Right on Christmas time the Washington Capitals extended Alexander Semin's contract for one more year, with sources from TSN claiming that it was worth around six million dollars. Semin's contract will now run out in June 2011. This was the main topic of an interview that Alexander gave to Slava Malamud of Sport Express.
RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation.
Russian NHL forward Nikolai Kulemin of the Toronto Maple Leafs is improving and even if his point production is not very high, he finds other ways to contribute to the team's success.
"Kulemin has been one of our better forwards," said Leaf coach Ron Wilson to Toronto Star. "He doesn't get many points, but he forechecks well. He did a great job on the penalty kill, and he made a great play on the winning goal."
In a Tuesday game against the Florida Panthers Kulemin assisted to Alexei Ponikarovsky on the game winning goal doing most of the grunt work.
"Obviously, he had a full head of steam," Ponikarovsky told Toronto Star. "I knew he was going to get there first, so I just went to the net and hollered at him.
"[Kulemin] is a hard-working player and a pretty good skater. When he's going, the other team has got to trip him or do something to stop him. He's got a lot of moves."
Kulemin's improvement can be partially attributed to his English getting better.
"Coach wants us to play hard and I try to do that,” Kulemin said to Toronto Star. “It’s easy for me. I understand more English."
In 39 National Hockey League games for the Leafs Kulemin registered 6 goals, 7 assists, 13 points, a -4 rating, 62 shots on goal and 14:56 average time on ice.
Kulemin wasn't included in the Russian Hockey Olympics 2010 roster.
Russian NHL superstar Alexander Ovechkin was named Washington Capitals' captain on Tuesday. The position was vacant after the former captain Chris Clark has been traded with defenseman Milan Jurcina for Columbus Blue Jackets' Jason Chimera.
"If I need to say something, I will say something," Ovechkin told the Washington Post. "But I will show what I can do on the ice. It's a big honor for me. I'm going to do my best, but I don't want to concentrate on having a 'C' on my heart. I'm just going to play the same."
The Capitals won the match 4-2, but Ovechkin has been left out of the score sheet. Alexander Semin scored two goals, including the game winning one.
"I had talked to a lot of [players] the last couple of days and they said Alex is the only choice," said Bodreau to the Washington Post. "He's our leader, he's our guy. What shows he was ready was when I talked to him two or three days ago, he said he would accept the responsibility but 'only if my teammates want it.' He was already thinking about the team instead of himself, which is what captains do."
Ovechkin is the fourteenth captain in the Capitals' history and the sixth Russian player who to have the same honor. He succeeds Pavel Bure (Florida Panthers), Alexander Mogilny (Buffalo Sabres), Alexei Yashin (Ottawa Senators and New York Islanders), Alexei Zhamnov (Chicago Blackhawks) and Ilya Kovalchuk (Atlanta Thrashers).
It took 579 games to Ilya Kovalchuk to score his 600th point in the National Hockey League. In his 579th effort, during the second period of a match between Atlanta Thrashers and Buffalo Sabres, he scored the first goal of the game with a top-shelf wrist shot from the slot.
In this season Kovalchuk scored 25 goals and 47 points in 32 matches, numbers that make him the fourth top goal scorer and the eighth top point scorer in the league. He's also the fifth forward with the most average time on ice with more than 22 minutes a night. He logs in average only eighteen seconds less than the mos used forward, slovak Marian Gaborik of the New York Rangers.
Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Bodreau, as reported by Tarik El-Bashir in his Capitals Insider, feels that Semyon Varlamov is quickly improving in the recover from the groin injury he suffered on December 7th.
Bodreau: "Semyon Varlamov is inching toward returning to the lineup. He's getting betterm the week after Christmas, he's going to be playing one of those games. I don't know which one it will be, but it will be one of them."
Semyon Varlamov is a strong candidate for the third goalkeeper spot at the upcoming Olympic Games in Vancouver. This season he has posted so far a .927 save percentage with a GAA of 2.21.
Habs' Andrei Markov and Thrashers' Maxim Afinogenov liked joke when they played for Dynamo Moscow of the KHL in the 2004/05 season, according to their former partner Yakov Rylov.
Rylov gave an interview to Russian site sports.ru where he recollected some stories with Markov and Afinogenov. RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation of some parts of the interview.
"Once Max Afinogenov made a bad pass and [Dynamo's head coach] Krikunov exclaimed: "What are you, blind?". The following day the team gathered in a room for the game analysis. Max took a seat in the first row and put on strong glasses. You know, the ones that enlarge your eyes considerably. Krikunov came in and started laughing.
At one moment there were rumors that Mikhail Grabovskiy (now playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs) would get traded from Neftekhimik to Dynamo. First he was expected to come right at that moment, then he was expected to come after the season. So one day there was a practice and Markov and Afinogenov were skating in jerseys with Grabovskiy's surname on the back."
Russian forward Ilya Kovalchuk gave an interview to Russian site sportbox.ru where he talked about the Olympics in Vancouver.
RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation.
Q. How often do you think about the Olympic Games in Vancouver?
Kovalchuk: "Pretty often, but right now I'm focused on playing for the Thrashers. We got into a functional slump and now have to get out of it as soon as possible."
Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals took part in a photo shoot for Men's Journal.
The photo shoot took place last September in New York.
The photo will appear in the December-January issue of Men's Journal.
Below is a video of the shoot:
Not wearing his Capitals jersey Ovechkin nevertheless looks nice in a suit. But then again, is there anything Ovechkin doesn't look good in?
21-year-old Russian defenceman, Vladimir Zharkov of the New Jersey Devils scored his first NHL point.
On 4 December, 2009, in a game against the Tampa Bay Lightning Zharkov assisted to Niclas Bergfors to give the Devils a 2-1 lead.
So far in the 2009-10 season Zharkov played 3 games having average 13 minutes TOI, 1 assist, 2 PIM, 6 SOG.
Video of Zharkov's assist:
In this exclusive RussianHockeyFans.com interview, New York Rangers' prospect, 19 years old Evgeny Grachev confirms that he won't go to the WJC, talks about his AHL experience and hints that he isn't going to follow Nikita Filatov's route and bolt back to the KHL.
Alexander Ovechkin gave an interview to Anna Nasekina of Sovetskiy Sport in Montreal where his Capitals faced the Canadiens. Ovechkin talked about being a caveman, not caring about what others think of him, the Olympics, girls, and a lot of other funny stuff.
RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation.
Viktor Tikhonov's father, Vasiliy, gave an interview to a Russian newspaper Sport-Express where he stated that the Coyotes want Tikhonov to come back to the North America.
RussianHockeyFans.com offers you a translation.
- Were there any problems with the Coyotes when Viktor decided to leave for the KHL?
- Yes. In Viktor's contract with the Coyotes there is a clause saying that he can return to Russia if he gets sent to the AHL. We used this clause and now he is going to play for Severstal of the KHL on a loan basis. But recently we have been contacted by the Coyotes, they want Viktor to return to the North America*. They say he has a contract.
- Is he going to return?
- No. We want him to play in the new Russian league. We hope Viktor will do great there.
Update:
* - in the original post I wrote 'return to Phoenix' and some visitors thought that the Coyotes' would grant him ice time in the NHL. Now I changed it to 'return to the North America' because this is what actually was written in the original interview. Beg your pardon.
Kuznetsov: "If we had won, it would have been unfair"