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When the Penguins Joined the Red Army · Pittsburgh Sports Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Pittsburgh Sports Memories podcast, where you don't listen to the podcast, the podcast listens to you.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Tim Hannon.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: With me as always.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm uh Comrade Steve Wirt, and uh we are humbly pushing back the communists, or not the communists, the bolts, the the capitalists, yes.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: We are taking the wealth from the evil capitalists and giving it to the wonderful workers of the world, at least hockey-wise.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, this episode is going to uh deal with an interesting story, one that I don't think a lot of people probably know about.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it's about the time that the Pittsburgh Penguins bought the Soviet Red Army hockey team and tried to run it and tried to integrate with it, and kind of a lot of shenanigans happen as a result.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: So um before before we get started, I have to uh give a lot of props here to a documentary by a guy named Gabe Polski entitled Red Penguins.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and that documentary is really where I got so much of the information for this show.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Really well done documentary, really tells the story of this in-depth.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So go out and watch that if you're you're interested in learning more.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I think I watched it on Hulu, uh, but you can probably find it wherever it's streaming or or where you can purchase it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So to set the context for all this, the the first thing we really have to talk about is the Cold War.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, boy, I'm not sure how I can sum up the entire Cold War in a few paragraphs, but here goes.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so after World War II, in which the the United States and the Soviets were allies, uh the Soviet Union kind of goes full supervillain under Joseph Stalin.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And for the next 40 years, the United States and the USSR are at war with each other without physically being at war with each other, if that makes sense.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where the term Cold War comes from.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Both countries were building up a stockpile of nuclear weapons, and both countries had those nuclear weapons pointed at each other, ready to set off at any moment.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Citizens of both countries lived in constant fear of nuclear attack, and kids in both countries grew up hating the other country.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, Steve, Steve and I grew up in the 1980s, and and Steve, If our experience with communism and and the USSR was probably a little different than the kids that grew up in the 50s and 60s.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you know, the tension was still high at that point, and you know, I I don't know.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: What what did you what was your view of the Soviet Union when you were a kid?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a kid?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's probably like tainted by the fact that like my father like had me watch like Red Dawn.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, they they had the bunch of kids go into the mountains and you know hold off the communists because they because not the guy, but the uh the Soviet Union because they decided to start a war with the United States for no good reason, apparently.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it was just like more of fear.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: I remember like when I was a little kid, like you just thought like at any moment there could be a war and like anything could set it off, and you just were never quite sure like what was gonna set it off.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: But it it definitely was an interesting you know situation for sure.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it it definitely ended uh ended when the um when the Americans got the uh the Red October submarine and um you know with the caterpillar drive and oh no, no, that didn't actually happen.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, it actually ended when Robin Drago.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's actually when it ended.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and he said when if I can change, you can change, we can all change.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that that's when it ended.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: I forgot about that.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: That or maybe when the Russians lost in Afghanistan, yeah, and they had their own little Vietnam, but topic for another Todd cast, yeah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Minor, minor you know, happenstance compared to Rocky IV and Red October, Hunt for Red October.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but but yeah, just it's you mentioned movies.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was a big part of the culture for years.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, any movie was always us versus them kind of, you know, call it propaganda if you want, but that was that was definitely the storyline.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and I would say a big part of the Cold War, it wasn't just who could obliterate the other, it was also who is the best.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the the that was really encompassed in the space race.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: The r the Russians were the first to send a man into space, uh, which was a huge deal.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the Americans were the first to put a man on the moon.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there was always a competition between these two systems of government, kind of which was better, and it was all about proving that to not only their own countries, but the the rest of the world.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sports, and and in particular hockey, definitely plays a big role in that competition.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: The Soviet national hockey team was dominant.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Between 1954 and 1991, they won nearly every world championship and Olympic tournament that they competed in, and they never failed to meddle in any international ice hockey federation tournament that they were in.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Their only real blip on the radar was the 1980 Winter Olympics, the miracle on ice game.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't understand why that's commonly referred to as the greatest moment in sports history, it's because not only was it set against this whole Cold War backdrop that we just talked about, but also that Soviet hockey team never lost.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were literally unbeatable.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea that an American team, I mean, not like not Canada or some other country that actually was good at hockey, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: But an American team being the ones to upset them in Lake Placid, it was just too unbelievable to actually be true.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why they've made movies about that.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's so legendary because it's the greatest upset in the history of sports.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, for sure.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and too, like this didn't earlier that year they had beaten the Rangers, like the New York Rangers, like by like five goals, like a professional, and they had beaten, they almost beat the um Canada team in what what the summit series in the 70s, and they only lost because uh that who's that piece of garbage to play for the F Flyers?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Bobby Clark broke Valerie Volmarf's ankle in a cheap shot.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, we're standing up.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yes, but there I am standing up for the commies.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: But but no, that was kind of B-esque.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the Soviet hockey team is dominant at the national level, and the best team in the USSR was a team called Siska Moscow, which was commonly referred to as the Central Red Army Team.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason they were referred to as the Red Army team was because they were actually a functioning division of the Soviet Army.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, back then in the Soviet Union, all able-bodied Soviet males were required to serve in the military.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so the team was able to just literally draft the best young hockey players in the Soviet Union onto the team because they had to come into the military, they were part of the military, and then whoever was the most talented athletes would just they would go on to the Siska Moscow team.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a ton of overlap between the rosters of the Red Army team and the Soviet national team, which is why both were so dominant.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Steve, we thought it was impressive when the Penguins won back-to-back Stanley Cups a few years ago.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Red Army team wins 13 consecutive league championships.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: 13.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you might say, okay, well, the competition couldn't have been that good, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: They're playing in Russia, in a Russian league against other Russian teams.