Home, Sweet Home

As the first notes rumbled over the public address system last Friday night, Sergei Fedorov pivoted to his left and fixed his gaze at the white, blue and red flag hanging from the rafters of Sokolniki Arena in Moscow. In 1990, at the Goodwill Games in Seattle, Fedorov had heard vastly different notes, the siren song of freedom or wealth or whatever it is that makes a man follow the tune in his head and defect. But now he was on Russian ice, staring at the Russian flag, listening to the Russian national anthem. Impossible.

"When they played the anthem, I seized up," Fedorov said later that night. "I'm thinking, Gee, after everything that's happened, now they're playing the song for us. It made it extra special. This was history."

Sometimes history is made by great men and their revolutions. Sometimes history stems from something as small and slapdash as the Superseries, the boastful name of the five-game homecoming tour of Russia by a group of former Soviet players who opted for a better life in the NHL. The series—the brainchild of free-agent Slava Fetisov, late of the New Jersey Devils—is based on a rollicking mix of persistence, confusion and good intentions, with its proceeds promised to Russian youth hockey. For Russia, with love.

Certainly of all the make-work projects for NHL players during the owners' lockout—including matches against Canadian junior teams, a round-robin tournament in Hamilton, Ont., scheduled for this weekend and a proposed Wayne Gretzky-led European tour—the Super-series is the most profound.

The Superseries harkens back to the days of the Big Red Machine, before it was stripped and sold for parts. For last Friday's opening face-off against Spartak of the Interstate League, the Stars of Russia sent out what was once the Soviet Union's Big Five: Fetisov and his defense partner Alexei Kasatonov, and the K-L-M line of Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov and Sergei Makarov, who in the 1980s were considered Russia's most artistic trio since Chekhov's three sisters. The stumpy 34-year-old Krutov, who now resembles a second-line winger in a beer league, was summoned from his Swedish pro team to complete the portrait of a group near or at the end of its hockey-playing days. "The last time we played together was the 1989 world championships," said the 33-year-old Larionov, who is now Makarov's linemate on the San Jose Sharks. "There have been a lot of reunions lately—the Rolling Stones, the Eagles. But we're not Mick Jagger. We won't be playing when we're 50. This could be the last chance."

But the K-L-M guys weren't the returning heroes. The 4,700 fans who packed Sokolniki were there to see another line: center Fedorov with wings Pavel Bure and Alexander Mogilny, who were three promising youngsters with the Central Red Army team (CSKA) when they bolted separately. Mogilny, then 20, defected first, leaving after the 1989 world junior championships in Stockholm to join the Buffalo Sabres. He wasn't merely a sports star who took a hike but a Red Army officer who went AWOL. A military court convicted Mogilny, in absentia, of treason. Fedorov skipped in Seattle a year later, to the Detroit Red Wings. Then in '91, the 20-year-old Bure left to join the Vancouver Canucks.

Considering that Bure signed a six-year, $25 million contract in June, after two 60-goal seasons, he has done O.K. In fact, all the boys have fared well, with Mogilny, who had a 76-goal season in 1992-93, getting a four-year, $10.8 million contract last November and Fedorov signing a four-year, $11.7 million deal during last season, when he was the NHL's Most Valuable Player and its best defensive forward. "We were never stars in Russia," Fedorov said. "We were young guys and, yes, bad guys. This series was important to show our fans what we have done in North America."

On Nov. 2, during the last leg of their flight from New York to Helsinki to Moscow, Mogilny and Fedorov sat together, their legs literally shaking. Said Fedorov, "I wasn't sure how our comrades with guns would greet us at Sheremetyevo [airport]. I didn't know what would be waiting for us."

The answer: a limousine.

On the 40-minute ride into Moscow, they were modern-day Rip Van Winkles. It was as if they had gone to sleep in the Soviet Union and four, five, six years later awakened in a new Russia. There were fancy hotels and foreign cars, but there was also the pulsating spirit of a city on the make. The schism between the rich and the poor was much greater, and a whiff of anarchy rode the first snow flurries of a Moscow winter. "Now everyone looks to see how people are living and what's new," Fedorov said. "We look at faces."