There are a lot of fantastic players from the city of Yaroslavl. You can see the whole list for yourself if you click on the link: http://www.eliteprospects.com/birthplace.php?birthplace=Yaroslavl,%20RUS
A long list of players that could cause envy among the hockey clubs around the world. It’s impressive indeed if you ask me.
Well, as you may understand when you have checked out the whole list of stars, the city of Yaroslavl is known for raising great players to the hockey world and to our joy as hockey fans.
It’s a diamond mine of hockey players if you ask me.
However, despite all current and upcoming star players, there is one that separates from them all and he’ll do so for a long, long time, a player who is at his own level: the ever shining and sharp Sergei Mozyakin.
It feels a bit unbelievable to have seen him passing Boris Michailov’s goal scoring record, a record that was supposed to be impossible, but was obviously not that unmanageable for Mozyakin.
Michailov is a legend of Soviet hockey as his name still awakens admiration among the hockey people, but to be fair to his person and to you my reader, I have never seen him play live, only through clips and photos, and not too many either.
But I can tell my grandchildren one day that I’ve seen Mozyakin play and break the record during a time when records seemed to be hard to reach, but what are they saying about records?
Those are supposed to be broken at some point, sooner or later.
What makes Mozyakin so great?
He has apparently a great nose for the net, and that we have seen more than 428 times. Yet more will come, a lot more!
And yes, he has great skill otherwise with the stick and a tremendous flexibility in his moves, which make it very difficult, if not impossible, to take the puck away from him. Or even knock him down.
But those are all academic things and views. Important enough though when it comes to the skill.
However, for me, what make him one of the greatest in the post-soviet era of players, is that he has a humble personality.
I have always seen him as a quiet and unpretentious person and player and that is a very rare thing among today’s athletes in any sport, especially when you can read on daily basis headline stuff and one-liners that are supposed to shock or be funny.
One thing that is for sure with Mozyakin, he never — or at least very, very seldom — lets his mouth talk instead of his stick and his almost unreal ability to find the net.
Therefore, I was and am so glad that he is the one that reached Michailov’s record; a player of his mind-calibre deserves it if anyone deserves it. Honestly, I wouldn’t have felt the same excitement and joy if someone else had done it, especially a headline machine.
Adding a bit more to his ability to score, let us put it this way, simple as it ever can be said:
It doesn’t matter if there is a goaltender or not between the pipes, he’ll make the puck cross the red line whenever he feels like it. That kind of scorer he obviously is, which we can sign under as testimony.
Most of all, as I have noticed that I am not alone in my view on Mozyakin, it makes me and my hockey heart bounce with happiness to read some of the quotes from Gennady Velichkin (the vice president of Metallurg Magnitogorsk) and Vyacheslav Bykov through the official KHL site: http://en.khl.ru/news/2016/09/11/318782.html
“Usually prodigiously-talented people, whether they’re musicians, actors, athletes, can be unpredictable, with a difficult attitude. Sergei is the exception to that.”
“On the ice, he’s a natural leader, but in the rest of his life, he’s a model of decency, civility, and good manners. I’ve never heard him be rude to anyone.”
“God gave Sergei a great talent, but also a great capacity for hard work”
“So every year Sergei polished that talent like a jeweller working on a precious gem”
From the diamond mine of hockey players as I mentioned above.
The eminent Russian hockey expert, Patrick Conway, pointed also out for me the crucial fact that if he wins the goals title this season, he will become the first player in Soviet/Russian hockey ever to do that five times.
Another unreal record, in other words.
Well, I don’t find any more to say about Mozyakin at this time as I find also that the dictionary is not enough to describe this man and I’ll let it be that way but another thing is for sure, that it will be a very large gap to fill the day Mozyakin ends his career.
For upcoming hockey players wherever they come from, there is a message left to take in and consider if there is a true desire to be as great as Mozyakin:
A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results
-Wade Boggs
