Of all the European languages that are available for translation, I’m still most hesitant to put Google Translate to work with Finnish and Russian. Finnish can be indecipherable on a good day, and Russian is just…Finnicky.
‘That being said, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff did a very good job of translating parts of an interview that CSKA Moscow coach Sergei Fedorov conducted with KP.ru’s (Komsomolskaya Pravda’s) Kirill Serov.
Fedorov, who has won two straight Gargarin Cups with the Central Red Army team, offers effusive praise for the work of Torpedo Nizhny-Novogorod coach and fellow former Red Wing Igor Larionov…
Larionov joined him in working behind a KHL bench last season, taking over as coach of Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod. In Larionov’s first season, he would guide a group of young, out of favor players to a fourth-place finish in the KHL Western Conference. Torpedo would reach the second round of the playoffs.
“I think that Igor succeeded in everything,” Fedorov told Russian website Kp.ru. “He discovered the versatility of those young players who ended up in the Torpedo system. And the game that they showed, it was difficult to play against them.
“I think in one season, in one preseason, the team made a lot of progress. Many players were not well known. But I understand that the team has climbed very, very high in terms of the level of play and dedication, and their results are quite logical for me.”
Duff continues, and the interview’s rather tame (thankfully) overall.
