I must be pretty dense. All along I thought Ilya Kovalchuk was flirting with staying with his St. Petersburg SKA team because he loved his country so much and was finally eating his favourite foods again. It barely registered on me that SKA, and probably the KHL head comrades, were offering him millions to stay. [...]

I woke this morning to the news – that NHL brains have made a sharp u-turn and hockey will begin again, maybe on January 15, maybe on January 19. (Details can be found on 8,537 news and sports sites). I’m not ready for this. I’m not finished talking about Gary Bettman and rich hockey players [...]

St. Petersburg SKA cheerleader cheers her team on. Maybe she’s singing – “Rah rah sis boom bah, Let’s go comrades, let’s go SKA We need a goal, so send out Kovalchuk, And about the NHL – who gives a flying $#%^&” Photo taken by Denis Brel. And if you can read Russian, you can see [...]

Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Sergei Kostitsyn, Pavel Datsyuk and a few other Russians are now saying they might just stay in Russia. Are you feeling bad about this? Nobody forced these guys to come to North America, and when they did come, the vaults were opened and they dove in head first, drooling and panting. [...]

For whatever reason, I just don’t feel ready yet to move on from what just happened in Russia, and I think that now isn’t the time to post some slightly frivolous things I have ready to go. And so I’ve gone into my archives and dug up some photos my stepson Denis Brel in St. Petersburg, Russia sent me last [...]

St. Petersburg SKA, sitting high in the standings, boasts several players who had careers in the NHL. Alexei Yashin, Maxim Afinogenov, Sergei Zubov, Evgeny Artyukhin, Sergei Brylin, and Evgeny Nabokov, all seasoned ex-NHLers, play here, although no Canadians are on the squad. I think for most North Americans, living and playing in Russia can be a [...]

My old friend Denis Brel, in St. Petersburg, Russia, was at a Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) game recently between the hometown, first-place SKA (in blue) and visiting basement-dwellars Vityaz Chekhov, a game in which Chekhov upset the big shots 5-4 in a shootout.  Denis has sent along some nice photos. The player dropping the puck (name unknown) in the middle picture [...]

My son-in law in Russia, who is also an old friend, was just at a KHL game in St. Petersburg and took a veritable cornucopia of nice photos while he was there. Beginning sometime tomorrow, I’ll be showing glimpses of the game through his photos in a three-part series. It’ll give you some kind of insight on what [...]

The answer is Alexander Kharlamov, son of the brilliant and legendary Soviet star Valeri Kharlamov. Bravo to Joe Pelletier for getting this right, even though I continue to pull my hair out and snarl menacingly because I’m not able to notch a shutout in the quiz department. Alexander was playing for Moscow Red Army when I took this photo outside [...]

It wasn’t working out for Marian Hossa. And some cruel bastards even thought it was funny. He was a Pittsburgh Penguin in the finals against Detroit when the Wings won it all so he decided to abandon the Pens and go to Detroit where he thought he had a better chance. But alas, in a cruel twist of fate, [...]