The New York Times Could Learn a Few Things About Russian Hockey, and Reporting

BOULDER, Colorado -- I was somewhat upset, but mostly just disappointed when this article appeared in the New York Times last week. Titled "A New Miracle on Ice: Russia Is Luring Back N.H.L. Stars" and written by Michael Schwirtz, the article discusses generally the growing wealth of Russian Superleague clubs, and more specifically about the return of Islanders castoff Alexi Yashin to Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.

Rather than summarize what is wrong with this article again, below is the e-mail I wrote to the Times and to a number of reporters in the Moscow bureau, including Mr. Schwirtz:

I am writing in regards to the article that appeared in today's issue (February 29th, 2008) titled "Russia Is Luring Back N.H.L. Stars" by Michael Schwirtz. As a former reporter for Russia's RTR-Sport television station and a long-time follower of Russian hockey, I must say that the article overstates the case for the growth of the Russian Superleague, relying far too heavily on the opinions of Russian government officials and hockey boosters, and not looking at the story across the wider hockey landscape in Russia.

I have to object to the use of the word "star" to describe a player like Alexei Yashin. Schwirtz seems to suggest the fact that had a $87.5 million contract makes him a premier NHL player, when the fact that neither the Islanders nor any other club wanted him, even without his albatross contract, suggests that he had few options to continue his career other than to return home to Russia. While Oleg Tverdovsky and Darius Kasparaitus have had successful NHL careers, no NHL clubs are currently interested in their services. This is the typical player returning to the Superleague - older veterans who are on the NHL bubble - and they far outnumber the bona fide NHLers who have opted for Russia (like Alexei Morozov or Dmitry Bykov).

During the NHL lockout in 2004-05, more than 70 NHL players, both Russian and non-Russian, flooded into the Superleague, and it truly was the best league in the world, but it still had major shortcomings. NHL players routinely complained about poor officiating, and even Russian players grew tired of the authoritarian attitudes towards training, practice and equal ice time for all that many coaches maintain. Not to mention the fact that, Yaroslavl and other wealthy teams like Ak Bars Kazan aside, most teams' facilities remain sub-par by even North American minor league standards.

A far more telling example of the state of Russian hockey is that of Pavel Datsyuk. A legitimate star for the Detroit Red Wings, he played for Dynamo Moscow during the 2004-05 season. More importantly, following the lockout, Datsyuk was ready to stay in Russia, signing a contract with Avangard Omsk. But a contract dispute erupted between his current and former teams, and with no reliable league regulation or arbitration system, Datsyuk was left in limbo, barred from playing for either side. Fed up with the infighting that plagues Superleague clubs, Datsyuk signed with Detroit and returned to the NHL. Russia's very best young players, like Evgeni Malkin, Alexander Semin and Alexander Ovechkin, continue to leave Russia at a regular clip for the NHL - and without a transfer agreement in place, Superleague clubs receive nothing in return for them. Russia is right to complain that too many players are brought to North America too soon, and they end up languishing in the minor leagues. As part of the new transfer agreement, the NHL should provide assurances that drafted players will be allowed to continue their development in Russia, just as other European players do.

The financial picture of Russian hockey is not so rosy, either. After years of work to establish the Professional Hockey League, a governing body for Russia's two top professional leagues, the PHL was dissolved in 2006 and taken over by the Russian Hockey Federation, and there remain major problems with the league's contract and financial regulations. While many of clubs have experienced a financial windfall in recent years, almost entirely due to the largess of their state corporation sponsors, other storied clubs like Spartak Moscow and Lada Toliyatti have been driven into financial crisis. Fan support is indeed strong, but attracting 10,000 spectators to a game is an outlier - even a rich club like Yaroslavl averages only 7,000 fans per game, while Spartak draws 4,800. With most tickets costing less than $20, these teams remain financially solvent due to the support of sponsors, not fans.

Many of the efforts of the Russian Hockey Federation to foster development of their players and leagues have been laudable, but they have mostly done this by keeping foreigners out, not by attracting Russians overseas back home. The league places limits on the number of foreign players teams can keep on their rosters, and they have to pay hefty fines for every foreign player they sign, especially for goaltenders. Players from Russia and other former Soviet republics (especially Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus) make up more than 90% of the players in the Superleague. By comparison, only 72% of NHL players are American- or Canadian-born.

I do not mean to suggest that the Russian Superleague is not one of the world's premier leagues - it probably ranks second or third in the world behind the NHL, and perhaps the AHL. However, the notion forwarded in this article that it will challenge the NHL is far-fetched, to say the least. The Eurasian Hockey League, which was proposed by Fetisov back in 2005, has not materialized in any form. While most players have been lured back from places like Switzerland and Sweden, where most fled in the early 1990's, the league has done little to attract top-flight talent from outside Russia. The Federation must decide whether it wants to turn the Superleague into an international competitor to the NHL or if it wants to use it to develop homegrown talent, because it can't do both.

