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The initial response to this news when I tweeted it was “just like a Crosby commercial” but for the few kids on a calm Sunday evening at the local community centre it was far more surreal. There was no broken bus or a picture perfect pond with trees. Parents were not watching kids in finely pressed hockey jerseys playing a game at night in the ‘middle of nowhere’. What did happen was the same magic that only made for film events ever display.
Tonight my son received a call from a friend on his hockey team asking him if he wanted to meet at the community centre for some shinny. It’s been cold in Winnipeg but only recently have the outdoor rinks been flooded and the various ice trails through fields cleared for use. With two weeks until December 25th, with hardly any snow on the ground, Winnipeg hardly looks like it usually does as Christmas approaches. Rarely is it the middle of December before kids can finally go ‘get on the ice’ but this year winter has come later and on a warm(er) winter day the local rinks in my part of the city were full.
Despite the kids having a harder practice today for my son’s team I was impressed when one of his teammates called him and asked if he wanted to go skate for an hour this evening. Two hours earlier these two guys along with the other kids all had soaking gear and were quiet in the locker room after ending practice with a bag skate. If they want to skate, they might as well I thought, as it was a beautiful night to be out under the lights on the new ice.
What they didn’t bet on was what would happen when they got to the River Heights Community Centre. There were a few guys milling around taking shots and doing the usual tricks and danglemoves on the ice. There was also some one else on the ice, skating a bit better and shooting the puck a bit harder. My son couldn’t tell me who figured it out first, eventually the kids realized that Alexander Burmistrov was on the ice with them.
Burmistrov was there with his Russian coach working on some various stick handling skills on the outdoor ice. For those who have never seen Burmistrov in an interview you need to know a bit about this young man. He is twenty, shy and still has only a rudimentary grasp of the English language. He is very gracious and patient but you can tell he is young adult in a foreign place, but maybe an environment not so unfamiliar.
Burmistrov is from Kazan, Russia, a city approximately 700 kilometers east of Moscow. It is the eighth most populous city in Russia and lies on the convergence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers. Now he lives in Winnipeg, a city in the centre of the country, the seventh most populous, lying on the convergence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Winnipeg may be Burmistrov’s new ‘home away from home’, in reality though it may be more like home in ways the fans who cheer for him will ever know. The city and this neighborhood may feel just familiar enough to allow a young Russian hockey player the comfort to go out and do something he may have done at home in Kazan, a bit of outdoor hockey on a Sunday night.
My son said he was friendly and loved passing pucks with the kids and talking to them as they skated around. While there was hero worship by these kids, some with dreams of NHL success, it was never something that made the moment uncomfortable at least from my son’s point of view. The highlight of it all was when Burmistrov started taking shots and ripped a series of pucks off the crossbar, all in the same spot. He played shinny with them and was gracious enough to let the kids win a few a puck battles before he and his coach had to leave.
The rinks at River Heights are far from ideal scenery for this story. A far cry from the snow dusted trees in Crosby’s commercial, the boards are banged up from years of use the nets may have yet to get a fresh coat of paint on the iron but that’s not what made the moment special. For my son, his friend, and the few others there it was that a magical moment did happen, just like we are made to believe it does from TV. These kids no longer believe in Santa Claus, but on this night in December a young Russian kid far away from home gave them something they can hold on to forever. Now my son just has to figure out what he’s going to do with his brand new stick that he just got autographed.
Winnipeg Jets Blogger •Winnipeg Jets Writer • 
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