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: How good could the competition really be?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, between 1976 and 1991, the Red Army team played a bunch of these super series.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Steve, you referenced that earlier with the national team.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Red Army team played a bunch of these super series teams against NHL teams.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So Siska Moscow, the Red Army team, would travel to North America to play NHL teams on their home ice.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the Red Army team never lost one of these series.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: In 1986, they played the Edmonton Oilers in Edmonton.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is the Wayne Gretzky Edmonton Oilers that were in the middle of winning five Stanley Cups, and they just wiped the floor with them in Edmonton.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then Steve referenced this earlier.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes those got ugly, you know, the flyers throwing the elbow.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: When that happened, Steve, that the Soviets actually all skated off the ice in protest.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they didn't come out for the third period of that game.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the summit, the Summit Series Canada did win.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know the name of the guy from Canada.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like he's a very minor player who ended up scoring, but that was more in the 70s and the 80s.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: But that I mean, they just that's probably one of the greatest hockey teams of all time in hockey.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's it's pretty hard to argue.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it is hard to argue, and and that Red Army team may have been the greatest hockey team of all time.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Here's some guys that played for that team that you may have heard of and who are also in the pro hockey hall of fame.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Pavel Burre, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Fatisov, Igor Lurianov, Sergei Zubov, who later played for the Penguins, and Vladislav Tretyak, who was the goaltender on that 1980 team.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, uh a lot of people believe that that the only reason the Soviets lost that game is because they pulled Tretiak out.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was after the first period.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tiganov.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he gave up a weak goal at the end of the period to I forget the it wasn't Yoru Zioni, it was it was the first goal, and like Tikanoff got mad and pulled him.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And like it's like you took the best goalie out because he gave up like kind of a weak goal.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the American players even said if Tretjak would have stayed in, we wouldn't have won.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think the American players are actually quoted saying that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: So he was very good.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Steve, you mentioned Viktor Tikanoff.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: So Viktor Tikanoff was the Red Army team's coach, and he was also the coach of the Soviet national team.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: He had held held both of those positions since 1977.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Tikinov was your your classic hardline Soviet.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: He was known for kind of a dictator coaching style.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: He had just total control over his players' lives because remember, this is the Red Army team.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so and Tikhanov was a colonel in the army.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so this was this was very similar to uh you know basic training going into the army.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this wasn't this wasn't uh guys could could go out and go to the clubs at night.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were they were in barracks and they practiced 10 to 11 months during the year.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, after 13 championships in a row and all this dominance against North American teams, you know, by by the 1990s, Tikhanov is a legendary figure in Russia.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say the best comparison is probably Vince Lombardi, where people in America, even if they're not really football fans, they they know the name Vince Lombardi, and they say that that's basically what it was in Russia with Tikhanov.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody knew who Viktor Tikhanov was.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: So around the late 1980s, uh things start to shift a little bit in this in the hockey scene in Russia.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Defections begin.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Some Russian players were finally leaving for the NHL, some uh you know, with permission, I think most probably without permission.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Alexander Mulgioni was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres in 1988, and he defects.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then really the Detroit Red Wings, they're the ones that really sink the Red Army team because they pillage a bunch of players on that team and eventually build a dynasty with them.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you notice that list we read earlier of Hall of Famers, you know, if if you were listening, there was there were several Red Wings on there, like Fedorov and Liryonov and company, uh that all went on to play for the Red Wings and have a ton of success.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's also a documentary by that same guy I mentioned earlier, Gabe Polski, about the the Russian five and that whole transition, uh, which is also a good documentary.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So Russian hockey players are starting to leave the Soviet Union, that's a problem.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: However, uh late 80s, early 90s, country has a bigger problem on its hands.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: In 1991, the Soviet Union collapses, and there's a lot of reasons and events that took place causing that to happen.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Way too much to get into on a sports podcast.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll just say that the end result is that what was once the USSR becomes 15 independent nations, the largest of which is Russia.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: A guy named Boris Yeltsin takes over as president of Russia.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: US President George Bush declares the Cold War over, says America has won, and the Soviet Union is no more.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and Steve, I remember being so shocked by that.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, nobody saw it coming.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's the craziest part, is like there was like no warning or anything.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: It just like kind of one day I was like, ah, we're out.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: See ya, we're done.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: We can't do this no more.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was just weird.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, maybe because like, I mean, in 1989, I wasn't like old enough to really know.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, you figure like it wasn't like now where like you could read like more independent news sources.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: So like it was probably harder to understand or really what was going on.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was just weird to not have a Soviet Union anymore.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like hey, there's no more Soviet Union.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I just that was so weird.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: You would think if the United States was all of a sudden just gonna be like, okay, we're just gonna separate into whatever we're gonna separate, you would like see it coming, but like it's just so out of the blue.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: Or like like pick a random country, like all of a sudden Canada decides it's gonna be like two countries.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I wouldn't see that coming.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey, you know.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's that's that's very true.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that that all goes down, and that's that whole collapse of the Soviet Union is bad news for Siska Moscow, the Red Army team.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because they, you know, we said they had already been losing all their best players to the NHL, and primarily to the Red Wings.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they they quickly go broke because the new government has little interest in funding hockey teams, and because their star players have all gone to the NHL, there's really no draw in terms of talent.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Their fans are dealing with a host of other problems, like their whole country being you know in chaos, as we'll we'll get into.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, they're not they're not really coming out to watch the Red Army team anymore, so they're not they're not getting the attendance numbers anymore, they don't have the star players, they don't have the backing of the government, and the Red Army team is basically on the verge of extinction at this point in the in the early 90s.