Malkin beats adversity, is signed, sealed and delivered
Shelly Anderson | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | September 5, 2006
It took Russian center Evgeni Malkin more than 26 months and some tense moments to get to Pittsburgh from the time the Penguins drafted him second overall in 2004.
It took him about 15 hours to get a sense of what life can be like for an NHL star—off the ice, anyway.
There was his arrival Monday night at Pittsburgh International, where he signed autographs and was met by a handful of reporters. There was dinner that night at Hall of Fame player and team owner Mario Lemieux's house, where Malkin joined, among others, general manager Ray Shero and players Sidney Crosby and Sergei Gonchar for filet mignon, lobster and a tour of a home full of memorabilia and trophies.
There was his first trip to Mellon Arena yesterday morning, with sights along the way pointed out, including the two North Shore stadiums.
There was the signing of his Penguins rookie contract, three years at $984,200 per year plus incentive bonuses that could top $2 million, followed by a news conference with plenty of lights and clicking cameras.
Malkin, 20, who speaks very little English, watched intently as the team played a promotional highlight video of some of his more spectacular goals. He answered several questions through interpreter Olga McQueen, looking at the questioners but showing little emotion. His few smiles came during the photo ops, when he was presented a No. 71 Penguins jersey by Lemieux and when he posed with others.
The difficult journey is over for Malkin. The Penguins and his agents, J.P. Barry and Pat Brisson, remain braced for a legal battle with his Russian team, Magnitogorsk Metallurg, which could contest Malkin playing in the NHL.
"I expect that something will happen in the next month, but based on the information we're receiving, we feel very strongly about the steps that we're taking under Russian law," said Barry, adding that Malkin stands on strong ground because he signed a one-year contract with Metallurg under duress, then submitted proper two-week notice to nullify it.
Malkin's long transition started about a month ago, when Metallurg, his hometown team in the Russian Super League, pressured him into signing a one-year contract in the wee hours of the morning.
"The next day, after I signed the contract, I was very upset and I looked forward to leaving as soon as I could," Malkin said. "That's why I phoned J.P. Barry and asked for help."
Barry met Malkin when the player slipped away from Metallurg at the Helsinki, Finland, airport. The two remained there five days until Malkin could get a visa to travel to the United States.
"The team was training only 10 miles away, and we were only 1 kilometer from the Russian embassy," Barry said. "We needed to get to the American embassy to get the visa, so we were basically going right by the Russian embassy walking down the road. We had to be quiet and subtle about what we were doing."
Some considered Malkin missing, and there were some fears about his safety or that of his parents in Magnitogorsk.
"When I was in Helsinki, I definitely was a bit concerned, but not that much," Malkin said. "I had the feeling, knowing Mr. [Gennady] Velichkin [general director of Metallurg] for so many years, he wouldn't go for any harsh measures."
Once he got the visa, Malkin flew to Los Angeles and trained there with NHL players. He said he was able to reassure his parents and help soothe bitter fans.
"I can understand my fans pretty well," he said. "When I signed the contract with Magnitogorsk, they felt very happy about me staying in Russia and playing with the club. But after what happened, I'm sure they were upset.
"Later on, I got a chance to call a few friends of mine and explain what was going on, that I was happy about my decision and that it was my dream to come here and play with the Pittsburgh Penguins club. I was always open about my desire to come to North America. My friends understood me, and now I keep in touch with them and my family in Russia. I know that everything will calm down."
And Malkin (his first name is yev-GEN-ee with a hard "G") can get on with his career, one that has seen him shine with Metallurg and in international play, including the Olympics in February. He will participate in the team's rookie camp starting Friday. Practices Saturday and Sunday will be open to the public from 10-11:30 a.m. at Mellon Arena. Malkin, 6 feet 3 and 192 pounds, has the size and deceptive speed reminiscent of Lemieux, but he also has a strong physical side to his play.
"With his reach and his size, he's got a lot of talent," said Lemieux, who looked to be a hair taller than the newest Penguin.
Lemieux understands the transition Malkin faces.
"I told him that I didn't speak any English until I came to Pittsburgh," said Lemieux, a native of Montreal who was the first overall draft pick in 1984. "I'm the perfect example that you can make it work. I know it's going to take some time, the first year or so, to get acclimated to a new culture, but I'm sure he'll do fine."
Malkin will live with Gonchar, a Russian-born Penguins defenseman.
Shero hopes that will help Malkin be as comfortable as possible and vowed to do whatever it takes to help him thrive.
"Going through what he did to come over, the commitment and courage he showed, makes us feel very good about him," Shero said.
Karen Price | Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | August 25, 2006
Evgeni Malkin sat back in the lobby of his luxury beachfront hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Saturday.
He couldn't be farther from the life he left behind in dramatic fashion earlier last week, escaping from his Russian team and life in the tiny, Siberian industrial town of Magnitogorsk. He also couldn't be farther from his family, friends and culture.
Two weeks ago, the Russian hockey star and Penguins top prospect was pressured into signing a new contract with his Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the middle of the night. It was a decision that drove him to tears and a decision that, in the hours immediately following, he knew he couldn't live with.
