The Russian Five

Growing up in America,

right or wrong, fair or unfair,

we were kind of trained to be...

"Those Russians, they're bad people.

"They're against us."

We sort of had that mentality.

Even me, a little bit.

But all I was concerned about was,

"How can I get good world-class players for the Red Wings?"

And I knew that there were good players in Russia.

The problem was you couldn't get them out to the National Hockey League.

It's now four o'clock in the afternoon,

three o'clock in the afternoon in Portland.

We had arranged a car service to pick us up

at the airplane.

And we said, "Well, how are we gonna do this?"

We checked into the hotel where the Russian team was staying.

Sergei had a game that night, and we got Sergei on the phone.

He said "Let's go."

And Sergei said, "No, it's my last game.

"I wanna play in the game."

I said, "Oh, okay, here's what we'll do.

"Take the key to your room, slip it under our door,

"And we'll go up and get the luggage

"when the game's over." I said, "I'll be in the lobby,

"you come off and you follow me.

"And we go out the door, get in the car,

"get in the plane, back to Detroit right away."

The game is over. We park the limo on the side of he hotel.

It's dark back there.

The driver is asking me if we're mafia and we're gonna kill somebody.

So, I'm saying... "No, no, we're not doing anything bad like that.

"We're waiting for a hockey player."

Literally, we were making up as we went along.

I said, "Look. He's a player of action.

Your player's gonna leave the Russian team,

he's coming to play for us. We're with the Detroit Red Wings management.

I said, "Look, I'll give you an extra 100 buck tip.

"Just do what we say. Just low-key it."

So now, it's ten o'clock, it's post-game, and I'm sitting in the lobby.

This bus pulls up in front.

The last guy off the bus is Sergei Fedorov.

He walks into the lobby, looks at me and goes, "Ready to go, Jim."

So, we're passing the elevators,

...suddenly, the doors open.

And it's a guy that Sergei knows.

And Sergei says, "One minute."

I'm kind of like, "What are you doing?"

I've never been more scared in my life.

I had no idea if he might grab me

because he was twice bigger than me.

He said, "Where are you going?" "I'm going to Detroit."

He was, "Yeah, yeah, let's go have dinner. We'll talk about that later."

I'm like, "No, no, no. Here's a gentleman right there, I'm going."

So he follows me down the hall. We get in the car, and I asked him,

"Who was that and what did you say to him?"

He said, "Well, that's my roommate, and I said to him,

"'I've not been kidnapped, I'm doing this on my own free will.

"'And I will see you down the road.'"

And that's how the Russian Five started.

I felt like I made a right decision.

I was ready to play hockey there.

The work ethic, that is the Midwest,

we have to outwork you.

You went to Yale.

I went to Central Michigan University.

So I gotta outwork you.

You can't imagine what it was like in Detroit in 1982.

The city was beaten.

Seventeen percentage interest rates. Really high unemployment.

You know, it was a mess.

I remember covering hockey games in Joe Louis Arena.

And what they call Devil's Night, the night before Halloween.

And there were cars flipped over and burning.

and that's what people remember about Detroit.

Back when Detroit was

truly the Motor City, in, you know, the '40's...

We were jammin' cars out of here. That's gone.

You're living in a part of the country that everybody thinks is worthless.

And the Red Wings have always been a salve

for the city of Detroit.

You see, hockey players'd get either sticks or pucks in the face,

and they get stitches. As soon as they're fixed up, they're back up going again.

I think people in Detroit, Michigan,

uh, the automotive capital of the world,

really, really connected with that kind of thought process.

The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup four times

within a six years span with what has been called the greatest team of all time.

There hadn't been a championship in Detroit since 1955,

during the glory years of Gordie Howe

and the production line with Alex Ovechkin and Ted Lindsay.

Things really started to slide in the '70s.

And slid even further in the '80s.

When I got traded here in '71, things were out of whack pretty good.

The Red Wings were buried

so far down, they couldn't see the top.

And it was demoralizing for a Wings fan, and you can't blame them.

There were no fans. There was no excitement.

They were always referred to as the "Dead Wings."

And I'm sure there was thoughts in this town,

like, "What's gonna turn this things around?"

