Pre-Olympics coverage: Team Russia

Добро пожаловать and greetings from Moscow, as we await the arrival of Team Russia and its legendary sniper brigade.  Russia's Olympic camp gets started Saturday August 29 (tonite East Coast time), but your humble correspondent is going on holiday at COB Friday so we're posting a bit early.

Did I mention I was going on holiday?  Why yes, yes I did.  This means that you folks will have to keep this post updated as camp goes on.  But where do you go for content?

First things first - unless you are Tuvan Hillbilly, you'll need to make the acquaintance of your search tools and googletranslate.  Most of the real news coming out of Team Russia's camp will be in, well, Russian.  How do you find news in Russian?  You search in Russian, of course! The easiest way is to copy and paste Овечкин into your google search box (Note: Ovie's always a great search term.  Like Team Canada and Crosby, very few articles get written without mentioning him!).  You'll get all the web hits; I prefer to hit the News link instead.  If you have installed the Google toolbar, it will automatically offer to translate the page.  If you don't have Google toolbar, you can copy the URL from the News search page, open a new tab and go to translate.google.com.  Paste the URL in the box, and presto! you have news articles that read as if they were written by some 1960's hack screenwriter pretending to be KGB.

I've grown quite fond of Russian googletranslate.  The team names in particular are awesome:  the Atlanta Tresherz, Nashville Predeytorz, Buffalo Seybrz, Pittsburgh Pingvinz.  Toronto Maple Lifs just makes me giggle. Naturally my favorite is the Washington Kepitelz, where I can actually picture Captain Ramius sailing the Red October right up the Potomac to the steps at the Lincoln Memorial.  And I wasn't quite sure, so I clarified with TH, yes - the English word "puck" does in fact equate to "washer" in Russian.

Now, back to the business of the Russian national men's hockey team and their Olympic camp: 

Russian Hockey Federation news in English

Camp schedule:

29th of August, Saturday

Team meeting

 30th of August, Sunday

11.00-12.00 - Training in hall USK CSKA

16.00 – Press conference of FHR heads and trainer,s staff of Russian National Team, arena "Megasports"

17.30-19.30 – Open ice training, competitions for fans, representation of World Champions Cups 2008 and 2009, arena "Megasports" (free entrance)

31st Of August, Monday

 11.00-12.00 - Training in hall USK CSKA

16.30 - Government decorations presentation to coaches and players of Russian National Team

17.30-19.30- Ice training, master classes for hockey players of DUSH, arena "Megasports"

 1st of September, Tuesday

Check-out of players

Roster of the players attending the camp.

Sergei Gonchar and Fedor Tyutin have excused absences – Sergei’s wife is having a baby and Fedor is getting married.

And finally, a company named "Ingosstrakh" is one of the primary sponsors of the RHF and will be covering the insurance costs so Team Russia can have its on-ice training.

Удачи and best wishes, Team Russia!  We'll be keeping an eye on at least three of you.