After his team arrived in Finland days later for a tournament, Malkin fled, hid out in an apartment in Helsinki with his agent and an interpreter while awaiting his visa and finally made it to the United States on Wednesday.
Now he waits under sunny California skies to see what legal drama might unfold as a result of his actions. It wasn't what he wanted to do, but it was what he had to do in order to realize his lifelong dream of playing in the NHL.
Yesterday, Malkin told his story to the Tribune-Review through interpreter Olga McQueen, a native Russian who lives in Vancouver and is working for Malkin's agents, Pat Brisson and J.P. Barry.
"Definitely I never expected anything like that to ever happen to me, but life is full of surprises, good and bad, and this is one of those times," Malkin said. "This is life. Sometimes you have to accept things the way they go or try to alter your situation."
When Malkin disappeared from his Russian team on Aug. 12 and immediately went into hiding just days after signing a new contract, people from Moscow to Moose Jaw were stunned.
Why sign a new contract with a team only to leave them days later⢠And why flee the way Russian players had to under the Communist regime when the country is now free and anyone can leave at any time?
The story goes back to last summer when team officials made a verbal promise to Malkin that if he played one more year for them, they would support him leaving for the NHL and the Penguins in 2006.
But those same team officials had other ideas, and after a transfer agreement between the Russian Ice Hockey Federation and the NHL fell through on Aug. 2 of this year, it sparked a series of events that led to Malkin's dramatic escape to the United States.
With an easy transfer no longer a possibility, Malkin's then-agents, Newport Sports, took advantage of a loophole in Russian labor law that allows an employee to give two-weeks' notice and walk away from the job, even if the employee is under contract. But what Malkin didn't know was that, inexplicably, his Russian-based Newport agent had turned his passport over to the team.
When Malkin asked for it back, general director Gennady Velichkin refused to hand it over.
So while Malkin himself wasn't being held hostage, his passport was.
Malkin fired his agents at Newport and went back to Brisson and Barry, who represented him for several years up until June. They barely had time to figure out their next course of action before Malkin and his parents were "invited" to a 9 p.m. meeting with team officials at a lakeside business center outside of Magnitogorsk.
That was on Aug. 6.
Team president Viktor Rashnikov started the meeting and, according to Malkin, expressed "his point of view" and the team's interest in Malkin staying another year. But Malkin and his family said that they would not sign a new contract.
"I still wanted to play in the NHL this season," Malkin said.
Malkin said Rashnikov stood up, thanked everyone and left.
But it wasn't over.
Not even close.
Malkin and his family left the office and went outside where they were joined again by Velichkin and another team official who suggested they follow the Malkins home to continue "negotiations."
"They didn't want to give up," Malkin said. "They hoped very much that the contract would be signed at that point at our house."
By this time, Brisson and Barry, who knew the meeting was taking place, were getting concerned. They'd called the Malkin home at 11 p.m. and Malkin's brother informed them that his family wasn't home yet.
Later, McQueen, who was already working with Barry and Brisson, called the house and got Malkin's mother, Natalia, on the phone. She whispered that she could not talk, and told them that Magnitogorsk officials were there in the home, talking to Malkin.
Malkin's Russian advisor and ally of Brisson and Barry, Gennady Ushakov, was also there, but there was not much he could do to help. McQueen relayed to Natalia Malkin that her son had the legal right to get up and leave at any time. But although Malkin said he was never in physical danger, Velichkin was nonetheless pressuring the 20-year-old, preying on his feelings of loyalty to the only team he'd ever known, the town he grew up in and his country.
This continued from midnight until 2:30 a.m., Malkin said, until finally he couldn't stand it anymore and gave in. He signed a one-year deal to stay in Russia even though his only wish was to go to the NHL and play for the Penguins.
He went to his bedroom in tears.
The escape
Malkin felt betrayed. The team had nurtured him throughout his career and had always been there for him, but when he knew it was his time to be in the NHL, he realized they were concerned only with their own interests.
"After I had the contract signed, I felt so upset and I felt deceived by Velichkin," Malkin said. "I felt something had to be done about that, so I phoned J.P. the next day and asked him to help me to leave. I was so determined."
Magnitogorsk was scheduled to play a game in Moscow and then travel to Helsinki for a tournament. His team believed he was staying, and Malkin had to get his passport back in order to leave Russia. So Barry and McQueen planned to meet him in Helsinki, and when Malkin hit Finnish land, he snuck away from the team in the airport, met Barry and McQueen and the three went into hiding in a Helsinki apartment waiting for the U.S. Consulate to re-open so Malkin could get his visa.
He knew it was his only option.
"I was not frightened," Malkin said. "I was calm."
The whole time, Malkin was just blocks from his Russian team, and for that reason his agents hired security guards to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
At no time was Malkin in fear of any physical harm, he said. But he was worried about his family.
"I was very much concerned about my family because I expected Mr. Velichkin to start making phone calls and be not quite polite with my family," he said. "I was also worried that lawyers would start calling and contacting my family trying to get them to sign any kind of documents. Which has already happened. They received calls and were asked to sign papers."
But he knew it was his only choice.
