Larionov has a special place in hockey history

In 1984, when Team Canada faced the Soviet Union in the Canada Cup semifinal, Wayne Gretzky and his Canadian teammates felt secure in the knowledge that they could shout instructions to each other without the Soviets understanding them.

This was, after all, the era of the Iron Curtain and the KGB. The Soviet players were basically prisoners within a system, their movements monitored and their activities ordained by their coach for 11 months of the year. They were always under KGB guard when they were allowed out of the Soviet Union, which wasn't very often.