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: The penguins, meanwhile, are at the opposite end of the spectrum.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: They had just won two Stanley Cups, and in in 1993, the team was 25 years old at this point.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: They had finally reached the pinnacle in terms of success and popularity in Pittsburgh.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the penguins were always third behind the the Steelers and Pirates, always.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And at this time, I don't think that was true anymore, and I don't think it's been true since.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: The team had recently been sold to uh Howard Baldwin.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: He bought the team from Eddie DeBartleau in 1991.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we did we did a whole episode called uh The Goal That Saved the Pens.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in that episode, we talked a lot about who Howard Baldwin was.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So go back and listen to that if if you get a chance, because that's another interesting penguin story.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll just do kind of a quick recap here.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Baldwin was a movie producer, uh, he's a guy that lived in the Hollywood Hills, his next door neighbor was Madonna, so he was you know kind of a celebrity um kind of mover and shaker.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Baldwin is a dreamer, he's always thinking big, and he's also a huge hockey fan.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh loves hockey, he had owned some minor league teams, and his entrepreneurial strategy was buying with very little of his own money invested.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: We talked in that goal that saved the pens episode about how he paid$1,000 for the Penguins, literally$1,000 cash, and the rest of it was assumed debt and capital.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh ultimately, Baldwin makes some terrible financial decisions that almost completely obliterate the franchise, the deal he makes with.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: SMG, the arena managers, the huge contracts he handed out without the revenue to support it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we covered all that in that previous episode.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: But here in 1993, Baldwin's riding high off the success of back-to-back championships, and he's looking for a way to keep that going.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um Baldwin, you know, like we said, he's a dreamer.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: He's always looking for an opportunity, and he sees one here to buy the Red Army team who's who's struggling financially.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Baldwin really sees two potential benefits.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So benefit number one, from a hockey perspective, wow, what if we could own the Red Army team, and we'll literally have a pipeline right into the middle of Moscow, right?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's all these good Russian hockey players coming over, and and we'll be able to mine them via the ownership of this team.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was we talked in previous episodes, Steve, about Bill Nunn and the Steelers in the 70s, how they had that pipeline into the historically black colleges that no one else had.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I think maybe the Penguins thought they could have the same thing with Russia.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's an interesting theory.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I can see I can see like there's gonna be problems with this, but uh yeah.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: But you can see that you can see the thought process, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the benefit number two was being on the ground floor of investing in this new country and its economy.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: You figure you had this big powerhouse nation.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was a large country, and and it was kind of like almost like a capitalism free agent, right?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because now the doors were open.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Vice President Al Gore makes a speech where he tells American businesses to take the risk and says, quote, we are behind you as an administration.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of American companies are doing just that.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're setting up shop in Russia, and they needed a mechanism to advertise.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And Baldwin figures, hey, what better way to advertise than with this really popular legendary hockey team?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And many of the companies that were that were kind of uh setting up in shop in Russia were traditionally ones that advertise in American sports, like beer companies and shoe companies and fast food restaurants.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, Steve, you said like you can kind of see it.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think Howard Bonewin's a guy that is not well remembered in Pittsburgh.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the more we talk about him on the show, the more I can kind of see where he was coming from with a lot of his ideas.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I just it was more about the execution maybe of those ideas, but I I I don't know.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I can see it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: I I can see the problem being like, is number one, since the Soviet Union is now 15 separate countries, you're not going to just get like the best of the best being just shipped right to Moscow, and that's probably gonna be the problem.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Is like you know, if you're just gonna be one team in like a hockey league, you're not gonna get the best of the best.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: So and this is long before the KHL, so I think I don't think the KHL existed yet.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's probably like two big problems.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is he the whole goal is to get the top talent out of Russia by having this minor league team to draw them to, but without the Soviet Red Army to just go out and collect up all the talent and make them come there, I don't know how that's exactly going to work.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: So well just me spitballing here.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean let's let's talk about how it worked or didn't work.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I I think too, um one other point I'll make about Baldwin.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he was so he was he loved hockey so much.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if part of the motivation was also that he just didn't want to see this legendary hockey team go out of business, and he thought he could rescue it, right?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that might have been part of the motivation, too.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Baldwin gets some folks together, and he actually has a couple of partners, silent partners.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Mario Lemieux is one of the silent partners, and actor Michael J.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Fox is one of his partners in this venture.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Michael J.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Fox actually goes on Larry King Live to talk about this, and I'm gonna play that clip now.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: You were telling me you own a piece of the Russian hockey team?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can't really call it owning because it's the Russian government.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we basically stepped in and took over uh the financial interest of the Central Red Army hockey team in uh in Moscow, in Russia.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you called them what?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well they're called the Russian Penguins.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that was Michael J.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Fox uh talking about the investment that he had made with Baldwin.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you heard him say there that uh you really can't own it.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: So what what happens is the penguins and their Russian partners each own 50% of the team.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, the the Russian law Russian law wouldn't let an American company own more than 50% of any Russian entity.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's still the same, I don't know.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: But that was the case at the time.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the max uh stake that the penguins could have was 50%.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh Russia owned the other 50%.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: I run into that problem all the time with my vodka company.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: Putin won't let me own more than 49.9.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's tough.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this this 50-50 split or this kind of supposed 50-50 split is actually going to be very key later in this story.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: The Russian 50% is basically owned by two guys.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So Viktor Tikinov, who, you know, we mentioned before he's still the head coach at this point.