Settling in
Malkin got his visa Wednesday and late that night he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. Since then he's skated with a few current NHL players including defenseman Rob Blake and forward Anson Carter, dined on steak, found a favorite breakfast haunt in Venice and spent a lot of time swimming in the hotel pool under the warm California sunshine.
"I'm glad that I'm here," Malkin said. "I wish things could have been done in a different way, amicably. It's been a very difficult decision for me to make. But I knew that I had to do that. I do recall that Velichkin said if I leave that there can be a huge, huge scandal, which obviously has happened. But I do know that now that I am in the right place for myself.
"It was the only way, unfortunately."
Malkin's ordeal may not yet be over.
He will remain in Santa Monica with Brisson and McQueen at least through Aug. 28, two weeks after he again gave written notice that he was leaving the team. Velichkin has claimed that the faxed notification is partly illegible and has threatened to sue. While no lawsuits are currently pending, Brisson said that their legal team is forming its own plan right now.
The Penguins' top pick in 2004 (2nd overall) also still has to sign a contract with the team, although at this point that is considered to be a technicality.
But he's a lot closer to being in the lineup on Oct. 5 when the Penguins open the 2006-07 season against the Philadelphia Flyers than he was two weeks ago. And as much as the Penguins and their fans want to see that happen, Malkin probably wants it 10 times as much.
Otherwise he wouldn't have gone through all he did the past few weeks and then brush aside the suggestion that what he did required courage or bravery.
"I believe that anyone who would have such a dream to play in the NHL for a long time would probably have made the same step as I had to do," he said, "to follow the dream."
The Malkin file
Who: Evgeni Malkin
Born: July 31, 1986, Magnitogorsk, Russia
Position: Center
Height: 6-3
Weight: 186
Drafted: 2nd overall, 2004
Shoots: Left
He spent 119-day NHL lockout playing hockey with his hometown Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the Kontinental Hockey League. Childhood friends attended every Metallurg home game, after which Malkin always devoured borscht at his parents' house.
“My mom came to every (home) game,” Malkin said Tuesday after the Penguins' final full practice of an abbreviated training camp.
The Russian road was rougher.
Some of Metallurg's closest opponents played in cities five hours away by plane. Often, Malkin was greeted at the team hotel by a horde of fans wanting autographs — and they also showed up at restaurants.
Games provided solace, especially because his two great NHL friends, Sergei Gonchar (Ottawa) and Nikolai Kulemin, were Metallurg teammates. However, his standing as the world's finest hockey player made Malkin a constant postgame target of traveling Magnitogorsk reporters and the local media in every city that welcomed Metallurg.
“I understand now how hard it is for Sid,” Malkin said, referring to Penguins teammate Sidney Crosby. “He does such a great job. It is hard. I get it.”
Malkin was the face of Metallurg and the KHL, as Crosby is the Penguins and the NHL.
Admittedly, Malkin “started slow” with Metallurg, but he was second in KHL scoring when the NHL lockout tentatively ended Jan. 6. He finished that season with 23 goals and 65 points in 37 games.
Over the last 12 months, playing in the NHL and KHL — widely regarded as the planet's two finest leagues — Malkin has scored 55 goals and recorded 133 points in 75 games.
During the lockout, Crosby described the level at which Malkin has played as “awesome.”
“Geno, really, can do whatever he wants when he's playing his game,” Crosby said. “What he did last season was pretty incredible when you think about it.”
For the uninitiated, or anybody who may have simply put Malkin out of mind when he was out of sight and out of the country, a recap of his last NHL season:
He missed seven of the Penguins' first 11 games, his surgically repaired right knee having flared up in the second game at Calgary. By the date of Crosby's heralded return from concussion symptoms Nov. 21, Malkin had produced five goals and 14 points in 13 games.
He finished with 50 goals, a career best, and 109 points in 75 games — or 45 goals and 95 points over his final 62 contests, a 1.53 per-game average during that span.
“And he did that after tearing two ligaments (anterior and medial collateral),” Penguins defenseman Brooks Orpik said about Malkin's injury in February 2011.
“People act like what (Minnesota Vikings running back) Adrian Peterson did after his knee injury was amazing. They don't realize Geno did the same thing, and basically wasn't right for the first two months last season.”
Malkin no longer wears protective gear on the right knee. He again welcomed Penguins strength and conditioning coach Mike Kadar to Moscow over the summer to oversee offseason training.
Malkin lives in Moscow because he can easily get lost in Russia's capital, which is home to about 11.5 million. Magnitogorsk, where his parents and brother, Denis, still live, is a city of about 407,000.
“He never wants to be the biggest man in town,” said Gonchar, who shares a floor of an apartment complex with Malkin in Moscow.
Malkin felt like the biggest man in every KHL town Metallurg visited, save for Moscow.
He was not just a two-time NHL scoring champion, the reigning MVP, or a winner of the Stanley Cup. He is a fiercely proud Russian who led the national team to a 2012 World Championships win, leading the tournament in scoring.
“He's like a hero there,” Kulemin said of Malkin in Russia.
Malkin has nearly reached that status in Pittsburgh, the only city other than Magnitogorsk he has called home. Both cities are known for being the steel capitals of their respective countries. The people of each are proudly provincial, and they treat their brightest hockey stars as civic institutions.
