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4 March 2021, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Alexei Kovalev
In February of 2019, I took a walk with Alexei Kovalev in the Forbidden City of Beijing. We wound through throngs of visitors—an experience hard to reimagine in the throes of a pandemic—low fog shrouding the roofs of imperial palaces that stood for six centuries. Kunlun Red Star had just relocated to the Chinese capital after several seasons in Shang-hai, a long-awaited homecoming that would be astoundingly short-lived. A future venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Shougang Arena had finally opened its doors to the displaced Dragons, a modern complex on the site of an old steel plant experiencing a renaissance ahead of the Games. We could never have imagined then—finally able to explore a home the team scarcely knew—that Kunlun would be exiled from Beijing three more times.
24 February 2021, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Oleg Li
Oleg Li began his athletic career on the antithesis of ice—the padded floors of a dojo. Li’s father, a judo champion-turned-coach, trained his son for a time in their hometown of Volgograd. It was not until the age of eight that the Sibir winger found his way to the ice, a relatively late start in a country where many children are born in skates.
9 February 2021, 12:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Philip Holm
In life, real estate and hockey, timing is everything. A team that peaks at the right moment can swiftly dethrone a steady contender. Metallurg Magnitogorsk found its stride with about twenty-five games left in the regular season, quickly ascending the Eastern Conference and recently blanking league leaders Ak Bars Kazan. Defenseman Philip Holm has equally timed the perfect entrance, joining Ilya Vorobyov’s defensive core in December as the team prepared to launch.
28 January 2021, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Viktor Tikhonov
I have only spoken once with Viktor Tikhonov, Jr., but here is something of which I’m sure: his courage is off the charts. If you know anything about his grandfather’s coaching legacy, then perhaps you will recall footage of the Soviet National Team pooling sweat in the gym of an army barracks, alternating Olympic lifts with calisthenics and sprints for hours on end. Superior athletic conditioning underpinned the ferocious Red Machine, a team that won thirteen-straight Soviet titles, eight World Championships and three Olympic Gold Medals under his watch. So when renowned coach of the USSR Viktor Tikhonov invited his grandson to the gym, perhaps anyone else in their right mind would have passed.
20 January 2021, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Janis Kalnins
Jokerit Helsinki netminder Janis Kalnins arrived to the KHL through a unique route: Hungary’s Erste Liga. The Latvian defenseman-turned-goaltender fought his way up the ranks, including a stint in Hungarian juniors—a battle that hardened him for life.
13 January 2021, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Chris Wideman
Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod blueliner Chris Wideman got the pep-talk of a lifetime ahead of his departure for Russia. The St. Louis native recounted his wife’s parting words as he embarked on his first journey to the KHL—just thirteen days after the couple had tied the knot.
10 December 2020, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Mike Pelino
Mike Pelino knows what it takes to lead a powerhouse, whether we consider his two Gagarin Cup championships at Metallurg, or the 100,000 honey bees he has wrangled all summer in the backyard. While the Ontario native was certain that he would not return to Russia at the end of last season—the glimmer of glory, and a reunion with head coach Ilya Vorobyov, caused the KHL mainstay to change his tune. Not literally, of course, as the karaoke clubs in Magnitogorsk will soon discover—both Vorobyov and Pelino are regulars, a tradition begun with “Iron Mike” Keenan seven years ago.
4 December 2020, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Semyon Der-Arguchintsev
“It was an honor to get killed by you.”

No, this is not a line from Braveheart that you’ve simply forgotten, nor the last uttered words of a slain samurai. Odysseus did not make this remark, and Napoleon had no such sentiment for General Kutuzov upon his retreat. These are the words Semyon Der-Arguchintsev shared with Pavel Datsyuk after having the wind knocked out of him in the third period of Torpedo’s clash with Avtomobilist.
26 November 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Eddie Pasquale
Eddie Pasquale was sidelined for the first month of the season, but you would not know it from his performance. Lokomotiv’s goaltender leads the league in shutouts (4) and goals against average (1.33), trailing only Traktor’s Ivan Fedotov in save percentage (94.4 to Fedotov’s 94.8). Despite COVID-19 roster changes and a recent dry stretch against tough opponents, Lokomotiv sits third in the competitive Western Conference. Andrei Skabelka’s roster is within striking distance of SKA, and has one of the league’s best netminders to anchor their playoff push.