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then Valerie Gushin, who's the team's general manager.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: So really Tikhanov and Gushin are responsible for the Russian 50%.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Gushin is kind of a hardline Soviet like Tikhanov.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: But unlike Tikinov, he's more interested in the business side of the team.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say he's also a little bit more jovial than Tikinov.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Karen Baldwin, who was Howard Baldwin's partner in the movie production company and Baldwin's wife, she relays a story how she would uh meet with Gushen and she would ask what the Penguins could do to make the team better.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And his answer was always Mercedes for Gushen.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if they ever delivered on that, but I just thought that was kind of funny that that was always his answer.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's one way to make uh Gushin's life a little better.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if the hockey will be any improved, but happy employees, happy company.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um there you go.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Although again, he was part owner, not employee, but nevertheless.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Baldwin hires a guy named Stephen Warshaw to be their marketing guy.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: So Stephen Warshaw is kind of this brash, energetic young guy, and he's like, Yeah, sure, I'll go over there and and and kind of run the team run the operations, and not really having any clue what he's walking into.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when he gets to the arena that the team plays in, which is ironically called the Ice Palace, he's surprised to find out that it's a dump.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the this arena that they played in, I mean, this is really the Russian equivalent of Yankee Stadium or Lambeau Field, because it houses the most legendary sports team in the country.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Warshaw finds that lots of stuff's broken, the lights aren't working, the plexiglass around the rink, you couldn't actually see through it because it was all scratched up.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the team at this point is sharing jerseys because they don't have enough money to buy new ones.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then even this is kind of weird.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually a nightclub underneath the arena.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually inside the arena called the Red Zone, where they had naked women dancing in cages.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Was this some sort of side business?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: What the heck?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little seedy.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm assuming they were doing this willingly, right?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't like they're like, oh, let me out.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: I can't have any food or anything.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question that I probably don't want to answer.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: As for the marketing side, um the the they found that the the Russians really had no idea how to run a for-profit business.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: That team had always been funded by the Soviet government, and they were selling tickets for literally the equivalent, the U.S.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: equivalent of a nickel, because they don't really understand this concept of supply and demand.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying that like mockingly or judgingly.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that, I mean, if you think about it, if you never lived in a capitalist society where you're where you're trying to buy and sell and make money and set prices and all that, how would you understand any of that, right?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: I guess you better pick up a copy of Wealth of Nations in a Hurry there by Adam Smith.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: But hey, you know, how many how long did we have to go before I could get an out of a Wealth of Nations and Adam Smith reference in the podcast?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like two years.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's impressive.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Very impressive.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have to have a link to that book now.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the arena has luxury boxes, but they're either being used for storage or they're being rented out for like little apartments for people to live in.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Kanye West right writing his new album in there or something back in 1991.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I I mean, literally, this is this is all, and and again, the Penguins are are not, you know, they didn't they did not know what they were getting into, and and they were surprised at all of this stuff.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the other thing that they were surprised at, the team doesn't have like anything celebrating their history.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is a team that won 13 straight championships, and you think you'd have posters and banners and and everything else.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: There was nothing.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Warsaw says the only thing they had, and they show a picture of it in a documentary, was this little trophy case that was about the size of a vending machine in the lobby, and it's next to like a bunch of plants.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: So like it's not, it doesn't even stick out.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: So Warsaw's walking into a mess with the hockey team.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a much bigger mess is unfolding in the country itself.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it would be easy to think that once a country is liberated from a kind of an oppressive system like that, that it would flourish.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like all these years of harsh communism, and now people are free to innovate and they're free to create businesses and create art and capitalize on their ideas like they never could before.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: But in reality, that's that's not really how it works.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: People are struggling to adapt.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have opportunists like the Russian mafia filling some of that void.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and I don't know, Steve, it kind of makes sense.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Putting people in the basement in cages, yeah.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, exactly.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it but it it makes me think of like the Shaw Tank Redemption.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Remember like the old guy that they they paroled from jail, I think his name was Brooks in the movie, and everybody's like, oh, congratulations, you're getting out of jail.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: It must be so nice to finally have freedom again.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: But he like can't handle it.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: He like wants to go back to prison because he can't handle this new life and this new freedom.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: He he was just so used to that system, even though it was harsh.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I just wonder maybe for some of the citizens back then, uh if if it was a similar thing.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's just I that's that's an apt uh comparison because it's you know almost like they were institutionalized, which I think is the word that you know, the phrase that was used in um Shawshank.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it's an interesting uh comparison.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, institutionalized.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's that yeah.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and if it's all you knew your whole life, then it's hard to know anything different.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: It it doesn't help too that the new government is not functioning at a high level.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh President Boris Yeltsin disbands parliament.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: The parliament fights back, and there's all this street violence that nearly results in a civil war.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: The core society systems are in chaos at this point.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: The healthcare system is a mess, the food distribution system is a mess.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they show clips in this documentary of people at the supermarket sniffing the meat before they buy it, because sometimes it was fresh and sometimes it wasn't.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's no FDA or anything at this point.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the law enforcement was pretty shoddy.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's really not a lot of roles.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a third world country, kind of a wild west at this point.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: So Warshaw gets to work on marketing this new team, and I think as you heard Michael J.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Fox say in that clip, they rebrand the team as the Russian Penguins, and they come up with this logo.