That is not an honor made for Malkin, who Gonchar described as “smart, funny, big-hearted, but also very private.”
“Evgeni would like to play hockey, and he can be the best hockey player,” Gonchar said. “But maybe he would like best to do it out of the spotlight.”
Malkin, though, can no longer stand in the shadows — and not because he is 11th all-time in NHL history with 1.23 points per game, the high for any Russian.
Malkin will turn 27 on July 31.
By then, he likely will have either signed one of the richest contracts in Pittsburgh sports history or be uncomfortably heading down a path toward becoming the most coveted free agent in hockey.
The Penguins, because of the new NHL labor contract, can offer Malkin a maximum eight-year extension that could total about $102.9 million. General manager Ray Shero has been directed by ownership to keep Malkin with the Penguins through the duration of his career.
The thought of that possibility — playing alongside Crosby and annually chasing the Stanley Cup — drew a wide smile from Malkin on Tuesday.
A pause quickly followed.
“We'll see,” he said. “(I) can't say what will happen. I want to play in (the) NHL. Two years left on (my) contract, but I want to play in (the) NHL.”
Malkin stressed that by in the NHL, he specifically meant “with Pittsburgh.”
Still, there is the dangling carrot of a tax-free, whopping-cash contract in the KHL.
“(I will) not talk about it,” Malkin said of his future. “I play for Pittsburgh for two more years. Of course, I hope more. Many more.”
Dave Molinari | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | April 17, 2006
Twenty-nine NHL teams have to be pleased that Russian hockey officials appear to moving -- albeit at a glacial pace -- toward eventually signing off on a deal that would reopen the talent pipeline from that country to North America.
And one—the Penguins—should be downright ecstatic about it.
Mostly because Pat Brisson, managing director of IMG Hockey, which represents highly regarded prospect Evgeni Malkin, believes that's the team's only realistic hope of having him play here next season.
"It's very clear that the [International Ice Hockey Federation] and Russian federation will have to have a deal in place in order to have Evgeni come to Pittsburgh," he said.
Brisson said his opinion is rooted in information he has received recently from Dmitri Goryachkin, who heads IMG's operation in Russia and was working with Malkin long before the Penguins claimed him with the No. 2 choice in the 2004 entry draft.
Russia is the only major hockey-playing nation in Europe that is not a signatory to the transfer agreement negotiated by the NHL and the IIHF last year. That deal establishes the $200,000 fee NHL clubs pay for each player they bring across the Atlantic.
The Russians balked at participating in the transfer agreement because they believe the fee is too low.
There had been reason to believe that would not be an issue with Malkin, because word began to circulate last summer that he had a handshake deal with the owner of his Russian Super League team, Metallurg Magnitogorsk, that would allow him to join the Penguins this fall, even though he has two years remaining on his contract there.
Brisson, however, said he has no evidence of any such deal.
"As far as getting out of there without a transfer agreement, I wouldn't know how to express it at this point," he said.
Brisson added that there are "15 or 20 players stuck in the same situation" as Malkin.
Under the collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the league and the NHL Players Association last summer, the Penguins can retain Malkin's rights until June 1, 2008. At that point, the CBA says he would become an unrestricted free agent, although his status could change because of Russia's refusal to accept the transfer agreement.
Repeated attempts to get the NHL perspective on transfer agreement talks with the Russians were unsuccessful — "They're keeping those negotiations close to the vest," Brisson said — but others with a stake in the issue are upbeat about something being worked out.
One is Anatoly Bardin, head of the union that represents players in Russia. In an interview with a Russian publication, Sport-Express, that was translated and posted on the Russian Hockey Digest Web site, Bardin offered an optimistic take on finalizing a transfer agreement when discussing a recent meeting with NHL Players' Association head Ted Saskin.
"The main question is an agreement between Russia and NHL, which, I'm sure, will be signed by fall and will be favorable for both parties," Bardin said.
While questions remain about when—if not whether—the Penguins will be able to graft Malkin onto their lineup, there are few about how valuable he will be to them once he arrives.
Although he is only 19, Malkin (6 feet 3, 186 pounds) was the No. 3 scorer in the Super League during the regular season, with 21 goals and 26 assists in 46 games. He followed that by putting up 15 points in 11 playoff games after an impressive performance at the Turin Olympics.
"He has to adjust to the NHL and fit into the style, but he has so much talent I believe he'll fit right in," said Penguins defenseman Sergei Gonchar, who played with Malkin in Magnitogorsk last season and was his teammate at the Olympics.
"If you look at Sid [Crosby] and [Washington's Alexander] Ovechkin, they did a good job this year, and [Malkin] is that kind of player. He's right up there, talent-wise. I'm sure he's going to be fine."
Malkin has a limited command of English, so having Russian-speaking players such as Gonchar around will be critical to getting him acclimated, on and off the ice.
"I'll try to help him, explain as much as I can the way the game is played [in the NHL]," Gonchar said. "He's a very talented guy, so I'm sure the on-the-ice adjustment isn't going to be as big for him. But off the ice, it's not easy. I might offer him to stay in my house, if he'd like to. I'll be there for him."
