It’s a fascinating dossier compiled by Jean-Nicolas Blanchet on the tragedies that seem to be befalling dozens of Russian ice hockey players. Among them is Matvei Michkov, who could be the secret ace in the Canadian’s hoped-for reconstruction.
• Also read: Why Did These 30 Russian Ice Hockey Players Die?
• Also read: Canadians: the terrible flip side of the Matvey Mikkov dilemma
• Also read: Hockey: Could Matvei Michkov never come and play in the NHL?
What strikes me as even more important in this case is that my colleague never forgot the person, the man, in the difficult Soviet and Russian relationship with ice hockey.
Their names aren’t Tremblay, Simard, Smith or Forsberg, but they are sensitive and pressured men who would screw any councilman.
I met these men and to be honest some of them became friends. Even though they were bad Russians. But entering their world has never been easy…
Oleg Petrov and the Russian mafia
I became aware of the ubiquity of the Russian mafia after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1993 at the La Troïka restaurant. Thirty years have passed, so I can reveal the secret details of this story.
I dined with Oleg Petrov from Canadian and Natasha, his young wife, to write a report on the holiday season in Russia. They are Orthodox and celebrate on January 6th.
Petrov didn’t speak English and we met up with my old friend Richard Chartier… and in particular his wife Elena Botchorichvili, who had been a journalist for the daily newspaper Le Sport Soviétique in the Soviet Union. It is the same Elena who became a great novelist, published both in Europe and in America.
Over dessert I asked Petrov if he intended to return to Russia in the summer. He hesitated before answering. And that’s when Elena, a former journalist, quickly grasped the story. Oleg had told him how the Russian mafia ransomed players in America by threatening families left in Russia. A fascinating story… and Petrov had named names on condition that he be protected.
The help of New York Times… and other
But how do you get the story out there without Petrov’s parents paying the price? The next day I called my friends from Hockey Beat Days. Joe LaPointe at the New York Times, Ellen Elliott at the Los Angeles Times and Alan Abel at the Globe in Toronto. I had told them Petrov’s story. By asking them to investigate the Russian players from the Rangers, Devils and Islanders in New York, the Kings in LA and the Maple Leafs in Toronto. We would gather the information unearthed and cover our tracks. The only stipulation is that the second paragraph of the NY Times, LA Times and Globe emphasize that “according to a story in the Montreal newspaper…”. I myself had written the story of Slava Fetisov from the devils in Montreal, who paid the Russian mafia a sum of money to leave his parents alone. Joe LaPointe gave me the information. Oleg Petrov had ended up at the Los Angeles Times, and since all four newspapers had published on the same day, it was impossible to connect the source.
In the following months everything broke out. The FBI got involved in the United States and CSIS in Canada, and the stories had come to light. Like that of the Detroit Red Wings, who had been waiting to announce the signing of a major contract with Igor Larionov for the return of his entire family to the United States, or the exchange of Pavel Bure from Vancouver to Miami. Locate the furthest city in North America from Vancouver on a map.
nice people
I will not dwell on cases that you have already read. How Vladislav Tretiak personified kindness even in the prime of the Communist Party in Moscow. How he became a true friend over the decades. As I was happy to see him four years ago in a series of reports in his office as President of the Russian Hockey Federation.
I would like to come back to a paragraph from Blanchet’s texts. When he writes about young Matvei Michkov’s state of mind since his father’s death. It’s spot on. They are not bad Russians. They are men (and women) living in a different society. They like Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Georgian red wine and Russian pop groups. But they have Vladimir Putin as President and not Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister. Let’s assume that changes the outlook.
To clarify, I would like to give you one last example. During my last trip to Russia I found myself in the large offices of the KHL in the heart of Moscow.
Interviewed by Valeri Kamensky, KHL’s Vice President of Marketing and Development.
Do you think it was stuffy? That I felt the police eyes on us?
pantout. Kamensky, I knew him when he played for the Quebec Nordiques. According to rumors, he even had to try to get a visa for a gangster. It was exactly in the years of Oleg Petrov.
But we talked about hockey, that’s clear. It is also evident from the KHL. But also Marcel Aubut and his extravagances with the Nordiques, his home in New Jersey, not far from New York, and his Florida residence in West Palm Beach.
Kamensky was the same smiling man as Claude Cadorette and Albert Ladouceur who covered the Nordiques. We are very steeply reconnected.
But what’s going on here? Did Kamensky become a villain because Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine for some very mysterious reason? Has he lost his home in Florida? And that in New Jersey? And how does he experience this war situation with his friends in the USA?
And if I dialed his cell phone number, would he answer?
And Vladislav Tretiak? Does he answer the call when you try to reach him from Canada?
Read Blanchet’s lyrics carefully, it’s all that human tension that underlies them…
Fascinating.