When were you first interested in buying the Detroit Red Wings?

When my business started taking hold fairly well,

I kind of dreamt about it, but I never, honestly, thought it would happen.

We've had some rough sliding the last 10 years or so.

But we've had some glorious years.

Mr. Ilitch and Mrs. Ilitch, they bought the Detroit Red Wings.

Because they wanted to see hockey, um...

mean something again.

I plan to surround myself with lot of competent people.

And roll up my sleeves and work 24 hours a day if it's necessary.

Ilitch's first job

was to hire the most capable general manager he could find.

And where better to look than the Stanley Cup champions.

Jimmy Devellano had been the architect of the Islanders draft.

The team I took over in 1982 was in the Detroit River, quite frankly.

You're looking to at least five hard years.

You've got nobody in the bushes, and you have the "maybe" three players

who really can play in the NHL.

Well, that's...

I'm giving you a blunt assessment. I don't mean to be rude or anything,

but you don't have any kind of a hockey club.

You're a justifiable 21st after tonight.

Well, I was hoping that maybe we could by 1990,

contend for the Stanley Cup. That's what I... 1990.

Well... Well, Dick, listen, now the...

I was completing my 10th year with the New York Islanders.

We were just coming off our third consecutive Stanley Cup.

And it was really, truly a team that was built through the draft.

And I had promised the Ilitches, I'd promised the city,

that we would build this team through the draft.

Is your owner... You think he'll have the patience, Mr. Ilitch, the Pizza King?

He tells me he has, and I have to take the man at his word.

The first draft of the Devellano-Ilitch era, was 1983.

The first round pick was Steve Yzerman.

I certainly wasn't sitting there thinking, "Oh, my God," like,

this organization had struggled.

You're bright-eyed and hopeful and there's new ownership,

there's a new general manager. You're thinking nothing but the best.

Now you pick up Stevie Yzerman. I'm interested.

And the fans get interested. And that...

goes for a while.

But when there is some mix of bad years with veterans on the way out

and it's not working.

We still need the pieces that put it all together.

And it takes a long time to build a great team.

I thought it would take forever.

And I was getting nervous.

I didn't feel you could get enough players out of one draft,

and I knew that there were good players in Europe.

Especially in Russia.

The Soviet Red Army hockey club was the gold standard

when it came to international hockey. They won everything.

Our scouts watched the Russian team

and when they came back,

they sang the praises of several young Russians.

But they really sang the praises of one Sergei Fedorov.

The problem was, there was an iron curtain.

No Russian player would jump as their family would be murdered.

So, the feeling was

if you took a Russian or a Czech,

you were really wasting your draft choice.

But I felt if we get him in three years,

five years, ten years,

Even if we get him 10 years from now, he's only 28,

we got a world class player.

When you draft a player, you own their rights, basically, forever.

But everybody was scared to use draft picks on the Russian players

because you didn't know if you'd ever see them.

And draft picks are assets, and you didn't want to use an asset

on something that you didn't know if you'd ever see.

When Gorbachev came along, the Soviet Union began changing.

Things started to ease up.

And so, the Soviets had started to release older players.

But it didn't guarantee that the younger guys were gonna come.

At least not without a fight.

Being the general manager at the time,

I had to make the final decision.

You never know what's gonna happen in the future.

There was a certain amount of feel

that if we don't start taking these Russian players earlier,

other teams are gonna do it.

So, I used the theory.

Who are we gonna get here now in the fourth round

from North America, really?

And so it was on that basis in '89

when we got to the fourth round,

we selected Sergei Fedorov.

When they made that pick and you could hear that, that was an audible gasp

like, "Oh, my goodness, what? The Red Wings just took a Russian,

"with their fourth pick in the draft!"

I'm sure a few teams snickered,

"There goes Devellano wasting a draft pick."

But I thought that the best 18-year-old in Russia

would be able to come over here and be a pretty good player.

When we got to the 11th round, we did the same thing with Vladimir Konstantinov.

I believe he was 22-23 years of age.

An established player, captain in the Russian military,

a wife, a child.

There's ever a communist guy that would be hard into the Russian system.