And the Penguins, to be sure, can't wait until Malkin is there for them.
Evgeni Malkin: A Russian tale with roots founded in ice and iron
J. Brady McCollough | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette | February 8, 2014
Up here, at the top of Magnetic Mountain, the past is alive. On the edge of the river where west becomes east and Europe finally yields to Asia, the factory's smokestacks stretch as far as the eye can see, and the horizon is forever blurred by the pall and plume of gunmetal gray.
Up here, Magnitogorsk is what you expected it to be. Frozen. Forlorn. Forbidding. A town built by the vision of a cruel, calculating man. More than eight decades after Joseph Stalin demanded a city be settled around the natural gifts hidden inside this mountain, Magnitogorsk still spits out more steel than most other places on the planet.
Up here, you get chills, from the sub-zero temperatures, and from just thinking about what was sacrificed. People born here didn't get to have dreams, to imagine beyond the Ural Mountains. Their lives were constrained by ideology, the needs of the state dwarfing their own.
Yes, if you stayed up here, it would remain very, very cold. But there is warmth to be found in Magnitogorsk. Come down from the mountain, and you'll start to feel it as you pass over the ice-covered Ural River, toward the European side, where the people live.
When you glimpse the small two-room apartment where Vladimir and Natalia Malkin raised their two boys, and the humble slab of ice on an adjacent street where the father taught his sons to play a simple game after he came home from the factory, you can sense a certain resolve.
As Denis and Evgeni grew up, the old walls began to tumble. It was perfect timing, their family's steely spirit intermingling with sweet, sweet opportunity. They say Evgeni, the younger brother by a year, was born hungry for success. He could do anything he wanted! Of course, all the boy really wanted was a puppy.
Now make the trip just a few kilometers north on Karl Marx Street, to the large brick house where Vladimir and Natalia live today. Here is Vladimir, running around the cul-de-sac outside the home his son gave to him, smiling and laughing. Here is Geoffrey, the 120-pound slobbering, growling French Mastiff, stuffing his face into the snow and dragging Vladimir by the leash.
If that dog could talk, he would tell quite a story. Of Evgeni buying Geoffrey, taking the 10-pound puppy home, and then leaving Geoffrey forever a few weeks later. Nobody, not even his parents, knew it was coming, this escape that was straight out of a Tom Clancy novel. All of a sudden, Evgeni was just gone, in the middle of the night, leaving his city and the coaches who cultivated his brilliance with broken hearts.
He would be a Pittsburgh Penguin. His talent would be the world's to cherish. Would he still be Magnitogorsk's, too?
Today, Evgeni Malkin is a Stanley Cup champion and one of the best hockey players in the world. He returns home about once a year, usually for five or six days.
And when he arrives at the house he bought for his parents as a teenager, he can't help but notice: His full-grown puppy has no idea who he is.
A steel connection
He was 25, with a job at the Magnitogorsk Steel and Iron Works like most young men in town. She was 22, with a round face and big brown eyes that set her apart.
Vladimir and Natalia would be introduced to each other by a mutual friend at a party. Years later, after they had fallen in love and she had taken his name, they would give their friend the credit. But, fact was, Vladimir and Natalia Malkin never would have met if not for the lure of the mountain.
Rising almost out of nowhere, it towered over the surrounding snow-white plains, its plentiful iron ore dictating the way of life for a strong-minded people. Its pull would only intensify, generation by generation, until it could not be escaped. Powerful and ambitious men from the cities to the west would succumb to it, calling for hordes of workers to mine the metallurgical marvel, fueling their wars and seemingly limitless future with bright orange fires.
Inside and outside their new society, still humming with the fervor of an October Revolution, the people listened, and soon, their town would be given a name befitting its lone significant property: "City of the Magnetic Mountain," or, Magnitogorsk.
Natalia's grandparents were among the first to hear Stalin's bell, in 1929, traveling the nearly 2,000 kilometers from their home in Belgorod, near the border of Ukraine, to this untamed river town. Like the thousands of others who uprooted from around the world to Magnitogorsk, they were sold a story of a Bolshevik utopia being built so far away that non-Socialist regimes could not find it, let alone topple it.
There, as the Communist Party pushed for the necessary industrialization to protect it during the wars that would inevitably come, people would have steady work and equal pay, no matter your surname or where home was. Only, the technology was all new, lifted from proven American industrial behemoths, and delivered without proper training to a workforce that knew only agricultural work.
A Soviet delegation traveled to the United States, to cities such as Pittsburgh and Chicago and Gary, where the American engineers scoffed when the Soviets said they wanted to build a plant and start making steel in a few years. Then, nobody could have understood Stalin's obsession, the things he'd do at any cost to get his results.
Within three years of starting Magnitogorsk from scratch, without railroad lines, apartments or a sewage system, the plant was producing pig iron. Within one more year, steel would follow.