14 November 2020, 11:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Steph Klein
Steph Klein has been obsessed with hockey equipment since childhood. Her main motivation for playing in net was the influx of gear she’d get to admire, from color-coordinated pads to custom masks that double as works of art. One object of obsession growing up was Alexei Kovalev’s AK-27 Warrior stick. The irony is that Steph Klein debuted as the KHL’s first female equipment manager on Thursday night, for none other than Alexei Kovalev’s Kunlun Red Star.
12 November 2020, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Pontus Aberg
Traktor Chelyabinsk newcomer Pontus Åberg is not used to this much free time. A quintessential “girl dad” who has been separated from his daughter Molly since the summer, the Swedish forward finds himself playing more Fortnite these days as he awaits the arrival of his number one fan. As COVID-19 travel restrictions ease to allow family members across the border, the Åberg duo will soon be reunited.
29 October 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Hunter Shinkaruk
Hunter Shinkaruk’s father took a job as the dentist of the Calgary Hitmen, a local junior team, to bring his son closer to the game he loved. Proximity proved a powerful motivator—the Kunlun Red Star forward and Vancouver Canucks draft pick launched a career that has spanned fourteen time zones and over 5,000 miles. Despite a tumultuous start to the season for the Dragons, Shinkaruk has found an individual rhythm, logging five points in ten games despite a fourteen-day quarantine and late arrival.
22 October 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Dmitry Samorukov
Dmitry Samorukov hails from a sporting dynasty—and in the vein of European ruling families of centuries past, his marriage to hockey royalty only further solidified the bloodline. Samorukov’s father Andrei was a professional soccer goalkeeper for nearly two decades, and while athletic prowess did not skip a generation, his youngest son preferred ice to turf.
15 October 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Tomi Lämsä
From FaceTime coaching between periods to players missing in double digits—Salavat Yulaev head coach Tomi Lämsä could never have imagined a year like 2020. The former head coach of Jokerit Helsinki was newly promoted to the helm of Ufa’s bench, having served as an assistant coach for the past three seasons. The lessons he has learned under Russian leadership have changed the way he coaches one of the KHL’s most dominant teams—combining local hockey culture with a Finnish perspective on team-building and unity.
8 October 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Ryan Spooner
There are two great storylines emerging from Dinamo Minsk this season—tales of immense hard-ship and the associated rewards. The first is the team’s whirlwind reversal of fortune. Craig Woodcroft’s squad emerged from their worst-ever season to contention for the Western Confer-ence top spot, chasing SKA and CSKA within a margin of four points. The second—albeit less celebrated—was Ryan Spooner’s successful import of his Rottweiler Koda to Belarus, in spite of travel hurdles that most humans cannot surmount in 2020.
24 September 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Mikko Lehtonen
Mikko Lehtonen won the scoring race among KHL defensemen last year—if you can even call it that. The Finnish blue liner picked up 17 goals and 32 assists in his inaugural Russian season, a healthy cushion of 27 points from second-place finisher and newly-minted Ottawa Senator Artyom Zub. Jokerit's breakout star unsurprisingly garnered attention from overseas, inking a one-year contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs in early May of this year. As COVID-19 reshaped hockey schedules around the globe, Lehtonen returned to Jokerit on loan—his tape-to-tape passes and strong shot welcome arrows in the quiver of head coach Lauri Marjamäki.
15 September 2020, 17:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Reid Boucher
When asked about the life lessons he’s taken from hockey, Reid Boucher says that the sport has humbled him. “Some days you feel like you’re on top of the world, and then others, you feel like it’s your first time playing,” he admitted. Both of those statements can be true at the same time, and Boucher has recently proven it—logging four points in the first three regular season games he ever played on Russian soil. The Avangard Omsk top-liner was named the league’s “Man of the Week” in his inaugural week of competition, an achievement he chalks up to a stacked roster, but one that surpasses the entrances of import powerhouses such as Nigel Dawes and Justin Azevedo.
10 September 2020, 12:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Eric O’Dell
Olympic bronze medalist and Sibir newcomer Eric O’Dell had the best faceoff percentage of the 2018 Winter Games. Given the name of my interview series, I felt compelled to take him on—and naturally, the Canadian center did not disappoint.  
