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Sergei Fedorov was one of the best hockey players in the NHL in his prime, as he helped the Red Wings win three Stanley Cups after making his debut with the team in 1990. However, Detriot had to go to some pretty wild lengths to secure his talents in the first place, as the franchise orchestrated an elaborate plan to successfully help the Hall of Famer defect from the Soviet Union.
Fedorov was born in Russia in 1969 and showed a ton of talent at a young age before landing on the roster of CSKA Moscow as a teenager.
He played alongside Alexander Mogilny before his teammate defected from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1989 to kick off his NHL career (the first hockey player hailing from the U.S.S.R. to do so), and the Red Wings were hoping Fedorov would follow in his footsteps so they could capitalize after securing the rights to sign him in the fourth round of the NHL Draft the same year.
However, that was easier said than done, as the Soviet Union had already seen a number of notable athletes disavow their former state and had plenty of motivation to prevent another name from being added to that list. As a result, the Red Wings had to get a bit creative in order to facilitate the speedy center’s exit.
The Red Wings dreamed up a complex scheme to get Sergei Fedorov to defect from the Soviet Union
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Federov was one of a quintet of players dubbed “The Russian Five” that the Red Wings harnessed to win a trio of championships (Vladimir Konstantinov, Slava Kozlov, Slava Fetisov, and Igor Larionov comprised the rest of the group), and Keith Gave wrote a book chronicling the saga that included a deep dive into how Sergi became the first man swap allegiances.
Gave actually played an instrumental role in orchestrating Federov’s (and Konstantinov’s) defection during a trip to Finland in 1989. The journalist had worked as a Russian linguist for the NSA before taking a job as a sportswriter for the Detroit Free Press, and Red Wings vice president Jim Lites convinced him to pass a message to the two draft picks while they were in Helsinki for an exhibition game.
Federov received a letter stashed in a Red Wings media guy informing him of Detriot’s interest in signing him (which included a monetary figure concerning a potential contract that made it much harder to ignore). They made it clear they would do whatever was necessary to help him defect, and around a year later, the plan the franchise dreamed up was hatched when Sergi arrived in Portland, Oregon to compete in the 1990 Goodwill Games.
Lites had initially linked up with Federov at a hotel in Chicago when the Russian was in The Windy City for an exhibition around Christmas in 1989, and while he showered him with gifts and made it clear he could help him defect at that very moment, the sales pitch wasn’t enough to convince Sergei (who was a few weeks away from completing his enlistment in The Red Army) to jump ship.
However, by the time the summer rolled around, he was ready to do exactly that.
On July 23rd, 1990, Red Wings assistant GM Nick Polano hired a limousine to wait outside of the Portland hotel where Federov and the rest of the Soviet team were staying. Gave already scooped up a hotel key Sergei had covertly dropped in the lobby in order to go up to his room and secure his belongings, and the Russian was instructed to keep an eye out for Lites in the lobby—if he was reading a newspaper, it meant the plan was a go.
After Fedorov saw the signal, the two men headed for the limo via a back door of the hotel, and while Fedorov’s roommate Sergei Tchekmarev intercepted them while they were heading for the car, they were able to avoid arousing further suspicion before linking up with Polano and rushing to the private jet that brought them back to Detroit.
The Soviet Union collapsed around a year and a half later, and Fedorov ended up representing the Russian team while respectively winning a silver and bronze medal at the Winter Olympics in 1998 and 2002.
Those weren’t the only pieces of hardware he picked up during his career, as he won the Hart Memorial Trophy (the NHL’s MVP award) in 1994 and a couple of Selke trophies on top of the trio of Stanley Cups he got to raise during his time with Detroit.