And a final correction - Alexei Yashin and Carol Alt are not married, but they have been in a long-term relationship.

Like so much reporting about Russia these days, this article fails to venture outside of the glitz and glamor of the moneyed ring around Moscow. A trip just across town from your office to the dilapidated home of Spartak would tell you a somewhat different story of Russian hockey.

Andrew Gustafson
Boulder, CO

I did receive a response from Mr. Schwirtz, though not from the Times, meaning my letter will not be appearing anywhere, well, other than here. This is what he said:

Dear Mr. Gustafson,

I appreciate your taking the time to write such a detailed and obviously informed response to my article. I disagree with some of the points you have raised, if not with the general thrust of your argument.

I believe that we are in general agreement about the relative strengths of the Superliga vis-à-vis the NHL. I did not set out to make the case that the Superliga can, at this moment, compete with the NHL, only to discuss recent trends in its development. I stated clearly that the best young players continue to opt for the NHL, where the financial incentives surpass what the Superliga can now offer. And, yes, many teams do continue to play in run-down, Soviet-era stadiums. That some can now afford modern facilities, however, is a concrete example of the point I am making about the league's increasing wealth.

I chose to profile Mr. Yashin in the piece because, with his long career in the NHL and successes in the Superliga, he was able to bridge the two worlds. I would argue that Mr. Yashin's NHL record and notoriety in the Superliga certainly qualify him as a "star."

As for the relationship between Mr. Yashin and Ms. Alt, please note the clarification in today's Times.

I can only respond to your last remark concerning "reporting about Russia these days" by pointing out that I wrote the article from Yaroslavl, not within "the glitz and glamour of the moneyed ring around Moscow."

Again, I thank you for your comments.

Sincerely,

Michael Schwirtz

Let me address some of these points.

First, he says that while Lokomotiv's wealth may not be representative of the whole Superleague, it is important to note that some teams are getting richer. While true, the point I was making is that the source of their wealth is important as well. These teams have not grown organically, but instead have simply found wealthy benefactors in the form of state corporations. Just as the collapse of AvtoVAZ nearly put Lada Toliyatti out of business, a change in commodities prices - or perhaps some more sensible management that actually invests in the core business - might force the likes of Gazprom to pull out of the hockey racket.

Second, I will concede that Alexei Yashin is very famous, and he is extremely popular in Russia, but the fact remains that no NHL team had any interest in his services, and even without his absurd Islanders contract that made him untradeable, it is unlikely that he will ever skate in the NHL again.

His final point about the current state of reporting in Russia deserves some consideration. I had wanted to draw more attention to this in my original letter but decided to focus on the hockey issues instead. Firstly, Yaroslavl is an easily-accessible, major city that is just a four-hour train ride from the capital, and I was including it within the "moneyed ring around Moscow." But my larger point is that even a cursory review of the major American and British papers reporting in Russia will show that far too many stories are features about the same thing: Russia's newfound wealth.

There are a number of problems with these types of stories, and Mr. Schwirtz' is by no means the most egregious example, but it is part of a pattern. This view through the eyes of Moscow's (or Yaroslavl's) elite is a total perversion of Russian society. Who cares about a Lamborghini dealership in Moscow when the majority of people live in desperate poverty? This gaze also perpetuates a myth about the accomplishments of Vladimir Putin - the myth that he has provided the "stability" that enabled the growth of the Russian economy over the past eight years. The world needs fewer stories about the habits of Russia's ultra-rich and more about what is going on it the country's more remote and impoverished corners. Or perhaps a mere acknowledgment of the fact that the country's current crop of oligarchs are no less thuggish and criminal than the robber barons of the 1990's that Putin supposedly brought to heel.

This story is also not really news. Many of the developments in the Superleague described in the piece have been going on since 2004. Alexei Yashin signed with Yaroslavl back in July. But this is not unique to this article. The Times recently published a piece by Clifford Levy about the Russian parliamentary elections in Nizhny Novgorod - an event that had taken place two and half months earlier. And much of the voting irregularities he described had been widely reported elsewhere, both in English and Russian. As if to add to the absurdity, the next day Mr. Levy wrote another non-article about reactions to his original piece.

I understand that this hockey piece is a feature, but with so much time to write this article, the reporting still seems slipshod. This is mostly due to the fact that the statements of various Russian hockey officials are left unqualified, leaving the reader with the impression that the Superleague is closing the gap with the NHL.

While I am sure that many readers who were unfamiliar with the Russian Superleague found this article informative and interesting, I see it as another example of the uninspired reporting that is rampant in Moscow. Russia is a massive and massively misunderstood part of the world, and American newspapers have a responsibility to ensure that the public is well-informed about the country. The Russian government is currently waging a propaganda war, clamping down on dissent in the media at home and using its wealth and reach to shape its image abroad. If our reporters are not diligent about getting the real stories in Russia, we are damned to be subjected to state-owned tripe like Russia Today, where the streets of Grozny are safer than New York, every Russian drives a BMW, and Alexi Yashin is a superstar.