27 August 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Lukas Radil
Czech forward Lukáš Radil once braved Moscow traffic on a scooter to add fifteen minutes of sleep to his schedule. The Spartak favorite returned to the red-and-white after a two-season sojourn to San Jose; he carries back lessons learned from NHL head coach Peter DeBoer, but unfortunately not the scooter. The latter remains in the capable hands of Radil’s grandmother, who has been cruising the Czech Republic on two wheels since her grandson’s North American departure.
21 August 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Andre Petersson
In André Petersson’s hometown of Olofström, Sweden, no one grew up playing hockey. His parents drove a half hour each way to the rink—which was far, the Lokomotiv newcomer says, for his corner of the world. The promising forward maximized his minutes by suiting up for two or three teams at a time, a ritual that repeated itself for almost a decade. With silver and bronze medals to show from his subsequent World Juniors appearances, and a professional career spanning five countries, the Petersson family is likely to say that the notches on their odometer were worth it.
13 August 2020, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Corban Knight
One kilometer east of Moscow’s outermost ring, Balashikha is not exactly the place you would expect to host a reunion with your first NHL coach. A temporary home to the KHL’s Avangard Omsk, the unassuming suburb has brought together Bob Hartley and Corban Knight—nearly 8,000 kilometers from where they first met in Calgary.
6 August 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Michal Jordán
Amur Khabarovsk's Michal Jordán has played hockey with a tiger. That is not to be confused, however, with the handful of times that another Michael Jordan played golf with one (Tiger Woods, to be exact). While the possibilities for Chicago Bulls jokes are endless, there is one point that is no laughing matter—Khabarovsk will require a full-court press to reverse its misfortunes from seasons past. The KHL’s own Jordán was all business when it came to Amur’s upcoming challenges, crowned with a head coaching shock just days into preseason.
30 July 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Teemu Hartikainen
Finnish forward Teemu Hartikainen has represented Ufa for so long that he won a government medal for service to the region. Prestige and bragging rights aside, it may take the entirety of his contract extension to finally learn the meaning of “Iron Back,” a fan-gifted nickname he still cannot explain. Over the course of seven seasons, Hartikainen has become a Bashkir fixture and local favorite—so much so that he can barely keep track of all the local fishing recommendations sent his way.
23 July 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Francis Pare
Hockey globetrotter Francis Paré has played in four countries across nine KHL seasons. A 2014 Gagarin Cup champion with Mike Keenan’s Magnitogorsk, the sought-after import has taken turns in Slovakia, Croatia, Russia and Belarus in the past decade—with brief visits to the Swiss and Finnish leagues in between KHL stints.
15 July 2020, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Stéphane Da Costa
Stéphane Da Costa idolized Sergei Fedorov, Jaromír Jágr and Peter Forsberg as a child. The dazzling trio left an impression on an entire generation of hockey players—but Da Costa would venture far closer to this pantheon than most. At the 2014 IIHF World Championships in Minsk, Da Costa received a call from CSKA Moscow to relocate his career to the KHL. Sergei Fedorov himself relayed the message.
9 July 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Dmitrij Jaskin
If winning MVP in your debut season would be considered “taking the KHL by storm,” then you might categorize Dmitrij Jaškin as a hurricane. In his inaugural year with Dynamo Moscow, the Russian-born Czech forward set a franchise single-season record for most goals, anchored the league’s top-producing troika [alongside André Petterson and Vadim Shipachyov], and took home the 2020 Golden Stick Award for the best player of the regular season. Under the iron fist of legendary Soviet coach Vladimir Krikunov, Jaškin made an entrance that will not easily be replicated—and he is slated to remain in Russia’s capital until 2022 after inking a two-year extension.
2 July 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Staffan Kronwall
Staffan Kronwall is hard-wired to lead—whether you boil it down to courage of conviction, an iconic hockey name, or career longevity in a sport of fast-fading stars. He arrived to Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the wake of immense tragedy, and served as the cornerstone upon which a broken city rebuilt its beloved club. At the helm of the Tre Konor in 2013, Kronwall brought World Championship gold to Sweden—breaking a decades-long curse on host nations in the tournament.
25 June 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Jordan Schroeder
American center Jordan Schroeder celebrated his inaugural Father’s Day this weekend, capping off a year of firsts for the Minnesota native. In his debut KHL season, Schroeder topped the pack at Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod—logging 41 points (19+22) in 60 games played.