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's very similar to the Penguins logo.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a little more three-dimensional.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's this penguin kind of like skating at you with a hockey stick, wearing this uh Ciska uh Moscow sweater.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: They make the game night experience very similar to what you would see in an NHL arena with lights and music and stuff.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: They they have a mascot who's basically like a carbon copy of Iceberg.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the this stuff that is it's very countercultural because remember, this is the Red Army team.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't have like QT animal logos and dancing mascots in the Soviet Red Army.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and and even just there were there were customs that were very different from here.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one one example is that it was apparently it was considered impolite to cheer if your team scored a goal.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I guess if you're like you know one of those teams that doesn't score a lot of goals, you're a pretty polite person, then like yeah.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's an interesting cultural uh difference there, yeah.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: So like what they could like taunting, like it was almost like you would like taunt the other team just because you were celebrating Yeah, I guess you're you're like in your face goaltender, you just gave up a goal.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I yeah.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: There had to be more context to that than just yay, we scored, you know, because there's a difference between like, yes, we scored then, ha ha, you stink, you know, Tom Barasso or I don't know.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I that would be an interesting one to delve into, but apparently that was the case.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So so again, they're trying to go against the grain in a lot of this stuff, and not surprisingly, it doesn't start well.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: The opening night uh game in the fall of 1993 draws virtually no one.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: But Warshaw, again, um he's featured a lot in this documentary, so again, go go check that out because he's an interesting dude.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he commits to filling the arena by Christmas, and he starts doing all these crazy stunts.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: So one night the two teams line up for the opening face-off, but there's no puck.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And a female acrobat dressed in a in a Russian penguin's uniform grapples down from the rafters, skates a lap around the rink, and then gives a puck to the referee.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he has the women from the downstairs nightclub start stripping on the ice between periods.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they actually follow the Zamboni around and just remove layers of clothes as they go.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's an interesting thing to see.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody's gonna get cold.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he has free beer nights where they hand out Iron City, of course.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be Iron City, to everyone in attendance, regardless of age.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you had 14-year-old kids getting drunk.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he has fan contests, he has like Gorbachev look-alike contests and bikini contests and stuff like that.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's definitely a bit of a bikini.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: Is it Gorbachev in a bikini?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_02: Would you win both at the same?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know that I wanted to see that if that was the the winner.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: But um it it it it it yeah, it's it's wild, it's it's a freak show, but it it actually does start to catch on.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and it really catches on with the younger fans in Moscow, which you can see that, right?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because the older fans that were so the institutionalized crowd, like that word you use, Steve, you know, they're probably not going to go for this, but the younger people who maybe are more into Western culture and more into you know crazy stuff that they've never seen before, um, they're the ones coming to the games.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they've never seen anything like this because hockey's always always been militaristic, very business-like, and the idea that it could also be fun was new and it was exciting, and that's exactly what the penguins have come in here and created in Russia.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the pens are also doing stuff that's not so crazy and even a little bit smart.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they're selling merchandise in the corridors of the arena, which again, you know, you wouldn't think twice of over here, but nobody was doing that.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're selling advertising everywhere.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: The the boards just used to be white boards, they were blank.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they're selling advertising on the boards, again, similar to what you would see over here, but they're also selling advertising on the jerseys, on the uniforms of the concession guys, and even the arena security guards have like a little McDonald's patch on them or whatever.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm talking now, and they do pretty much all that on the uniform is pretty much, you know, especially international, although the NHL is starting to catch up.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you'll see company logos all over.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: Even in soccer, like the company logo is bigger than the team crest.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe they're just ahead of their time.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think they were, because like you said, that that all became a thing eventually.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing giveaways too, which again, like you you have that over here, but they're not giving away bobbleheads and things like that.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're giving away things that are relatively inexpensive, like chocolates and razors.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: But though those are things that a lot of people in Moscow at the time did not have easy access to.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: There were a lot of supply chain issues, there was a lot of chaos going on.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they they said even the toilet paper in the bathrooms at the arena was a valuable commodity.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: When they actually had to have uh a person at the entrance of the bathrooms who would hand out toilet paper to you before you went in.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they just put it on rolls in the stalls, people would steal it and take it home because it was a it was something that they didn't necessarily have.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you could give away things like that, and people would come just to get a free razor or a free box of chocolates, because that was not something you could go to the store and buy.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and if you could get that stuff over there from Pittsburgh, you know, it wasn't that expensive, and you could get a lot of people to come.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: So this all leads to success.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: The attendance is up.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Warsaw had committed to selling out the arena by Christmas.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: He actually accomplishes that by November.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he starts finding more ways to make revenue.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: We mentioned the advertising.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: The games are also broadcast on national television, and traditionally in the Soviet Union and even in this new Russia, you had to pay the TV station to carry your games.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: But here, the TV network is not only paying the Russian penguins to put their games on TV, they're also giving them control over the sponsorships.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're giving them control over who was interviewed during the intermission and key aspects of the broadcast.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so now the the penguins are managing all of that, which is all to their advantage financially.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: Al Gore even attends a game and he makes a speech about how attendance is up 400% and what a great success story it is.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't, Steve, I don't know why Al Gore was so involved in Russia at this time.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure how he found time to do all that while he was creating the internet, but good on that guy for multitasking.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it wasn't an inconvenient truth that Russian hockey was awesome.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Poor Al Gore.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so a lot of success financially right off the bat.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh on the ice, though, it's not a very good team.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: For years, the the the Red Army team was used to having all the top players, how we talked about, you know, they could just get anybody that came into the army.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: But now the best hockey players are in North America playing in the NHL, and the the the Red Army team doesn't have that pipeline like they used to have.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh probably the best player on that team is the goaltender, a guy named Nikolai Hobby Bolin, who later goes on to win a Stanley Cup for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was a pretty good goaltender.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but there's really no other real good players.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: In February of '94, they toured North America playing against minor pro hockey teams in the old international league, starting with an exhibition in Pittsburgh against the Penguins Farm Club, the Cleveland Lumberjacks.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: You remember them, Steve?
