2021 NHL season," a season plagued by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Check out the parade video of the team's second-most famous Russian, Nikita Kucherov, or Kuch (pronounced "Cooch"), from Maykop. Kucherov said that the league's best goaltender trophy (the Vezina) was stolen from "Vasy" – a move that Kucherov called "Number One Bullshit." (How do you translate that into Russian?) At any rate, the phrase has already been turned into a meme-t-shirt, which "Vasy" wears along with the trophy on his head at the parade.

There is one more Russian on the winning team, Mikhail Sergachev from Nizhnekamsk.

Maybe all the memetic shenanigans being generated by the winning Russians will help put hockey on the map for American sports fans – many of whom know nothing about hockey.

Something else that happened at the boat parade: the 128-year-old Stanley Cup got majorly dented. As far as we know, the Russians had nothing to do with that.

You Might Also Like

New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey
  • February 28, 2021

New Life Breathed into the Museum of Hockey

Moscow's stunning Museum of Hockey and Hockey Hall of Fame is a hidden gem with new investors ready to keep it going – hopefully for a long time to come.
Not-Russia Does Great Figure Skating
  • April 25, 2021

Not-Russia Does Great Figure Skating

The non-doping "Russia" won three out of four events at the recent world figure skating championships and swept the ladies' podium.
KHL Victor Crowned
  • May 23, 2021

KHL Victor Crowned

Omsk Avangard clinches Russian hockey's Gagarin Cup with some famous NHL faces.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of our Books

Murder and the Muse
December 12, 2016

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices
May 01, 2013

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.

Murder at the Dacha
July 01, 2013

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.

Woe From Wit (bilingual)
June 20, 2017

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.

Moscow and Muscovites
November 26, 2013

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

Russian Rules
November 16, 2011

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.

The Latchkey Murders
July 01, 2015

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...

The Moscow Eccentric
December 01, 2016

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.

Marooned in Moscow
May 01, 2011

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955