The division between Westerners and Slavophiles in Russian hockey always occurred, in my opinion, along the alcohol line. The main drink of Soviet hockey, the great hockey was champagne, it was used in boxes, and not at all because champion traditions inspired it: our player drank it not in the locker room, sweating with tears of happiness and sticky bubbles, but right on the eve of the next victory, according to hussars. While growing up, ours raised the degree, bringing it to an ice forty, and soon, barely noting the thirtieth anniversary in the banquet hall, already hung, as it was written, skates on a nail. By the age of forty, such a patriot, ZMS, champion (Olympics or at least the USSR) was burdened with a tummy, an ulcer and irritated lamentations, which hockey was ruined, oh, what!
The Westerner, on the other hand, jumped from champagne not to vodka, but to wine, or even just to orange fresh, badly remembered the restriction of freedoms at Tikhonov’s training camps, preferred public life to save lost hockey, taught the word “fitness”, learned to do business and even at 45 it looked like even tomorrow on the ice. Vladislav Tretyak in this classification has always been a Westerner. With his rival friends in Oka, he hobbled much more often than with former teammates, he successfully invested his hockey fame in Canadian dollars, was not noticed in slackness and nagging, and when, after repeated failures at the Olympics and the World Cup, Steblin took the place of idle reveler Tretiak man, it became clear: new times have come.
THEY AND TIRES: terry times. On the banner unfurled by the Tretyak it was inscribed: “Everything for the national team, everything for victory” - and the color of his flag turned out to be faded red. Alcohol theory crashed.
The first thing Tretyak took to his federation from under the jurisdiction of the Professional Hockey League was the Russian Championship. The second - declared the national team's absolute priority over the Russian championship. Third - decided to revive the long, like a beep in the fog, fees. Well, for the full blazer of the hockey audience, he threatened the limes of foreign goalkeepers as a class working in Russia. According to his project, now Ak Bars Kazan will either have to pay a seasonal fine for Fred Brathwaite (three hundred thousand dollars), or put in the frame of the domestic goalkeeper.
The idea that professional hockey was created not for the pleasure of the owner of a subscription to Omsk Avangard, but to the great glory of the Russian State, is very popular with a simple villager, a spectator of Malakhov, but somehow met with fierce resistance from our clubs. Consider the country's championship exclusively a training cycle for the Eurotour, and their only task is to educate the players for the national team, they, stupid, refuse. It was said by Vladimir Putin to Vladislav Tretiak that the next world championship, which will be held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, should be victorious for us, and so the Tretiak is trying as best he can: he is sent to the gates at the gates and will be in charge.
HOW ALWAYS in sports, there remains the problem of rivals, all kinds of Swedes, Czechs, Finns, who are not subject to the administrative resources of United Russia, and how to solve this problem, Vladislav Tretyak has not yet figured out, hasn’t announced to the public and to hide this an annoying logical gap, grabbed on time for the saving theme of the health of the nation. Even if the Russian team loses the World Cup again, he will have something to tell the president in a year about a pack of cigarettes sold on the territory of the Russian Federation, which, according to the goalkeeper-regime officer, should be decorated with a painted corpse. As you can see, the corpse of his enemy, an irrelevant Westerner, a defender of personal freedoms and professional values, even if drinking.
Stanislav Gridasov
Photo : Imago / Russian Look
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