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sure.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not at all.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: Not even a little bit.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: So the so they're I wasn't there the Skipjacks, wasn't there?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: I thought there was a Skipjack or something.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it was a Pirates.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: I digressed, yes.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, regardless.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Those teams weren't very memorable, and that's who they're playing this tournament against.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and they don't fare very well.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's a good thing for financially for the Pittsburgh Penguins, because they're able to host one of the games, they're selling tickets, they're selling merchandise with this like USA versus Russia theme, which you know still had a lot of meaning to Americans.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but for the for the actual team and their players, it's not it's not good because the the the Russian Penguins players are smaller, they're not as skilled as the IHL players, and they go 2-9-2 on that tour, and they also get beat up a lot by these minor league uh North American players.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them had lost their NHL jobs to Russians, and they kind of saw this as like some kind of chance for revenge, which is kind of unfortunate.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: So this is all super frustrating for Tikhanov, the coach.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he had been used to this military-style discipline, and he had been used to dominating in these international games.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: And here he is managing young kids who aren't very good.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's coaching an organization who has strippers come out between periods.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you can just imagine this old line uh Soviet hockey coach just trying to deal with this kind of change, and it's not gonna go well.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, it's not I mean you you think of it like I think as I get older I understand like how hard it is to adapt to change, just that's especially like this this Tikinoff was very successful.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it wasn't like he just like, you know, oh we kind of were okay or not very good.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: He like had one of the greatest hockey teams of all time, and now he's like, you know, managing some minor league team that can't even compete with you know minor league players.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: So and and it's all different.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: He just can't you know, he probably didn't you know, he probably had to do some scouting, but you know, he could just pick somebody and say, Hey, I want you know that guy, whereas now he's gonna have to compete for the players.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I I'm sure it just was a lot of change and adapting to you know that much change just might have been just too much for uh Mr.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_02: Tekinoff there.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: But um or Colonel Tekinoff, I guess.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: I guess if he still had his rank in the military there.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, very, very different role for him.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but maybe we would have called her Brooks for help, but you know, maybe not.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's full steam ahead though for the Penguins.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: They still see this as a a huge opportunity.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And around this time, Baldwin and Warshaw have dinner with a guy named Michael Eisner.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Michael Eisner was the CEO of the Walt Disney Company, and I think kids pe people our age, Steve, probably remember Michael Eisner because we were we were always into Disney as kids, and he used to show up on a lot of the Disney specials and stuff.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean he was he was the head of Disney for a while, I think.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Very powerful.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: He kind of saved Disney.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he saved Disney after um Roy.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is it Walt Disney's brother?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of they kind of slipped and then he kind of brought him back to like, you know, I don't know, success, financial success at least.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't I mean if you consider The Little Mermaid a a cinematic success, I guess.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good it's a fun film.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: People like it.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if it's gonna win any Oscars, but well they they they definitely by the 90s they were a powerhouse company again, and you're right, I think that that had slipped for a while.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: So so Baldwin and Warshaw have dinner with Michael Eisner, and Disney is talking about investing and investing heavily in this Russian penguin thing.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they allegedly even have their imagineering department come up with new logo designs, and they talk about all this opportunity for tie-ins.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Disney had these movies called the Mighty Ducks uh about this like kids' hockey team.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people remember those movies.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and Disney's even talking about you know, one of the sequels could be like the American team versus the Russian team, stuff like that.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, for the record, Disney denies ever being involved in any of this.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the penguins say no, they were, they were like on the verge of like you know, pumping all kinds of money in, and they had all these ideas and there are all these plans.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Disney says that never happened.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you can pick who you want to believe there.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe Disney just owns like so much of the world that they forgot about this, who knows?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but anyway, a lot of definitely a lot of opportunity.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: You just wonder like what what Disney like if Disney just like tries to walk away, you know, like if this there's like nope, never had anything to do with it, can't prove it.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Or like, did the negotiations never get far enough where they put like a bunch of money into it?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: So they kind of have like that, what's that, that plausible deniability?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it happened, but you know, Michael Eisner just heard about it and nobody really told him, you know.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe, yeah, it would it would be interesting to know what the real truth is there.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh over the next two seasons, the team continues to make money and they even start to improve on the ice.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's it kind of mirrors the success that the Pittsburgh Penguins were having at the time.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the the future is looking bright for this partnership.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh however, um things do start to go south a little bit.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Russian ownership starts to really cloud.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: With the Pittsburgh ownership.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: Tikhanov cannot stand all the marketing stuff.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: One thing he's particularly upset about is the promotion of one of the team's players, a guy named Alexander Karlimov.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the one thing that everybody agreed on, the Pittsburgh side, the Russian side, everybody agreed that Karlamov wasn't a very good player at all.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Just not a very good hockey player.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: However, his father was a guy that Steve mentioned earlier, Valerie Karlimov, who's in the Hockey Hall of Fame and who's a Russian legend.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, if you go look up, go look up Valerie Karlamov on YouTube.