FEDOTENKO BRINGS EXPERIENCE, STANLEY CUPS TO IOWA
Mar 2, 2015By Tom Witosky
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When Ruslan Fedotenko finished his one season with the USHL Sioux City Musketeers back in 1999, the young Ukrainian hockey phenom thought Iowa would be distant memory in a long professional hockey career.
But wars change things and for Fedotenko, whose homeland is in the midst of a gruesome civil war, it has meant playing professional hockey in Des Moines for the Iowa Wild not in Donetsk where he had hoped to complete his career.
“I had hoped to give something back to my country,” said Fedotenko, who has played professional hockey every year since leaving Sioux City including -- 12 in the National Hockey League that included winning two Stanley Cups with Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh. “I wanted to help bring hockey back to the Ukraine and I thought it was the right thing to do for a lot of reasons. The country had given me the opportunity to play hockey.”
But things changed last May when Fedotenko, who was going into the second year of a three-year contract to play for HC Donbass in the KHL, got word that Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels had attacked Donetsk, destroyed the city airport as well as the ransacked the city’s hockey rink. Fedotenko and other members of the team were informed two months later that the club owner had decided to suspend operations of the club instead of relocating to a safer country.
“It is crazy (to think) in this day and age that this happening right now. The fact that someone thinks they can come into a country and take over the land, that’s crazy,” Fedotenko said.
As a result, Fedotenko now finds himself back in his adopted country – he became a U.S. citizen in 2005 – and fighting for a way back into the National Hockey League. Invited to the New Jersey Devils training camp, Fedotenko played in two-preseason games, but scored no points and was released before the regular season began.
The 35-year-old native of Kiev said that he understood when he signed his contract to play in the Ukraine that getting back into the NHL would be difficult, if not impossible. He said that he was fine with that, but hadn’t anticipated that the civil war would interfere with his plan.
In mid-January, the Minnesota Wild offered Fedotenko that chance with a professional tryout contract and a promise to consider whether he might be able to help the club during their playoff push. As a result, Fedotenko has been in Iowa since then trying to get into shape and get his timing down.
The man with two Stanley Cup tattoos on his right shoulder is confident that he can still play in the NHL.
“I am here to get into shape and show what I can do for the team. I didn’t come back here to just play in the AHL at this point in my career,” Fedotenko said. “I am healthy and feel I can play this game. I might not be the fastest guy out there, but I’ve got a lot of experience and I understand what it takes to win championships.”
Since signing with the Wild, Fedotenko has played in seven games with two goals, but even his return to U.S. professional hockey had its problem. Early during the Iowa Wild’s 5-3 home loss to Hamilton, Fedotenko attempted to set the tone with a big hit on a Bulldog forward.
“We were down and I wanted to get guys going. I wanted to set a tone for the game,” Fedotenko said.
Instead, Fedotenko ran chin first onto the forward’s elbow knocking him out.
“I was out before I hit the ice,” Fedotenko said. “It was a fluky unfortunate thing that set me back another two weeks from playing and conditioning.
But John Torchetti, the Iowa Wild’s head coach, said he appreciated the veteran player’s decision to try to shake-up the team with a hit. At the same time, defenseman Brad Richard had been hit into the boards, which resulted in a season ending leg injury.
“He was there for the team and that is a veteran move,” Torchetti said. “It was too bad it turned out the way it did, but that is what a pro does. He is there for the team.”
Fedotenko said that he learned those lessons by playing with some of the best NHL players. They included the Flyers Keith Primeau, Martin St. Louis and Vincent Lecavalier with Tampa Bay, and Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
“I was incredibly fortunate to play with some of best players in the game. Crosby, Malkin were great, but so was the Tampa Bay team,” Fedotenko said, adding that he also believed his two years with the New York Rangers in 2010-11 and 2011-12 would payoff in a third Stanley Cup ring.
“We had a great team and played well,” Fedotenko said. “That was a big disappointment when it didn’t happen.”
Asked what is required of a team to win the Stanley Cup, Fedotenko said that it isn’t always the best or most skilled team that will win it. Instead, he said, the team that is focused solely on playing together is the team that generally wins it.
““The big thing is team chemistry and the team buying into that they are playing for each other. Not playing for points or anything else, but playing for each other,” he said. “Everyone is doing their job no matter if it is playing 4 minutes or 24 minutes. Everybody is doing it and doing for each other. “
Of Iowa’s problems this season, Fedotenko said that fans should understand the club has been hit hard with injuries as well as call-ups. Those are the kinds of things that will hurt any AHL team considerably.
“You try to put a good team out there, but then you lose half the team to injuries and call-ups, that makes it pretty tough. The fans here have been great. This team is young and as they learn they will get better,” he said.
As for his future, Fedotenko is taking a wait and see and hope attitude.
“At this point, I don’t want to go back to Europe so I figure I’ll see if I can come back here. We will just have to wait and see,” he said.
And, he says, he still thinks about is going on back in his homeland. He still has a brother who lives in central Ukraine, but his parents and much of his family has migrated to the United States.
“Right now, it is really bad,” Fedotenko said. “I have friends in Donetsk who are still living there. Basically, they go from shelter to shelter when there are bombings going on and trying to survive. When you can’t get food on the table, hockey is not a big deal to anyone.”