John Scott, a freshly graduated American student from Wisconsin, became enamored with the Bolshevik cause and moved to Magnitogorsk to work in the factory and write a book about it. Upon arriving in 1932, he was met with a paradoxical and fantastical scene, where people lived in tents and barracks -- the unlucky ones froze or starved to death -- yet still managed to breathe unwavering enthusiasm into a movement that wasn't at all theirs.
In his book "Behind the Urals," Scott wrote of an unskilled workforce that was up at 6 in the morning, learning on the job for 16 hours a day the processes that had been refined for decades in developed countries. And after the Russians held off the Germans in the Second World War, Scott, then back in America, would tell all who would listen that the Soviets couldn't have done it without the metal -- and mettle -- of Magnitogorsk.
The people were proud there. Growing up, Natalia did not ask her grandparents about what it was like in those early days. She just sort of knew they didn't want to talk about it. Her parents would work there, too, and that's just how it was.
"We had no alternative," Natalia says. "We could not travel abroad in other countries, Europe. But then no one really thought about it. It was absolutely fine. You were born in a particular city, studied and began working at the company in the city."
In the early 1960s, Vladimir Malkin's parents journeyed the 1,200 kilometers from the Penza region of the Soviet Union to Magnitogorsk, joining family in working at the factory. As his father toiled as a driver of heavy vehicles, Vladimir went to school and learned to play hockey.
The Metallurg Magnitogorsk hockey team had begun in the 1950s, but it was just a club program. The Soviets outlawed professional sports, seeing them as emblematic of the greed that plagued the West. Metallurg did not have its own arena. For a boy, there was no life in hockey, no matter how much of a desire he had.
Vladimir showed skill with the Metallurg youth teams. But at 18, he spent his mandatory two years with the Soviet Army in a peaceful period. When he returned to Magnitogorsk, he found that he was not the same player as before, and he entered the factory repairing equipment in the oxygen plant.
"It's hard work," Vladimir recalls, "a lot of monotonous noise."
But it would provide enough income to raise a family. History had shown that very well. And so, not long after he first saw Natalia at that party, Vladimir found her address and convinced her to go on a date with him.
'Star fever'
On the clearest days, when blue skies backed the persistent gray, young Evgeni Malkin could look on that mountain from the river's west bank and feel a deep yearning in his gut as he walked to ice hockey school.
That mountain had given his family everything. There wasn't much, no, but there was a life. Three generations of his blood had sweated in that factory. The town's story was his story. And here was the thing -- yes, his father's days were long, but the man didn't complain.
"We have four people in our family, and just my father working," Evgeni recalls of those days. "And he needed more money. It's not easy. You have to care for your family and work hard every day because you have two kids, and kids want ice cream and candy."
What Vladimir could give them was a deep knowledge of the game he had mastered as a younger man. He first put ice skates on Evgeni when the boy was 3. Evgeni would begin attending the Metallurg Magnitogorsk hockey school around 5.
Vladimir understood what Evgeni couldn't: The Russian existence, with the fall of the Soviet Union, was making a slow and methodical transition. When Vladimir was a young player, Magnitogorsk did not have a proper arena. But in 1991, the Ivan Romazan Ice Palace opened just a few city blocks from the Malkins' 10-story apartment building.
Romazan was the president of the Magnitogorsk Steel and Iron Works, and he had shown great cunning in getting a sports arena commissioned during the Soviet era. Then, in 1993, future plant president Viktor Rashnikov began pumping major investment into the Metallurg franchise, including more resources devoted to the hockey school.
Rashnikov knew more than most about production of raw materials, and into this new appreciation for human development stepped Evgeni and his friends. He was an active boy, so getting up at 6 in the morning just like all of those plant workers was fine with him. He and about 60 others could play hockey in an arena before and after elementary school. What could be bad about that?
There, the coaches would challenge this fresh crop of youngsters by reminding them in a not-too-subtle way that, if they did not excel at hockey, they would end up working across the river in that factory, which now spanned 20,000 acres around the mountain.
Evgeni didn't have to be encouraged. He had always been captivated by hockey. When he was a toddler, Natalia once visited his bed and saw him sleeping in a goalie mask. At 11, he broke his leg during the summer and was on crutches. Vladimir assumed that meant Evgeni would not play in the first hockey tournaments of the fall, and he was shocked when a friend asked him why he wasn't at the game that day to see Evgeni play.
"The coach tried to stop Evgeni," Vladimir says, "but it was impossible."
The game brought joy to Evgeni, but it did not solve everything. His parents still would not let him get a dog.
"He asked very often," Natalia says, "even wrote a school essay that said 'My mother does not allow me to get a dog.' "
Evgeni would just have to keep working. He had immediately shown how gifted he was with the puck on his stick, and he was placed on his brother's team with boys a year older.
Evgeni was unafraid to stand in front of the net against bigger kids, taking hit after hit. He cared so much he would cry after losses. And before long, he'd be named captain of the older group.
"I'm like, 'Wow,' it's a surprise to me," Evgeni recalls after a recent Penguins practice in Pittsburgh. "The coach said, 'No, you are the best player on the ice. You should be captain, because you work hard. These guys, they're bigger and they're older, but they want to follow you.' "
They followed him to American cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and Albany, where the Metallurg Magnitogorsk youth team, backed by Rashnikov's money, brought home championships. And there came a time in all of the boys' lives, usually around 16 or 17, when they had to decide if they wanted to keep pushing to make the pro team or go to a technical school or university so they could get a job in the town's fast-modernizing factory.
