25 years of the Russian 5

NHL.com’s John Kreiser notes that today is an auspicious day in hockey history:

1995: The Red Wings under coach Scotty Bowman make history by playing five Soviet players (Viacheslav Fetisov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Igor Larionov, Sergei Fedorov and Vyacheslav Kozlov) as a unit during a 3-0 road win against the Calgary Flames. All five had played for the Central Red Army in the Soviet Union. The “Russian Five” become a fixture in Detroit and help the Red Wings win the Stanley Cup in 1997.

Published by

George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.