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's a 1978 game where Sisko Moscow was playing against the New York Rangers, and Karlomov scores this goal where he splits like four Rangers and beats the goaltender.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: So again, this his dad was a legend.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so since his dad was a legend in Russia, the Penguins thought it made financial sense to kind of promote him as the face of the team, to have him do interviews between periods, stuff like that.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Tikanoff, as this hardline old school coach, Tikanoff says, you know, this guy hasn't done anything of note as a player.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: You should have your have to earn your way to that kind of status.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so Tikanoff feels like his ability to coach the team and run the team is being undermined by the pens.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and I don't know, Steve, I could I can kind of see that, right?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think he has a point.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can see like how things would be done differently nowadays.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like you would definitely have like if I was trying to do this again, like now, like I would have the the local people more run it because they would be more in tune with okay, Carl or Karlomov or Varlamov, or I think I called him Varlamov, but would be a nice story, but you wouldn't make them the friend the face of the franchise, you know what I mean?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: It'd be like, oh, here he is, you know.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: And that was probably the they they overhyped him, is probably what what had kind of happened in his case.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I do like I think Tikhanov has a great point.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like you have to earn it, and and just it look it's gonna like sell out kind of your credibility with the fans if you say, Oh, it's like remember Sammy Khalifa for the pirates, shortstop of the future, you know, it's kind of like that again, you know.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: When you say somebody, oh, this is gonna be the next great one, and they're not, yeah.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of kinda hope everybody forgets what you said, I guess.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's the best you can hope for in that situation.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Valerie Gushen, the general manager, who who also owns part of that Russian 50%, the penguins say he's stealing money from them.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Gushin says all Americans are untrustworthy.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not a good setup.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Penguins send people over to Moscow and they get reamed up by the Minister of Defense, uh, who says, you know, make no mistake, this is still the Army's team.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Which, you know, really wasn't, but the Minister of Defense thought so.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Warsaw also tells a story about how Nike was paying them$100,000 for advertising.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they set up a deal with Nike to put all these advertisements on the arena for$100,000.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the Russian management tore down all the Nike signs and replaced them with Adidas signs.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when Warsaw went to Gushin and said, Why would you do this?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Nike's paying us$100,000 to advertise.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you tear down all their signs?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Gushen reportedly said, Because it's our bleeping team.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not good.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Penguins also set up a deal with Proctor and Gamble to have Tikanov endorse Vicks cough drops.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Get it?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Victor Tikanoff or Vick's coughdrops.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Tikanov is less than thrilled about this arrangement, and he locks himself in his office the day of the commercial shoot.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he does eventually do the commercial.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think you can find that on YouTube too.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty awkward.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Again, colonel of a Soviet colonel popping like a cough drop.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: Was this in Russia or in the United States?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, like, what would he even do?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, you remember me?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: I was the guy that like lost it was the evil Russian coach that your 1980 team beat.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Here's some Vic's cough drops.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like, this is all that.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is all in Russia because remember, Al Gore and the Clinton administration.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's a legend.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: The Clinton administration is telling American companies going vest, and American companies are.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh Procter and Gamble, I mean, you needed you needed products like that in this new Russia, right?
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: You need people needed cough drops.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they they don't know Vic's cough drops, but if Viktor Tikanov is popping Vicks cough drops, he'll know Vicks cough drops.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and the penguins think they can make a lot of money off of this.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And again, Tikanoff not happy.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Warshaw also says that they have a guy from the Russian mafia sitting in his office spying on him.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's a claim that Guten denies.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so basically the Penguins think the Russians aren't being good partners.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Russians see it differently.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: They think the Penguins are making all this money off of the Red Army team and they're cheating them out of their fair share.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there's definitely a lot of clash between the American and the Russian partnership.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually things start to get even worse.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say, Steve, if maybe if you're running a business like this in a stable country, you could work through some of the management differences.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: You could bring in some consultants and right, you could work through the differences.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: But here, that's really not the case because the system in Russia itself continues to deteriorate.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot is controlled by the mafia.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: And capitalism in its western form really has a tough time succeeding here.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's no different at the Ice Palace.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's always lots of mafia guys around wanting money for different things, and you had to pay them or else, right?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you gonna do?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: If they like, yeah, we need a hundred dollars for uh security tonight to provide security.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what no, we have security guards.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: We don't, I mean, what are you gonna say?
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like so well, it would be a shame if something bad happened.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: In and things things are starting to get legitimately dangerous.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Warshaw is supposedly told that there's a hit on his life unless he quits the penguins and works for the mob.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: The team photographer for the for the uh Russian penguins is assassinated allegedly because he took a picture of one of the mob bosses by accident.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the assistant coaches is gunned down in the team parking lot, and one of the Russian Penguins players, one of their better players, a guy who had actually been drafted by the San Jose Sharks, is found dead under mysterious circumstances.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: So not only is their clashed with the management, but now people are literally dying.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um Disney pulls out if they were ever in, depending on who you believe.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the pipeline of players, uh, like like Steve, you mentioned that that didn't seem realistic in the first place.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it turns out to not be realistic.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you kind of call that one.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's not happening.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they're just not getting the pipeline of players.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like you said, they're scared, they're not just all in Moscow anymore being drafted into the army.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you know, the the other thing was the some of the other teams went to the commissioner, Gary Bettman of the NHL, and they're like, uh, you know, we have a draft.