For Ivan Semochkin, one of Evgeni's teammates, the right decision was to end his hockey career. He went to school to study the enrichment of minerals. But it was clear to him, and to everyone else, where Evgeni was headed.
"If you look at Malkin," Semochkin says, "you see that he will definitely be a professional hockey player."
Evgeni had joined Metallurg's B-team, where players could get stuck for years before making the jump to the pros or deciding to give up their pursuit. Evgeni was only there for a few months before he signed his first pro contract, at age 17, to play for Metallurg during the 2003-04 season.
On the ice, the club worked him into their lineup gradually. They did not want to rush him. But in the small apartment on Karl Marx Street, Evgeni's mind remained active.
He wanted to buy his family a new home, one in a nicer neighborhood, where they wouldn't have to share their walls with others any longer. His parents suggested they just expand the apartment. Evgeni would not hear it. They all went to look at homes together, and it was intoxicating, simply having so many options.
"Maybe Evgeni had some 'star fever,' " Vladimir says. "Evgeni was on the rise. He felt that he could now help our family. It was very important to him."
Says Metallurg general manager Gennady Velichkin, "He walked light. It was his greatest achievement. First victory. Real happiness."
So Evgeni Malkin moved his parents and his brother into their own house, tucked away in an older part of town behind tall brown brick walls, where their neighbors were higher in the factory pecking order. But he was not exactly happy.
He did not relax in the house with the marble staircase and the mirrors lining the long first-floor hallway, not for a second, for there was still much to explore and pursue in this ever-evolving country of his.
Escape from Helsinki
Evgeni Malkin did not feel like a star. Sure, the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL had drafted him second overall in the 2004 amateur draft, so people knew his name. But during his first three seasons with Metallurg Magnitogorsk, he had not even scored 100 total points.
He was ready to make a move. He had never been patient. Now American agent J.P. Barry was in his ear, saying that the 2006-07 season was the time for him to seize his destiny across the Atlantic Ocean.
"Malkin was hungry," says Andrei Zaitsev, a Magnitogorsk restaurateur and club owner who befriended Evgeni around that time. "He wanted to change everything. There are people who are 'fed' in the sports world, and they cease to play. Malkin was hungry."
Of course, when it came time to actually make his decision official, it was not that simple. The Malkins had been under the impression that Evgeni could get out of his contract after the 2005-06 season to join the Penguins. In June 2006, he sent a fax to Velichkin with notice that he was exercising his right under Russian labor law to terminate his contract with two weeks' notice.
Velichkin said he had given the Malkins no such assurances, and he could sense that this precious gem of a hockey player, produced right there in Magnitogorsk with the help of Rashnikov's immense investment, was slipping away before they even had gotten to taste the fruits of their labor.
Velichkin and Rashnikov, who had added team president to his role as chairman of the board of the factory, talked it over. They would offer Evgeni a one-year contract worth a reported $3.45 million, which would be the highest in the Russian Super League for that season and more than he would make for the Penguins, to unleash him as a star for Metallurg. And after that magical year in Magnitogorsk, they would celebrate his departure to the NHL with a ceremony for the team's fans.
This, they felt, was a fair deal -- the only way Evgeni's time with Metallurg could end.
"We wished to show our fans that diamond that we have created," Velichkin says. "What is it to grow a player? It is easy to grow one tennis player. You need to provide one athlete nutrition and gear, have one coach and have a field to play.
"To grow one good player in hockey, you have to be training 25 people on the team. You need to go on trips and play games with other teams. You must give them the equipment, which is deteriorating rapidly, feed them and keep the coaching staff. Parents for hockey school almost do not pay. The basic costs are borne by the hockey club and help from the plant. It's a very, very, very hard and long job.
"There is a total of 500 people in one year in the same school. All of this in order to make several top-tier players."
For weeks, Evgeni met almost daily with Velichkin and Velichkin's assistant. Natalia was also in frequent contact with Velichkin, who was trying to woo the parents as much as the son. On Aug. 6, with Evgeni stubbornly withholding his signature, Metallurg brought in the heavy artillery. A meeting was set at Rashnikov's office, and, at first, one of the most powerful men in Russia could not sway him. But, as the conversations changed locations to the Malkins' home and continued into the next day, Evgeni became worn down by the pressure. To Velichkin, the young man seemed confused.
Evgeni and his hometown had reached a tipping point. It was with their training that he became a master of this game, but now the globe was opening up to him. What was he supposed to want? To be the best for the city that made him? Or to simply be the best?
"It was big stress," Evgeni recalls. "I understand the general manager was doing his job. He wants me to stay in my hometown. But maybe he did too much. He came to my house, he talked to my parents. It was a little bit much."
Evgeni couldn't have understood why he meant so much to Metallurg. Early in the morning of Aug. 7, he signed the contract, but there was no sense of relief, only the feeling that control of his future had been stripped from able hands. Weren't those days supposed be over?