11 June 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Linden Vey
Until April of 2019, CSKA Moscow had not won a post-season title since the fall of the USSR. Under the reign of Anatoli Tarasov or Viktor Tikhonov, expats would not have found themselves in the hallowed halls of Red Army—an enduring symbol of Soviet fortitude, and the great challenger to Canadian hockey dominance.
27 May 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Bovee, Nightingale, Saeed
If you had told Hassan Saeed in September that he would be calling his players’ babushkas come April, he might have taken your temperature. The Spartak strength coach sees nutrition as one potential source of improvement during this outlandish offseason, but he knows that he must win over a key faction in his quest: Russian grandmothers hell-bent on spoiling their grandsons.
20 May 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Jake Chelios
Jake Chelios did not intend to wear the #7 in his debut KHL season, nor did he begin his hockey career as a defenseman. The twenty-nine-year-old Kunlun Red Star newcomer acknowledges that the hockey gods may have been at play in forcing him to pay homage to his father, three-time Stanley Cup Champion Chris Chelios. “It was never up to me, I guess,” the Beijing blue-liner joked, but embracing a hockey adventure in China was wholly his own doing—a transatlantic trip that he will repeat next season.
13 May 2020, 12:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: David Rundblad
Stanley Cup-winning defenseman David Rundblad was a newcomer to Sochi this season, happily soaking up a sunnier average of 23 minutes per game after a challenging streak in Saint Petersburg.
7 May 2020, 14:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Justin Danforth
Justin Danforth knows how to make an entrance. Named Atlantic Hockey Rookie of the Year in 2014 and ECHL Rookie of the Year in 2018, it perhaps comes as no surprise that he swiftly established himself as an elite point-sniper in Finland’s SM-liiga. With a stop in Davos to notch a Spengler Cup win with Team Canada, Danforth took his second European season by storm—hardly a departure from the rest of his career, where speed and success have always coexisted.
30 April 2020, 13:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Alexei Yashin
One of Alexei Yashin’s most emotional moments in Ottawa occurred after he had hung up his skates, twenty years past a hotly-anticipated NHL debut. As GM of Russia’s Women’s National Team, he helped a roster of young stars to capture a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships, their first podium appearance in twelve years. Yashin’s tearful reaction was one of the most enduring images of the tournament—both a celebration of his team’s achievements, and a reckoning with his own retirement.
21 April 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Bob Hartley
“If someone today would have told me, ‘We are going to get to season two and you will lose Zernov, Manukyan, Chudinov, Emelin for most of the season, Franson…’” Bob Hartley’s voice trailed off. The Stanley Cup-winning head coach of Avangard Omsk lost an unprecedented chunk of his roster to injuries this season, and yet finished the regular season with the same number of points as his inaugural one—a KHL debut that ultimately led to the finals.
28 February 2020, 17:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Rob Klinkhammer
Rob Klinkhammer will always be known for his championship-winning goal in the 2018 Gagarin Cup Finals, but his father might simply be satisfied with the fact that Rob stayed on his feet.
20 February 2020, 15:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Justin Azevedo
One of Justin Azevedo’s earliest hockey memories centers on a green helmet. His hometown colors were black, yellow and white, but Azevedo’s parents, Portuguese immigrants to Canada, had strayed from the local color palette. “Here I was going out and power skating with a green helmet,” Azevedo laughed. “It is pretty funny how I remember that.”
31 January 2020, 17:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Mathew Maione
I really do not want to lead this article with Mathew Maione’s cover of The Lumineers at the 2019 KHL All Star Game. It is far too predictable a start for a man who is anything but.
20 January 2020, 13:30 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Ilya Sorokin
Soviet hockey legend Vladislav Tretiak summarized his position best: “There is no position in sport as noble as goaltending."
16 January 2020, 16:00 The Faceoff

The Faceoff: Kirill Kaprizov
The Russian Hockey Hall of Fame faces CSKA Arena—an apt location, given the number of Red Army heroes who grace its walls. Inductees’ portraits are etched in glass and backlit for maximum drama; bas-relief hockey players flank the ceilings in a style similar to the opulent Moscow metro stations. Tretiak, Tarasov, Fetisov, Zubov…decades of stickhandling genius, masterful goaltending and strategic brilliance gaze down upon you in a cerulean twilight.
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