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: These penguins just can't, you know, have players play for their Russian team and then ship them over.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like a minor league team.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the you know, the penguins aren't getting aren't getting good players.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: And plus, like we said, there really weren't any good players for that team.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Baldwin says the last draw comes when they have a year-end meeting with Gushin and Tikanov in 1995.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they they they meet, I think it was in New York, it was in the States, and Gushin and Tikanov bring these two guys who are apparently very shady with them, and they introduce them as, quote, the new partners in the team.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the penguins are like, uh, what do you mean, new partners?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even know who these guys are.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't vetted them or even met them.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: You you can't just say that they're the new partners, right?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the the next day, the next day the penguins decide they're often.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: If it's the same guys that are taking the protection money, I guess they guess they can.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: They made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Probably.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the penguins decide, you know what, we're done.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: They decide they're gonna pull out of the investment.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: The team's gonna be back to full Russian ownership, and the international joint venture experiment between the Penguins and Siska Moscow is officially over.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about some of the aftermath of this.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Boris Yeltsin resigns in 1999.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: He apologizes to the Russian people for, quote, not making many of your and my dreams come true.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeltsin is replaced by a former KGB operative, a guy named Vladimir Putin, and the rest of that story's history.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: We won't get into that.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Putin's actually a big hockey fan.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, did you ever see the like there's video of him on the internet playing, like literally playing hockey?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's true, true story.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: So he is a big hockey fan.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if does oh Cisco Moscow.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, I was about to ask a question, but you're gonna answer it yourself.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, Tim.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so Baldwin, Baldwin, meanwhile, eventually drives the penguins all the way into the ground.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: The franchise declares bankruptcy in 1999 and is saved by Mario Lemieux, and has a lot of successful years after that.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Cisco Moscow is still around.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're not called the Penguins anymore, uh, although they did keep that moniker for a few years afterwards.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they currently play in the KHL.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, to kind of just bring this whole thing full circle, their head coach is Sergei Fedorov.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that that franchise is still still running.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and yeah, it's just an interesting experiment.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh definitely seemed like something that was gonna work out for a while, but it it was probably was kind of false hope because this probably this thing probably never had a chance of working, Steve.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, what was it, four years?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: How long did this last?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Three or four years?
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, two or three, I think.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it it seems like the Russian way of doing capitalism is kind of like, you know, mob or I mean some people call it crony capitalism, you know, where it's just you gotta pay the the mob to do business or whoever's you know, the strong man.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that seems to be more of the setup that that that will and a lot of countries work like this.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: So that's probably like was the bigger issue and like that the pain the Howard Baldwin who's from Hollywood probably didn't really understand what was going on.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I I would say that's probably like the biggest one of the bigger issues is you have to understand who you're dealing with, and they just and obviously they were just they were looking to keep their um you know their franchise afloat afloat, Tikhanov and the Russian government without having to pay for it.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: And hey, got them through two or three lean years and they're still in the KHL.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: Have they won any uh of their championships since, or I don't know.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is that Moscow?
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: Good good question.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: But you're right, you're right.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: It probably ended up being a better deal for them than it it was for the Pens ultimately because uh it did it did regenerate interest in the franchise and it did get them through what was going to be bankruptcy, uh, or whatever the the Soviet or the Russian equivalent was at the time.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it it it it probably worked out well for them.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think for the pens it was just something that you know they they hoped would be a financial boom and and would get them you know better on the ice here, and none of that happened, and then of course, as we detailed in in the previous episode that we did about the uh the the 1999 season and all that, I mean it it just all went to pot eventually anyway for the pens.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just and these international deals are probably tough to do between the you know, like you said, the culture and the governments and the you know, just you know, people like different things.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_02: So it's i i I I maybe hockey I mean hockey is popular in Russia, so I mean it would be fun like to see the KHL and the NHL like you know play each other at some point, although you know, I guess most people will assume that like the the NHL is much better players since they have more money, but you know, it it would be interesting at least.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, because there there's definitely talent over in Russia and they they always seem to have a a lot of talent.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: It just seems like they come over here, you know, more than they stay at home.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but then that's kind of how it works in international sports too, even in so like because the better is like if if you know soccer, that's like people move around the you know, the better players always seem to move around the you know, even the better American players like you know, is it uh Pacilic for uh he plays over in Europe, you know, and he's one of the best, you know, American soccer players, but he plays in the European, you know, the English Premier League.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_02: So it's Howard Baldwin, he wasn't the greatest businessman in the world, and he definitely got in over his head with the uh Russian mafia and Viktor Tikhanov.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think I think like you said, Steve, it's really it was really about not understanding what you were getting into from a business perspective, and then trying to do all these things to make it work, uh, but not realizing that the the short-term success of some of those things were really not going to work with the culture and the partners you were working with.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I I don't know.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, Baldwin, Baldwin was a dreamer.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Baldwin was like uh let's make movies and let's you know let's do grand things, and a lot of times those things didn't work out, and it didn't work out here, it didn't work out eventually with his ownership of the penguins, but definitely an interesting story, and one that I didn't know much about, Steve.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um I I thought it was very cool that somebody made a documentary about that and uh and that that story gets to be told.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully every everybody enjoyed that.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for listening.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, please uh share the podcast with your friends.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth is definitely our best advertising.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and check us out on the web, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: See you next time.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: Мы не выйдем, может быть, славь, я там домой подошву, А завищу черкану всех половина злоку.