"On this night," Evgeni texted Velichkin's assistant, "you killed my dream."
Days later, he flew to Helsinki, Finland, for the team's preseason camp, seemingly ready to give one final season to the people of Magnitogorsk.
But Evgeni and Barry, his agent, had hatched a new plan, spawning a series of events befitting a Cold War fantasy. When Evgeni landed in Helsinki, Barry was there waiting for him at customs. They snuck away and hid out for a few days in an apartment, until Evgeni could go to the U.S. embassy and apply for a visa. When Evgeni and Barry made their escape to Los Angeles, Velichkin was enraged.
"This is pure sports terrorism," he said then.
The hurt was profound. This was what Magnitogorsk got for all of its time and energy, for its willingness to let its best player leave for foreign fame and riches the next season? Metallurg would sue the Penguins and the NHL, making the point that the Pittsburgh club had not invested anything in Evgeni yet somehow got the finished product free of charge. Velichkin wanted some compensation, anything to ease the pain. But there would be no monetary salve for this wound.
Back in Magnitogorsk, Vladimir and Natalia Malkin were as surprised as everybody else by Evgeni's bold departure. They knew nothing of it, and now they were left with their younger son's parting gifts: a sparkling new house and a rambunctious puppy named Geoffrey who, truth be told, they never even wanted.
A joyful reunion
Magnitogorsk does not stop moving forward, the key strand of its industrial DNA. Since Evgeni Malkin left this place eight years ago, Metallurg has won a Kontinental Hockey League championship and christened a new arena, while the factory proudly claims that a bachelor's degree is now mandatory to be considered for employment. Thousands of jobs exist here with responsibilities that couldn't have even been conjured a decade ago.
Evgeni does not stop either. He wants more Stanley Cups, and an Olympic gold medal, which he'll heartily pursue on home soil during the next two weeks in the Sochi Winter Games. In Pittsburgh, where he is known affectionately as "Geno," he has made a life for himself. When Vladimir and Natalia visit, they are treated like celebrities and cheered when their smiling faces flash on the big screen, and two worlds can be merged with the help of Natalia's borscht.
Evgeni and Magnitogorsk made up quickly. It's hard to stay mad at someone you love. After his dominant first season in the NHL, Velichkin met him at the airport when he returned to Magnitogorsk. They hugged, attempting to put any bitterness behind them.
And two years later, Evgeni would come home that summer with the ultimate gift. He decided to spend his one day with the Stanley Cup in Magnitogorsk. That night, Zaitsev, his friend, threw Evgeni a party at his nightclub that was attended by more than 700 people.
"He joked, 'I'm surprised that I have so many friends in Magnitogorsk. When I left, there were less,' " Zaitsev says.
Evgeni may have bought an apartment in Moscow, where he spends the bulk of his offseason, but when the threat of a NHL lockout loomed in 2012, he never considered playing anywhere in Russia other than Magnitogorsk.
For 37 games, he terrorized the KHL, scoring 23 goals with 42 assists, entertaining sellout crowds every night while showing the strength of Magnitogorsk manufacturing. Thanks to the NHL's labor foibles, Metallurg finally got back some royalties from its hit single.
"It was a joy not only to Magnitogorsk," Velichkin says. "It was a joy for all of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Czech Republic. Because every game had a full stadium. After the game, there was always a huge amount of fans waiting for Malkin, wanting pictures, autographs. Sometimes, we even had to hide Malkin, look for another entrance to the stadium."
Evgeni lived at home, with his parents and brother, and, of course, Geoffrey, who got a chance to bond with his original owner.
"When he was small I loved him so much," Evgeni says. "Now he's big, and when I'm back, he forgets me and starts to jump on me. I'm a little bit scared."
Evgeni's presence has grown, too. He left for Pittsburgh a boy, Velichkin says, and has come back a man. Along the way, hockey lovers everywhere got to learn of Magnitogorsk.
"I'm a lucky guy," Evgeni says.
But how does he show his appreciation? Ivan Semochkin, his former youth teammate, can tell you more than most.
In November, Semochkin's wife, Larisa, was diagnosed with blood cancer. She went to Germany for tests, and to have the treatments she needed would cost 150,000 euros (about $205,000). Ivan went to work in Magnitogorsk, putting out feelers all over town. The team and the factory were willing to help, but time was running out, and the Semochkins still needed $1 million rubles (about $30,000).
Semochkin had heard that Evgeni was very generous with people back home. He had not spoken to Evgeni in nearly a decade, but he did not know where else to turn. He got Evgeni's cell phone number and texted him the story. With two days remaining before Larisa would have to return to Russia without having the surgery she needed, putting her life in danger, Ivan got a text message from Evgeni.
"Check bank account," it said
The money was all there.
"Fiction," Ivan says, shaking his head months later, with a wife in remission and a happy 1-year-old daughter, Lubov, climbing all over him.
"For me," Larisa says, "this story is like a fairy tale."
Because of stories like this, the people here now understand that, sometimes, a native son has to be set free. It's the hopeful lesson of today's Magnitogorsk, embodied in the pioneering steps of a boy named Malkin, who like them was raised in the shadow of the mountain.
